What began as a Redditor “just dabbling” two years ago blew into full-blown crypto trading addiction that all came to a head three weeks ago.
A self-confessed crypto trading addict and father of two is threatening to lose his family forever after secretly racking up $180,000 in debt from his crypto trading habits.
Reddit user “Leather_Opposite2135” posted his story to the r/relationship advice subreddit on February 21, saying he started trading cryptocurrency around 2021.
Fast forward two years and his wife kicked him out owes at least $180,000.
“It just started chatting,” Ledo said. “It’s a technical space, so it was very interesting for me. I joined a bunch of online spaces (discord) and I started to see how some people were trading BTC and I was immediately hooked. In years he was already $50,000 trading cryptocurrencies “burned”
“We fast-forwarded another year and it got really bad,” Leather said, noting that his addiction took hold when he started financing his business through other means like personal loans and credit cards.
“I was playing on my phone when I went to the bathroom when the children were asleep, on the computer when I was not in a hurry to work.”
Ledo realized that about three weeks ago, he finally got out of debt to his wife, who did not take the good news and threatened to leave him and take her
Since then he banned himself from using crypto, handed over control of his business accounts to his wife, and saw a gambling addiction counselor every week, but admitted that the addiction was hard to get rid of at first.
“Emotionally I was full for the first 2 weeks. Cold turkey for something I spent (at least) 10 hours a day […] All the while there was a little voice telling me to go, looking at the charts over my shoulder”
Leather_Opposite2135 has since deleted the original post on Reddit, but this is not the first or last story to shed light on the potential dangers of crypto trading addiction rehab centres around the world have begun adding crypto trading addiction to their list of services that address compulsions in addition to alcohol, drugs, and behavioural health.
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“Clinically, we’ve definitely seen an increase in people coming into therapy reporting difficulties managing their crypto trading,” said clinical psychologist Dr. Anastasia Hronis in an email to Cointelegraph.
“Like gambling, many of them report that it interferes with their daily lives, spend a lot of time on it, and may experience financial difficulties as a result.”
Dr. Hronis noted that similar to online gambling addiction, crypto trading has “easy access” that “can be quite dangerous for individuals”.
“One can be seen participating in their normal daily life, for example, going to work, spending time with family and friends, participating in hobbies, etc., but still trading. This means that the addiction can actually become quite serious before anyone else in that person’s life notices it.”
“Given the newness of crypto trading, I still think treatment is a bit inappropriate. Although the general principles of addiction treatment can certainly be applied here, there are nuances of crypto-trading that would benefit from better understanding to inform clinical treatment,” added Dr. Hronis.
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