The most important step for you now is to get some expert advice, either from a money counsellor at your local Citizens Advice Bureau, or through one of the charity debt helplines, National Debtline or the Consumer Credit Counselling Service.
In 1996, the 26,000 callers to the New Jersey gamblers' helpline reported average gambling debts of more than $31,000.
In addition to the helpline, the charity has 239 debt centres working out of churches, 71 church-based job clubs and a money course designed to prevent people from getting into debt.
If you would like to discuss any of this in more detail with a CCCS debt counsellor, then you can call our helpline on +44113 2970126 which is open from 8am-8pm Monday to Friday.
And 21 per cent of student inquiries to the Stepchange helpline last year related to payday-loan debt, at an average of £1,069 per person.
StepChange, the debt charity, has revealed that students who called its helpline in 2013 had racked up average debts of £7,818.
Over the last 12 months, 73,500 problems were dealt with by the helpline, and more than one-third of those calls (29,508) related to debt.
Every day, my fellow planners and I talk to employees on our Financial Helpline who are contemplating taking a retirement plan loan to pay off debts.
Consumer helplines have sounded a warning after Britons ran up their highest level of new debt in November for nearly seven years, with the month's borrowing on credit cards, loans and overdrafts hitting more than £1.25bn.
