I had an aunt who was addicted to scratch-off lottery tickets. Every day she’d start off her day buying reams of them and then she’d spend the rest of the day scratching them off. She’d go to church on Sunday and testify in front of the congregation that God had finally released her from the scratch-off ticket demon. On her way she’d get some more tickets. Rinse and repeat. She died prematurely from a host of lifestyle diseases.
My parents spend a lot of money and time at casinos. I don’t know if their habit rises to the level of addiction, but I would not be surprised if it did.
He hasn’t gambled away all of his money (yet) , but I know someone with a bad gambling habit. Funny thing is, he rarely goes to casinos , doesn’t lose much when he does and never goes to the track. Most of his gambling is lottery tickets- to the tune of over $12K a year. And he only makes about $50K. It’s funny, because he doesn’t seem to get any enjoyment from it - perhaps he did at the beginning, but now it seems to be a combination of some OCD-like thinking that “bad things will happen” if he doesn’t play his mother’s birthday and a fear that if he doesn’t play his usual numbers on a given day one of them will win. On some level , he seems to acknowledge it’s a problem ( he did go to a meeting of Gambler’s Anonymous*) and on others he doesn’t - it’s been years and he still doesn’t believe he buys $12K a year of lottery tickets, even though multiple people have done the math in from of him using numbers he provided.
He claims he never went back because he was told that bowling in tournaments with prizes was a form of gambling. I don’t know if he was told this, or if he misunderstood something or if it made it up to explain why he didn’t go to further meetings.
I worked on trade desks in the financial industry, I’ve met plenty . Sports gambling is huge there. One guy was so damn moody it was like being in a toxic relationship. I’d be scared to death of going to work Sunday afternoon during NFL season, we were often the only two in the office (financial markets open at 5pm central time Sunday) No idea about his own personal financial situation but he was as an odd guy and I never knew that he has any other interests besides sports gambling. All vacation was spent in Las Vegas and of course, there would always be some unscheduled sick time during the NCAA tournament.
An acquaintance of mine from work turned out to have a serious problem. He was a faculty member at the college and fairly well trusted. Turned out he was using one of the college credit cards to rack up big gambling debts at the track. He was asked to resign.
There really was nothing about it to show he was stuck by the gambling bug. I never heard him talk about anything you could bet on.
My brother-in-law. He lives to gamble, as far as I can tell. He and his wife, and my nephew (!) live nowhere permanently. They move around from one casino to another. He lost his job, and started re-mortgaging the house. Somehow he got it so entangled in paper that there are now several banks arguing over who has claim to it. This is unfortunate for my father-in-law, who paid for it, and was at one point on the title. My brother-in-law took him off.
He got ahold of my mother-in-laws financial information, and he ran up every card to the limit, took out several new cards and loans, maxed those all out, had all of the paperwork sent to him (so she saw no bills), and then never paid anything in. He emptied her savings accounts, and would have cashed out her pension but fortunately never managed to do it. When she needed to move into an assisted living facility, she had (surprise!) no money other than the pension, and no credit rating.
I’m sure he has an addiction and I should be sympathetic somehow, but fuck that guy. If an addiction causes you to screw over your family, it’s time to take some serous stock of your life.
For some, like my Dad and I, gambling is an addiction, which is why there’s Gamblers Anonymous and other therapy group. Fortunately, I have enough restraint and the lack of money, not to go to Vegas. There’s constant talk about bringing legalized gambling to Hawaii, but the lawmakers know that it would be disastrous because of the high percentage of the local population are probably gambling addicts as evidenced by how many and how frequently many locals go to Vegas.
I used to go to an American Legion Post and they had a few illegal video poker machines (they took money and you could cash out with the bartender). They also had an illegal slot machine.
Knew a lot of people who would blow their paycheck in one night. My brother-in-law was the post commander and he played those things all day and night. A few times he’d hit it big (5 or 6 hundred bucks), but he’d end up putting it back in the next day.
The also had pull tabs and folks went nuts with those.
I once lost a hundred bucks on those things one night and I never played them again after that.
We all went to Vegas once and I ended up losing a thousand dollars. That was enough gambling for me.
Well to get to the beach the tour bus dropped us off at the front door of the casino which you walked thru to get to the beach (amazing).
Well in that casino were all these crazy people on the slot machines. Imagine. a beautiful beach outside but all these people want to do is gamble indoors.
Yes, I have.
But to be honest… he was always an arrogant prick.
