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.
In my opinion it is a choice of negative things from a person, and it all returns to a person's nature whether he is an addict or not, or gambling is just a hobby for the pleasure of his daily activities, sometimes the nature of wanting to know more than what they have not felt when they have a lot of money, so whether the money will be used to gamble or buy drugs or vice versa the money that is owned for the necessities of life, everyone's choices and the nature that is in a person are not too similar, so that's why we can judge someone from when they have a lot of money or not at all..
Whatever results we are getting from gambling we need to know that we choose that way and is the outcome of what we have chosen. We don't need to blame people around us for the results we are getting.
If we don't like the results we are getting, we can better still work on how we make our bets so that we don't end up losing big from what we are doing. Gambling is a choice we need to know and accept any of the results we are seeing. Those we keep making consistent winnings have paid the prize and still paying so we don't need to see it as a shortcut we can take to get the kind of results we are looking for.
Once you decided to gamble, it is already a surefire loss, it is only up to different factors whether you will win or lose just like luck, and as you'be said that it is also your decision on what to do next, either you will try to gamble again or will just immediately stop. Gambling is your own responsible, not other people, and it is not also right to let other people decide it for you and will end up blaming them if ever you'll lose.
There have been so many cases of this kind of situation before where they tend to be swayed easily only to end up losing big and struggling to get out of that pithole of loss. As they said "gamble responsibly", coz in the end you are the only ones who will eithee benefit or suffer, that is all up to how you handle your gambling habits.