Is winning the lottery really terrible luck?

WWould Hat do it if I won the lottery? Is it something we have all fantasized, surely? Would the money go directly to the property, a London Pied-à-Terre, an expansion of Somerset, perhaps an Italian farm? It sounds lovely. Or perhaps you would become a philanthropist, investing cash in the causes of rescuing kittens until cancer is cured. Or, as in the new romom The ballad of the island of WallisYou would spend something more niche, like gathering your favorite musicians to perform a private concert. That is the dream, anyway. The nightmare is that you lose every sense of itself and become a cash machine to walk, talk, unable to trust anyone and harass the loot for the rest of your life.

When the news occurred this week that a newsletter in Ireland had obtained a Lottery boat of Euromillions records of £ 208 million, all I could think was about the nightmare. Surely that amount of money, which appears in your bank account from nothing, cannot lead to something healthy? At the risk of sounding like an omen of Doom (or simply jealous), nothing in life comes without a price. Case in question: this week, there were also reports that a woman who won a mansion of £ 6 million in a raffle of £ 10 has denied the keys, and is now wrapped in a long planning battle. Even so, his life has changed beyond recognition overnight. “It's crazy,” said Vicky Curtis-Cresswell to the press. “One week we care that our old car breaks, the next one we have a house of £ 6 million.”

The stories of the winners of the cursed lottery are a story as old as time. A historic headline, about an incident in Paris in 1765, sounds more like a plot of black film: “A baker and his pregnant wife murdered for their profits by an employee.” More recently, there was a British teenager Callie Rogers, who was only 16 when he won £ 1.8 million in 2003 (a modest sum compared to the last victory). He gave hundreds of thousands to his loved ones and then admitted in the newspapers that he feared that people were only kind to her for her money. After everything spent, he began working as a cleaner and moved to his mother, telling a journalist: “Now all the money is gone, I can find some happiness. It has ruined my life.”

Victoria Jones, who won £ 2.3 million with her now ex -husband in 2004, said that winning the lottery was “one of the worst things that happened to me, without a doubt,” he added: “People treat you differently, it is simply not something pleasant.” And Margaret Loughrey, who went from living with £ 71 per week to win a major prize of £ 27 million in 2013, fought with his mental health after entering fortune. She said: “I don't believe in religion, but if there is a hell, I've been in it. It has been so bad. I went down to five and a half stones.”

One of the most disturbing stories leaves the United States, where West Virginia businessman Jack Whittaker won a $ 315 million Jackpot Powerball (£ 234 million) in 2002. Only 10 years later, his wife had left him, and his daughter and granddaughter had died of drug overdose. They had also stolen numerous times: once, someone was drugged in a Striptease club and stole $ 545,000 in cash that had been sitting outside in his car. “I wish I was destroyed that ticket,” journalists later told the tears.

These can be stories of gloomy tabloids, but they demonstrate one thing: making public is a bad idea. The official advice of the National Lottery is that the new winners “keep calm, obtain independent legal and financial advice and contact us as soon as they can.” Those who pose outside their home with a large check and a bottle of champers do not have the opportunity to receive a rhythm and think about how they want to spend their fortune.

Staying anonymous seems to be the key to keeping things as cold as possible. And it is surprising to see how many choose to do so, in this list of the 10 greatest victories in the Lottery of the United Kingdom to date, all of Euromillions raffles:

But whether you choose to tell people or not, the impact on your own psyche must be huge. There are not many of us who raise ourselves in the alarm of the 6.30 am, travel to work and go out eight hours later if we knew we had hundreds of millions in the bank. With all that money, where would you find your impulse, your address? Not to say that one of the first things that depressed people recipe is routine and structure, to address apathy, something that generally provides a job?

It is no accident that so many aristocratic children, who do not need to work one day in their lives, fall apart. If you have all the things you could desire, then those things become bored much faster, and you go to new ends just to feel something. It is human nature.

And there is too much money. Take the imminent wedding of Jeff Bezos who is about to drag Venice. The excess of everything, including a megayacht of the size of a football field tied in the Grand Canal, has left the Venetians boiling, and many threaten to jump to the river tracks to block the festivities. And the fiancee of the multimillionaire of technology Lauren Sánchez is apparently having 27 changes in the outfits. Is it something really fun or cheerful? I'm not sure. Sounds exhausting.

Of course, there are many cases in which people have won the lottery and transformed their lives for better. A 2023 study conducted by Joan Costa-Font at the London School of Economics discovered that winning the lottery could actually strengthen close relationships. The academic discovered that the winners spent more time with their friends. Funny, less time with their neighbors spent, the idea is that perhaps that money allows you want to, instead of those who are geographically closest.

Then, the happy lottery winners exist. But for many others, isn't it alone, well, bad luck?