Hearing that he’d lost all of his talent to gambling just felt like justice.
1-800-Gambler, Baby!
I had a friend in grade school and high school, who was seriously into gambling, even at that time. He was playing parlay cards on NFL games when he was in 7th or 8th grade, and would bet on just about anything. He also loved to play cards when we were in school, but he always wanted there to be some wager involved.
I lost touch with him after we went to college – he and I went to the same college, but he flunked out after spending all of his freshman year drinking and gambling. What I later learned was that he had a lot of issues with alcohol and drug dependency (probably had some addiction issues, generally). He committed suicide a couple of years ago, and it’s pretty clear that he chose to take his own life because he was looking at a long prison sentence due to DUI and drug possession.
I had a good friend who was borderline addicted. Gambling just made all the problems in the world disappear for him. Fortunately, he was wise enough to be able to stop.
I heard about, but never personally knew another guy. My friend’s brother-in-law was heavily addicted here in Taiwan and borrowed money from gangsters to fund his losses. Not the brightest idea.
He was beaten up badly a couple of times, mostly so that his mother would pay up, and then kidnapped. Eventually, he fled to my friend’s house, which didn’t make my friend very happy about the arrangement. Somehow someone made arrangements for him to disappear in southern Taiwan and perhaps get across to China.
I haven’t talked to my friend for a while, so I never heard how that turned out.
He could go for years without setting foot inside of a casino, then go through these months-long periods where he would gamble away whatever he had, and sometimes steal from my grandmother’s purse to gamble more. Then he would go for years again without gambling.
I didn’t know him well, only met him a couple times, buy my cousin’s (now ex) husband had the worst gambling problem I had ever heard of. He was a consultant who specialized in this new, booming software package. So he was well paid. My cousin and he would enjoy visiting the nearby indian casinos, and her initial impression was that he “never lost”. Sampling error or he just hid it.
Not only did he lose his paychecks, when he travelled for business, he racked up so much on the company credit card, they cut him off. He ended living out of his rental car as no hotel would allow him to stay with no credit card (he had long since lost his own personal cards). Once that project got to a certain point, he was finally let go. (it was kind of amazing how long the company put up with him - but his work was apparently solid).
He actually had himself “self excluded” from the local indian casino. this is where you register with the casino, and they are to not only not allow you to play, but to escort you out of the casino if you show your face ! I wasn’t even aware casinos offered such a service until my cousin told me about it.
Long after their divorce, debt collectors were still harassing my cousin. They were convinced she still knew his whereabouts, when even she hadn’t had contact with him for months.
My first roommate’s father, as it turns out. Back when I knew the father, I thought the family was the greatest thing ever, as they seemed so wealthy and everything seemed so perfect there. I later learned that they teetered on the brink of disaster for years and years because of this.
I tend to get very enamored of things and throw myself into them, and I tend to get hooked on various pleasures. I guess if there’s such a thing as an addictive personality, I have one. Gambling is something that never appealed to me, and I’ve never tried it (except playing poker with the children on family vacations, when I’d give them each a big pile of quarters and then try to win some back). I’m just happy that there’s a terrible addiction I don’t seem inclined toward.
I once worked with a woman who was addicted to lottery tickets. On most days she would bring them to work and scratch them off. Am guessing she lost a lot of money in doing so.
Personally I’ve never understood the appeal of gambling. When I walk around a casino, it does absolutely nothing for me; I feel zero desire to participate in any of it.
I have been to Vegas once for a week. I think I lost about $500 that week. I have not had a strong desire to go back.
Occasionally I will go to local casinos with friends but mainly I people watch these days.
Reading your post above reminds me of seeing hundreds of people putting $$ into slot machines. They all look like robots or like they are in a trance. I am sure I looked the same when I spent time gambling.
Thank goodness I don’t have the habit.
My late mother played her “numbers” weekly and whenever she would travel out of state always had me play them for her.
My late wife’s best friend’s fiancee was a long-term (i.e., seven years to get an undergraduate degree) student at our local state college when we all met. He bet heavily on college football and basketball, losing/winning a couple thousand dollars a week. We would go to his shared apartment one Monday and he’d have a new stereo, or he’d even show up with a car he just bought. The next week his apartment would be bare and the car would be gone. He just sort of laughed it off.
Fortunately, she took over managing his money when they got married. It was sort of funny to see the look on his face when he knew he had a “sure thing” and she wouldn’t give him $1000 to wager.