22-Year-Old Says He Spent More Than $30,000 on Booze in Just 2 Weeks

Wales Online published a story Tuesday about David Rixon, a 22-year-old man who claims he spent £25,000 ($32,438) on booze in a mere two weeks. The hefty liquor expenses came during what Wales Online characterizes as a "spiral of addiction," which started after Rixon was violently and traumatically mugged and then, just two weeks later, broke his foot in a motorcycle crash, an injury that forced him to leave his job. He says he fell into a debt of more than £12,500 ($16,218) thanks to a year of gambling and drinking. According to Wales Online, he received £96 ($125) a week of sick pay but spent it on online casinos and maxed out eight credit cards in two months. At one point, Rixon won £17,000 gambling but spent that plus more on what Wales Online describes as a "colossal two-week bender," in which he spent his time buying drinks for his friends, binge-drinking and doing drugs. He bought beer for parties and dropped hundreds of pounds on bottles in clubs every night, according to Wales Online. Apparently, Rixon's wakeup call came after a night of drinking so much he woke up "unable to function." At that point, he apparently decided to quit alcohol, gambling, smoking and even coffee all at the same time. Talk about cold turkey. According to Wales Online, Rixon has been sober for a year and seven months now and took out a year-long debt relief order .

Lessons Learned

With his dark days now behind him, Rixon shared some lessons he learned, telling Wales Online: "It just shows how things creep up on you and you don't realise it. I wasn't registering it. By the time I knew it, I'd gone through eight credit cards and the winnings and spent it all on alcohol. I used to come home from drinking and gambling and my sister at the time was five or six and I used to just shout and swear at her and my mum. "It was not the person I wanted to be - slamming things and breaking things. If I fast forward to now, I'm a year and seven months sober, don't gamble, don't drink, don't do anything like that and I have a very big connection with family, friends and my partner, Nicholas. It's completely different to what I was. I've worked on myself so much." [newsletter-promo]