Watching my younger brother gamble his life away and I don’t know what else to do

Hi everyone. I’m posting anonymously because this isn’t my story to tell publicly, but I don’t know where else to turn.

I’m a (22M) writing about my younger brother (20M), who is a few weeks away from turning 21. He started gambling the day he turned 19. It began with sports betting and within a month shifted to blackjack, with occasional slots.

At first it was small, $5-$10 hands, and felt manageable. Over the past two years, it has escalated dramatically. He now plays blackjack at stakes as high as $1,000 per hand, if he’s not doubling down on a hand. This week he won $10,000 over two days and then lost all of it tonight. This is a recurring pattern. He has hit for thousands of dollars multiple times, only to give it all back within 24 hours.

Based on account statements and what we’ve been able to piece together, he has likely wagered well north of 4 million dollars over the last two years, with most of that coming in just the past eight months. Most months have deposits of $20,000 into the casino apps, even though that is barely a tenth of his income. He is technically down on paper, but because he is so financially supported, it often appears like he is doing fine. In reality, his cumulative losses likely exceed $30,000, and that number feels like it is growing quickly.

What makes this even harder is that, on the surface, he appears to be doing well in life. He works a full time job that is intended to be his long term career, shows up consistently, and functions normally day to day. To anyone on the outside, he looks like a successful, responsible young adult, which makes the severity of the problem easier to hide.

My family and I have tried what we can. We put phone restrictions in place through an iCloud family plan and used BetBlocker on his desktop, which worked for about six months until a friend showed him how to bypass it. Once that happened, the gambling resumed immediately.

We’ve also got him banned from the local casinos until 2029, so he can’t go in person to any of them in our area. He’s also self-excluded himself from dozens of sites, but there are so many that he keeps finding more.

I also want to be honest about our role in this. We tried at times to allow what we thought was controlled gambling, hoping moderation would prevent blowups. In reality, when he pushes for more, we struggle to say no. The pressure, arguments, and constant harassment wear us down, and it has often felt easier to throw money at the problem just to make it stop in the moment. We know this is enabling behavior, and we are painfully aware that it has likely contributed to where things are now.

He has lied to all of us, sold personal assets, gambled with money he doesn’t have, asked friends for loans, and generally made every bad decision possible when it comes to gambling. Any willingness to change only seems to appear when he needs money.

After tonight’s events, my parents are planning to start pulling back on indirect financial support by offloading the cost of things like his gas, car insurance, and phone bill onto him. When this was discussed, his response was that doing this would “keep him broke his whole life,” and he has repeatedly said that he plans on gambling for the rest of his life. Hearing that was sobering and made it feel like we are not even working toward the same goal.

At this point, my parents and I are exhausted. We are at our wits end. We all have our own lives and responsibilities, and we are painfully aware that there is only so much we can do. Between doctors appointments and professional schools interviews, it’s a lot to handle as another part of the day to day life, but we’d do anything to support him.

We come from a relatively well off family, which has honestly made things worse. Financial bailouts have happened in the past, especially early on. Now the sums are too large to keep rescuing him, and we are trying to stop entirely. On paper, he looks financially stable with a maxed out TFSA and some supplementary assets, but the only reason those remain untouched is because selling them would trigger warnings from the bank. It feels like a collapse waiting to happen. We’re just delaying the inevitable rock bottom for him.

What makes this even more concerning is that this is not an isolated issue. Several people we know around our age are struggling with gambling in similar ways. Online betting, casinos, and gambling apps feel omnipresent, normalized and aggressively marketed. It genuinely feels like an epidemic among young men in this generation, and watching it up close has been terrifying.

What scares me most is that my brother shows no sustained internal motivation to change. No remorse that lasts, no consistent effort toward recovery, just the next bet, the next chase, and the next request for help when things fall apart.

I’m hoping to hear from people who have lived this, either as gamblers or family members. What actually helps when the person doesn’t want recovery? How do families stop enabling when saying no feels impossible? Is there a point where stepping back completely is the right thing to do? For those in recovery, what finally broke through for you?

I love my brother, but I feel like I’m watching him destroy himself in real time, and I don’t know what else is possible.

Thank you for reading.