Gambling should be your choice, you shouldn't let anyone compel or persuade you into it.
Saying that gambling is a choice sounds like a BS excuse to me. Doing drugs is also "a choice". Becoming an alcoholic is "a choice" as well.
Ruining your life is a choice. Sometimes the people lose control over their behavior and their choice suddenly becomes an addiction.
Being addicted is not a choice, it's an illness that has to be cured. The life story you are describing seems like a scam to me.
Letting someone else manipulate and scam you is your choice, but that doesn't mean that it's your fault only. The scammer is also guilty of manipulating and scamming innocent people.
Bringing out good moral conducts in gambling is a choice and misbehaving in gambling also is a choice, everyone fall in either of the category stated above, but yet it's our decision on where to settle on, we will definitely be responsible for our outcomes received through gambling if they are good or bad base on what we have decided to settle on, but one thing that i see which is very important here is individuality involved, our personalities as well account, our level of thinking and reasoning matters, the kind of orientation we have as well as the place or environment we lived in, that's why i put it that it's not about gambling now, but our personal individuals responsibility and choice while gambling.