The Boston Phoenix January 11 - 18, 2001
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I cringe when I think how closely this model applies to my story -- right down to the early hit ($1000 on a $2 ticket). The discovery that I'm not alone should be comforting. It isn't. The fact that my sky-lowering drama is so run-of-the-mill, so predictable, is somehow even more demeaning. Chasing the wagon
(continued)
by Chris Wright
At the same time, I'm grateful that I stopped when I did (edging into the "Monster" stage). There are gamblers out there who make my habit look like a penchant for coin collecting: the guy who stole money from his daughter's piggy bank; the guy who went to Belmont Racetrack on the day his wife died of cancer; the guy who stole $300,000 from his law firm, got caught, and killed himself on the eve of his son's 11th birthday. There is some comfort in the thought that I wasn't that bad.
On the other hand, I was pretty bad.
The scariest moment of my brush with ruin came when I began to entertain thoughts of committing a crime. I wasn't about to rob a bank, mug an old lady, or start giving hand jobs at my local bus terminal, but I had eyed a thick stack of Spectaculars at a convenience store, and I had thought how nice it would be if I could only ... It was the if that saved me. That and a big fat yellow streak.
When people associate addiction with crime, they tend to think of sweat-slick crackheads lifting Pampers from Stop & Shops, cankerous junkies pulling blades in gloomy alleyways, or bloated alcos kicking the crap out of each other in parking lots. But hard-line gamblers are as likely to resort to crime as any drug addict. In fact, given the limitless amounts of money that can be poured into their addiction, they may be even more so.
Forty-seven percent of people in Gamblers Anonymous (GA), for instance, say that they have engaged in fraud or theft. Thirty-two percent of prison inmates acknowledge having a gambling problem. David Nibert, citing a nationwide study on state-sponsored gambling, writes that "states with lotteries had a rate of property crimes about 3 percent higher than states without, a statistically significant finding." Yet it's unlikely that someone who discovers his car missing or her house burgled will spit out, "Damn scratch addicts!"
Part of this misconception stems from the fact that many people have trouble thinking of gambling as an addiction at all. It's something you do, not something you take. A recent study at Harvard Medical School, however, found that a gambler's brain responds to a bet in much the same way a drug user's responds to a line of coke. The hormones released during a gambling bout produce a real chemical high. But you don't have to be a neurologist to know this. All you need is to have slapped down a 10-spot on an all-or-nothing Spectacular.
But where's the buzz in that? How could I possibly get a kick out of frittering my money away? Questions like these point to another error non-gamblers make when trying to understand people like me. The true gambler gets a rush just from laying down a bet, or even thinking of laying down a bet. And perversely, or maybe inevitably, losing makes winning all the more enjoyable.
The tail end of a losing streak is a place of great possibility. For all the sobbing and whining, the loser knows this -- at least on a subconscious level. You know that by unloading a boatload of cash you are setting yourself up for the most delirious rush a gambler can experience. And you know that the longer a losing streak lasts, the bigger the rush will be when the streak breaks.
There's an old saying among gamblers: "The biggest bet I ever made was my last two dollars." The eye-popping, heart-stopping action doesn't come when the shipping magnate slaps down a hundred thou on the spin of a roulette wheel; it comes when some poor slob hands over the dregs of a stake on a lousy ace-high. To come from behind, to pull yourself back from the brink of ruin -- that is pure rocket fuel.
Herein lies the gambler's Catch-22: if you quit in the midst of a losing streak, you're denying yourself the Big Bang that comes when you finally break out of it. And if you're on a winning streak -- well, what kind of idiot stops in the middle of a winning streak? Couple this dilemma with the physical addiction of gambling, and it's clear why, according to some estimates, as many as 92 percent of addicts suffer at least one relapse.
But not me. I'm stopping.
A seasoned gambler, if you say something like this, will laugh in your face. Compulsive gamblers are liars. And long before they start lying to their spouses and co-workers and friends, they lie to themselves. They say things like "Not me" and "I'm stopping." Dana Forman, associate program director at the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling, has a list that he sends out: "40 Lies Problem Gamblers Tell Themselves."* When I bet $50 and win $100, I'm up $100.
* It takes money to make money.
* I'll stop once I get even.
* I'm not that bad yet.
* Without gambling, life would be boring.
"Without gambling, life would be boring." It's got a ring of truth to it. How do you replace something as all-consuming as a gambling habit? Could anything else even begin to approach the sheer drama of it all? Needlepoint and stamp collecting aren't going to cut it. Neither are movies, pinball, or long walks in the park.
Another thing people often fail to take into account is this: gamblers love to gamble.
Dana Forman doesn't buy this line of reasoning at all. "An addiction isn't `love,' " he says. "You're a slave to it. You've lost control of your own behavior. And that's not love." Forman does agree, however, that the recovering gambler faces a huge challenge in finding something to take the place of the habit. "That's one of the more common questions," he says. " `What do I do with this void in my life?' There are no easy answers. You have to figure it out for yourself."
Not surprisingly, a large number of recovering gamblers turn to religion. The second step in the GA 12-step recovery program, for instance, states, "[We] came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to a normal way of thinking and living." In many ways, though, it was a "power greater than ourselves" that got us into this damn mess in the first place.
