[AlphaWhale]

My father is/was a problem gambler. My parents eventually split up and nothing has changed, I stopped talking to him after he told me he won the lottery and bought a race horse (a quarter of a race horse). Which I later read came dead ******* last. So it's probably the most expensive glue he's ever bought.

To put this in perspective, my parents split when I was 8. Now I'm 21, my father is still the same man my mother left.

These types of men are leeches than pin their futures on miracles and dreams. They're not fit to be fathers in the slightest. Any man that puts anything before his family is scum, and any man that puts a game of chance before his family is lower than that.

You can have dreams, but when it is simply delusion it is not the same. There's no "treatment" for these "illnesses" because they are not physical afflictions but character flaws.

You can love your father, but you can hate everything that makes him who he is at the same time. That's family.

My words of advice are: Get out while you can. Your sister and mother, too.