Hold on tight to your (€115m) dreams

Winning a fortune in a lottery is many people's fantasy, but sudden riches can have nightmare consequences, writes Shane Hegarty

When someone claims their jackpot at the National Lottery office, they get handed a 15-page winners advice booklet. Dolores McNamara may get a chance to read it as she decides what to do with her €115 million windfall. In between running from the media, of course. "Remember that they are just people who are trying to do their job," says the booklet, wisely. "And their job in most cases is creating a positive news story about you and your win."

The simplest moment of McNamara's Euromillions win may have been those few seconds it took to check the drawn numbers against her ticket. From here on in, it gets complicated.

There have already been front-page stories about one relative. Meanwhile, the widely circulated blurred picture taken of her celebrating her win in Garryowen's Track bar was taken by an enterprising local, who then sold it to two newspapers for an estimated €17,000.

He was only the first of many people who will hope to make a quick buck from her good fortune.

On the subject of "donation requests" (ie begging letters) the booklet suggests: "you might want to change your phone number." Winners should make sure a charity is legitimate before they donate. "Be conservative." She will need to be.

An Post is not, as reported, putting on an extra van to deal with the volume of begging letters, but she can expect correspondence from all over Europe.

On the psychological consequences of winning, the booklet warns: "research has indicated that winners of large sums of money who make rapid changes in their jobs and lifestyles can sometimes pay a price in terms of increased boredom and social isolation."

The director of the National Lottery, Ray Bates, says that its approach is "intimate, folksy". When Dolores McNamara arrived to pick up her winnings on Thursday, with her own legal and financial advisers, a small team of five National Lottery advisers spent a couple of hours with her "getting a sense of her general demeanour and if she was happy with her own advisers. We left very happy that she was." While there is no long-term follow-up programme, he says that it impresses upon winners that "we are always there for them".

He says he's heard no horror stories from the 270 Irish Lotto millionaires, but if McNamara wants reports of how big money can bring big problems, she'll never have to wait long. If there's one thing the press loves more than a tale of rags-to-riches, it's rags-to-riches-to-rags-again.

"£11m . . . And All It Brought Me Was Trouble" was one British lottery winner's recent story.

Another, 19-year-old Michael Carroll, who picked up his £9.7 million (€14 million) while wearing an electronic tag, will soon tell a Channel 4 programme that he wishes he'd never won. Of course, for Dolores McNamara £11 million is now nothing more than a generous tip.

For a comparable winner she will need to look to the US, where 55-year-old Jack Whittaker, already a successful builder, scooped the richest undivided lottery prize in US history, $111.5 million (€90 million) after taxes, in 2002. Since which, things have gone downhill.

Whittaker has been arrested twice for driving under the influence, sentenced to five days home confinement, ordered into rehab and has also been accused of assault, molestation and of making death threats.

For a devout Christian who gave millions to his local church, eyebrows were raised at his increasingly frequent visits to a strip club. During one of them, $545,000 (€442,000) was stolen from his car.

Then, at the end of last year, his granddaughter was found dead of a drugs overdose. Reports say that her life spiralled out of control after her grandfather showered her with tens of thousands of dollars. His wife says she now wishes he had never bought the winning ticket.

"If I had to do it all over, I'd be more secluded about it," Whittaker admits. "I'd do the same things, but I'd be a little more quiet."

Mike Grenby, the author of Suddenly . . . It's You! A Guide for Lottery Winners, has said people stay true to character even after huge wins.

"I found if they always blew all their money, that's what they did. If they were always very careful, that's what they were. You'll manage a big win just the same way you always manage or mismanage money."

Faced with endless advice on how to spend it, and friends and family who expect some of it to come their way, riches can become a burden.

According to Grenby: "With some people who've won money, they almost wished they'd never won it because of the problems it causes. If people know you've won they can expect you to pick up the tab and this can be a real problem."

Studies have shown that, once the initial high has subsided, lottery winners are about as happy as the rest of us. There is a theory that once a comfortable level of income is reached then happiness is pretty much the same regardless of whether you are a billionaire or a lowly millionaire.

Unfortunately, most of us will never get a chance to put that theory into practice.