A friend of mine once remarked that my gambling habit stemmed from a fascination with "the point where statistics and psychology meet." But it's more than this. Gambling embodies a belief system. We believe in Luck. We can feel it within us: the mana that allows us to fucking know what that next card will be. And we feel its absence. As we double-down on 11 and see a three. As we get up from the table and perform our little oops-oops two-steps with passers-by.
Luck, as all gamblers know, is a vengeful god. So we court it. We coddle it. We adopt little rituals to appease it. Your average compulsive gambler observes a level of superstition that would put the most devout fundamentalist to shame. We have our lucky socks, our lucky shirts, our lucky numbers, our lucky dealers, our lucky drinks, our lucky seats, our lucky games, our lucky days. The very idea that "my luck has to kick in sooner or later" is magical thinking at its most basic level.
The gambler's belief system is intense and immediate. When we pray, we expect our prayers to be answered, and we expect them to be answered now. And when they are, oh, we feel blessed, in the truest, most mystical sense of the world. What code have we cracked? What power have we tapped into? Nothing can compete with the thrill of having Luck on your side -- not talent, not smarts, and not knuckle-down toil. It's the only true brush with faith that many of us get. But faith is, by its very nature, a fragile thing.
The day of my terrible scratch session, at the very moment I began to fathom what a mess I was in, I heard that a worker on a nearby construction site had scored $4 million on a Spectacular. Word was he had bought the ticket from the same store I had been trawling all day. That was it. I didn't scream, I didn't spit, and I didn't shake my fist at the sky. But I no longer had any faith in Luck -- at least not my luck. What else would I lose?
I didn't really mind telling my dad I was a gambling addict. Telling my wife, though, was another matter. I felt guilty. I felt pathetic and maggoty. More than this, I felt scared. "Oh, you know everything I've said to you over the last year? Disregard it." How the hell would she react to that?Apparently, my fears were well-founded.
"It's the Watergate of gambling," says Dana Forman. "President Nixon was forced to resign not because he committed crimes, but because he tried to cover them up. It's the great cover-up that gets you into trouble."
Equally unsettling was the realization that once I made my confession, once the truth was out -- well, that would be it. My love affair with gambling would have to come to an end. This too, says Forman, is a common reaction. "Many gamblers report that when the spouse threatens to leave them, they will say, `Good, now I'll be able to gamble all I want without your nagging,' " he says. "That's what the addiction does."
But I'm lucky; owning up to addiction has actually helped my marriage. For one thing, I can finally look my wife in the eye, free of the ball-withering guilt that went with the lies and obfuscation. My "outing" has answered a lot of questions. It's given us something to focus on, something to take aim at -- a common enemy. My marriage feels stronger now than it did a month ago, and next month it'll feel stronger.
I realize it now: I'm lucky.
I also realize that I not only have to stop lying, I have to stop blaming. I have to stop shifting responsibility. I have to realize that what I have long called "bad luck" was actually bad judgment. The crap I've had to deal with is not the lottery's fault. It's not the fault of the guy who bought my winning Spectacular. It's not the fault of the friend who introduced me to gambling 20 years ago. It's not in my genes or my culture or my stars. I'm the one who gambled my money away. It's me.
I don't even blame my former scratch-mate -- we'll call him Mike -- who still tries to tempt me every now and again: "Twenty'll get you in." The other day, Mike approached me with a pocket full of Spectaculars. There could be a winner, he said, a $4 million winner. I looked at the tickets fanned out in his hand -- so silvery, so full of possibility. A few weeks ago, I would have succumbed to the what if in a heartbeat. This time, I wished him luck and walked away.
But I'm not naive enough to believe I've got this thing licked. Not yet. An addict is an addict is an addict, right? "Admission that one has a problem is the first step," says Forman. "It's a huge one, but it's not enough. You've got to keep going. There's a lot of legwork." He's right, of course: there's a lot of work left yet.
I am planning one last ritual.I will go into my back yard, take a dollar bill from my pocket, and set it on fire. As I watch the bill burn, I'll say a few words for all the money I've spent on gambling in the last few years. Ashes to ashes, scratch to scratch. This private ceremony, I hope, will help me break the spell once and for all.
For me, the hardest part of quitting has been coming to terms with a single, simple fact: the money I've lost is money I've lost. It's not money I've yet to win back. It's not money I've invested. I haven't been putting good luck aside on the layaway plan. There will be no redress, no redeeming hit. "You have to let go," says Forman. "You're never going to get that money back, ever." This is the most excruciating thing to do, to let go of hope like that. It's the hardest part.
About a month after I stopped gambling, my wife and I went to see a movie. I didn't try to wriggle out of paying for the tickets. I bought the candy and the soda. I remember thinking, "That's a bloody stupid thing to be proud of." Anyway, it was a far cry from the Thames-side penthouse I'd hoped to own, or the round-the-world trip I'd hoped to go on. Then, as the lights dimmed and the movie started, my wife gave my hand a little squeeze. I will never win the $4 million jackpot. I will never go to Monte Carlo. There are other things to hope for.
Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com.
