The Sure Ticket to a Beautiful Life
As a young boy being raised in New York City, I would pitch pennies against the building with other boys in the neighborhood; and the person whose penny was the closest to the building would be the winner. What a rush it was to collect the pennies in these games. It soon expanded to small wagers on the outcome of the stickball games.
By the time I was 13, I was betting with a bookmaker in the local candy store; and a year or two later, I was regularly finding ways to get into the harness racing tracks. Gambling was a regular occurrence through high school and college—race tracks, card games, and sports betting with bookmakers.
Subsequent to college, I got married and attended law school. For the three years I attended law school, I did very little gambling. But after passing the bar exam and opening my law practice, the gambling really escalated. By now I had two children, and money was coming in quicker than I have ever seen it before. Money to a compulsive gambler is like cocaine to a cocaine addict. It stimulates the need to make the bet. Gambling was now a daily occurrence. It could be race tracks, jai-alai games, sports betting, card games or whatever. It was now starting to take over my life!
And then……..I discovered Las Vegas and the casinos; and there would be a 16-year run of casinos throughout the world—but primarily Las Vegas. The ugly truth is that the highs I received from gambling—especially from blackjack, craps, and baccarat in the casinos—were still the greatest highs I had ever experienced. This includes highs from athletic achievements, sexual highs, and even the highs of my children being born.
While I was ignoring my family prior to casinos coming into my life, I totally disregarded them subsequent to discovering Las Vegas. I became a favored customer on the strip in Las Vegas establishing credit in many hotels there. This meant my air fare, hotel room, food, alcohol, shows or whatever I else I wanted was paid for by the casinos.
By now, gambling was totally in control of my life. While I never ceased all of the other gambling, the casinos escalated it up many levels. I was virtually never home but instead was flying to Las Vegas mixed in with flights to the Caribbean. My wife and children ceased to exist in my mind. While I professed to love them, the bottom line is that I could care less about them, as gambling was the only thing I cared about.
With the amount of gambling I was now doing, what used to be fun and exciting now became devastating because the losses were starting to pile up. I obtained money through any means that I could because stopping gambling was not yet an option. It started with borrowing money from friends, banks, and finance companies. Then came the loan sharks; and at one point, I had five loan sharks—paying between 3 percent and 5 percent per week (150 percent to 250 percent per annum). Even with all this ugliness and unmanageability in my life, I still had to find a way to pay the bookies, casinos, and loan sharks because I could not stop gambling.
So I then graduated to the next step—and that was stealing. It started with “borrowing” from my trust account (embezzling) and escalated to schemes where I defrauded people into giving mortgages on nonexistent property. I simply obtained money any way that I could without any sense of morality or thought of the consequences.
The unmanageabilities went far beyond the financial. My wife had two nervous breakdowns. I had a loaded revolver to my head to obtain sympathy in a fake suicide attempt. My children’s lives had been threatened. My wife miscarried after two weeks of ugly arguing over gambling, and I went on a gambling junket while she was in the hospital, etc., etc., etc.
I was now all alone, literally homeless, financially devastated, with nowhere to turn. Therefore, I went to my first Gamblers Anonymous meeting. In retrospect, I see that I did not enter GA to stop gambling—but merely to stop the overwhelming pain. I did everything wrong. First of all, I violated the rule of no bailouts. I conned my father into paying the loan sharks, bookies, and casinos stating that I would be seriously hurt or killed. These were outright lies. Then I continued to tempt and test myself by watching the gin rummy game I had played in every afternoon. For 30 days I did not gamble, but then one day when they were one person short, I willingly filled in.
The gambling addiction is so insidious, irrational, and deceptive that even with all of the pain I had been through, once I opened the door, I went on a 7-year run that was uglier than before. I was attending GA meetings, gambling, and lying about it. In view of the fact that I will never be cured—with my addiction always wanting to come out, it is crucial not be cute with my recovery. By obtaining bailouts and tempting/testing, I triggered a relapse with the devastation that naturally follows.
What finally brought everything to a head was being arrested in my office by the F.B.I. for fencing stolen bonds for a huge sum of money. While the grand jury eventually threw the case out (They believed my lies!), it was this arrest along with the ensuing civil litigation which finally got it into my gut that my gambling was over and that recovery and Gamblers Anonymous would be my prime priorities.
My goal in Gamblers Anonymous changed. It was to stop gambling and recover. That meant keeping the door closed at all times and being totally immersed in the Gamblers Anonymous program—multiple meetings each week, speaking engagements, doing pressure groups, etc. It is now 26 years since my last bet, and I could not be happier! I have rid myself of the slavery of gambling and have replaced it with the freedom of recovery. I now have things I could never have had while gambling; namely, self-respect, happiness, and the ability to love and be loved. I am remarried to a beautiful person, and my relationship with my children could not be better. I must not make that first bet, I must be 100 percent honest, and I must continue to remain active in Gamblers Anonymous. These are the sure tickets to a beautiful life!
–Bob D., New Jersey