In the week it was announced Middlesbrough had won a large casino, Lindsay Jennings hears one man's moving and honest account of his battle with compulsive gambling.

IT is 1964 and the smoky casino at Newcastle's Grey's Club is the place to see and be seen. By the roulette table is Sammy Davis Junior and Dean Martin. Michael Caine spent his nights here as well, playing cards after days filming what will become scenes in the iconic movie, Get Carter.

The lads from Newcastle United FC are regulars, the Beckhams and Rooneys of their day. And so too is Paul Johnson, who plays cards with them all.

Only Paul is 14-years-old - and he's about to win £1,000 on a French card game called chemin.

"I thought I was the bee's knees," recalls Paul, now 56, and a spokesman for the charity, Gamblers Anonymous (GA). "It was about 2am and I went home and woke my parents up and threw this thousand pounds on the bed. My mum started crying and said 'if you can win a thousand, you can lose a thousand'. My dad had gambled all his life."

For the next 32 years, Paul was intent on chasing the next big win. Like a sleepy demon inside him, his gambling addiction was awoken with games of cards played with his family, when he was aged 11, for pennies at a time.

But it was 1964, when the Gaming Board for Great Britain was formed and casinos became legal, that he began to live the life - and lies - of a compulsive gambler. He would steal money from his dad's wallet, his school friend's satchel and, once, even from the pocket of his physics teacher at school.

"I understood I was wrong to take the money but the urge to gamble was so powerful in my head, I had to take it," he says.

"I used to spend five nights a week at the casino. I was hanging around with my brother's friends who were 18 and I learned at a very early age that I could lie, and that people believed me.

"From the ages of 14 to 20 I won large amounts of money and I lost large amounts. But I would never bet on the horses or the dogs, because that's what my dad had done and I didn't want to be like him. I could remember my mum crying because my dad had lost all his wages.

"But then at the time I didn't consider myself to be a gambler because I was in the winning phase. Next would come the losing phase, and then the desperation phase."

It wasn't too long before Paul's gambling caught up with him. His cheques were bouncing across Newcastle and, owing huge amounts of money, he moved to West Yorkshire, where he sold classified advertising space for a newspaper. It was there he met his future wife, a school teacher he describes as an angel.

'She knew I was a gambler but she only saw the glamorous side then, going to the races, staying in fancy hotels," he says. "But I was clinically insane. A drunk may be drunk, a smack head will have drugs in him, but I was insane. I was absolutely intoxicated with it. I was completely mixed up with lies, deceit and fraud and the fantasy of it, which is almost more all-encompassing than gambling."

As Paul talks, his conversation develops at a quick-fire rate. He explains how, by simply talking about his past, his pulse has quickened, he's become "giddy".

"Really, this isn't good for me and that's why we don't recommend members do it," he admits. "It's not good for me because I'm genuinely enjoying it."

It is evident the conversation has evoked strong memories. From the highs of winning - living in a big house and wearing Versace and Prada suits - to the inevitable crash of the "desperation phase".

His wife and two children moved out in 1988, fed up with the lies. At an all-time low in 1996, Paul attempted suicide and swallowed 120 tablets - only surviving because the girl in the corner shop had sold him aspirin instead of paracetamol.

He woke up in intensive care where a doctor later told him about Gamblers Anonymous.

"I walked into a meeting on November 5, 1996," he says. "I believed I was the only person who was going through it but before I even spoke, six other guys told me their stories and their stories were exactly the same as mine. I felt like I'd come home."

While the average age of the men in the room was 55 then, the age of people attending meetings today can be as young as 20.

According to GA, 33 million people gamble at least once a week in the UK, with 375,000 - including 20,000 in the North-East - considered to be problem gamblers.

With more and more internet sites devoted to gambling, many people don't even need to leave the comfort of their front room to place a bet.

The turnover for the British gambling industry is £115m-a-day, with over £1.5bn going to the Government in taxes each year. Those figures will only increase in the future.

This week, it was announced the country's first Las Vegas-style super-casino will be built in Manchester and a large casino created in Middlesbrough. The Manchester casino will have up to 1,250 fruit machines with unlimited jackpots, while Middlesbrough will have 150 gaming machines and jackpots of up to £4,000.

But while there is talk of the jobs, regeneration and tourism the casinos will bring to the deprived areas they are usually sited in, it remains to be seen whether they will lead more people to become compulsive gamblers.

As a spokesman for GA, Paul declines to comment directly on the super-casinos, but does say: "It's weird that the Government is trying to restrict smoking yet, at the same time, not trying to restrict gambling. They are actually promoting it."

Paul managed to fight his way through his darkest times with help from GA's 12 step recovery programme. But the key factor to wellness is admitting you have a problem in the first place - and the desire to change.

"I was in denial for such a long time," says Paul. "When I went to GA, I suppressed my ego and I did the 12 steps. But some people come with too much spunk and they're not ready to lie down and as long as you're fighting it, you can't commit yourself.

"My brain is wired up slightly differently to yours. Unless I use the steps that GA have given me, then, left to my own devices, my instinct is to gamble money."

In the end, Paul has paid a heavy price. He has lost hundreds of thousands of pounds over the years but gambling has also cost him his self-respect and his family. His wife and children do not speak to him. He has not seen his daughter since she was a teenager and he's not sure if he would even recognise her today.

He lives in a small flat and has a small amount of money in his pocket. The flash car is long gone; he hasn't worn a designer suit in years and hasn't been abroad for five years. But despite his heartache at not speaking to his family, he has found a certain peace.

"It's just one day at a time," he says. "I could go out and do it again tonight or tomorrow, so it's just one day at a time."

* To contact Gamblers Anonymous, which has meetings in Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Darlington, log on to www.gamblersanonymous.org.uk or contact 01142-620026.

* Paul Johnson's name has been changed to protect his identity.