Hey look! There’s my addiction, doing pushups in the parking lot!

I know the signs when my resolve’s weakening and stress is taking a toll.

I begin to miss gambling, specifically the slots, the only gambling I enjoy.

Moreover, I begin to want to be there, inside a casino, in front of the machines.

I begin to picture it and remember it. The pleasures of gambling, the sounds and the smells and the entertainment of spinning wheels, the anticipation of bonus rounds or free spins.

I remember too pulling bills out of my wallet. Sure, there might be 5 $20 bills earmarked for gas or things needed. By the time I left the casino, they’d be gone.

And the ATM card also in my wallet, maxed out for the day’s withdrawal.

Yet none of that mattered to this gambling addict. What mattered is relief and respite from unmanageable and extraordinary stress and loneliness and isolation and sometimes just boredom.

I recognize the warning signs of a “binge waiting to happen.” It’s presently not to the point of a constant yearning or gambling impulse that won’t be denied.

Oh have I been there.

Neither is it grown to a point of immense preoccupation and desire to gamble that pushes EVERYTHING else out of the mind. That need to feed a starving beast that cannot be satiated or satisfied.

Oh have I been there too.

The yearnings, the desire, the missing of gambling and urges to go to a casino for an afternoon of fun — like it ever ends with one afternoon! — are absolutely symptomatic of deeper issues: stress, oppressive stress, anxiety, fears, unease, intense isolation and loneliness.

In part for these reasons, I returned to the GA meeting yesterday for the first time after a hiatus of nearly three months. A hiatus whose reasons are written in earlier posts (the isolation I was experiencing while some members talked on the recovery house, which necessarily excludes and isolates all other members who don’t reside there).

I still feel isolated and lonely — no meeting, be it in GA or elsewhere, can fix what ails me in one gathering!

But I recognized the need to reconnect with GA … to dampen the growing interest and inclination to gamble again … to lessen the risk of going back out, which I did before after 3 years clean and can attest to the fact that NOTHING CHANGES.

The gambling addiction / compulsion comes roaring back, picking up right where it left off and progressing even more intensely and destructively.

Once a gambler, never a “beginner” gambler again. Not. Ever.

Also, it is hoped that my experiences, feelings, thoughts, words can be of value to someone else. I never expect or think that anyone, including in support groups that highlight personal or intimate shares, where I excel, gives a goddamn fuck about what I have to say and contribute. I didn’t matter to my parents (primary caretakers). Why would I matter to anyone?

There it is. Not mattering to them, to others, to myself. The pain of loneliness and isolation. A perfect perfect PERFECT reason to go gamble.

Choosing other … anything other than gambling … is very hard when the very reasons that you took you to gambling in the first place are being felt naked and raw.

Nothing would be easier — or more tempting — than going to hit the slots right now.  An afternoon of absolute pleasure and forgetting of everything that’s hurting. Certain relief, despite the throwing away of money and importantly the uneasy peace of not gambling / recovery.

Like a drug addict or drinker or any other addict, a gambler blocks out all the certain negatives and destructive consequences of partaking to satisfy that one sole overriding need: relief from pain. The need to forget life, even if just for an afternoon.

Gambling became more than my coping mechanism and means of forgetting life and people and stress and fill-in-various blanks. It became my pleasure. My sole pleasure in a landscape fraught with problems and void of connection and support and caring.

Saying no to the slots right now is not an easy choice. In fact, it sucks! Were I a “normal” person, I could go put $20, maybe $40 into the machines, make it last an afternoon, have some fun and call it a day.

There’s no fucking way I can do that. No fucking way. I’m like the alcoholic who can’t stop at one or two drinks. One or two drinks leads to an entire bottle. For me, gambling’s identical. A $20 is nothing in a casino. It’s 4 to 10 spins, depending on the machine. And, poof!, it’s gone in under 5 minutes, depending again on the machine.

I don’t even bother trying to deceive myself that I can gamble like a normal person. Hard-core experience affirms: I can’t. I cannot. When I gamble, I don’t want to stop. And when I stop, I want to go back and as soon as possible. And with more and more cash each time. I fear that I could gamble away an entire vast fortune were one at my disposal.

So there it is and here I am. With urges, urges stronger than I’ve so far experienced in nearly six months of clean / recovery time.

That’s the other thing I know from experience of three years clean prior and going back out. Gambling grabs you by the balls and leads you right back into the casino. It does not recognize time in recovery. Could be a week, a month, 10 years or 40 years. Philip Seymour Hoffman is an excellent example.

Addiction knows no time. It recognizes no recovery. Like it’s been said, in recovery, the addiction is out in the parking lot doing pushups.

For today, I choose to just keep on driving. To not pull into the parking spot reserved with my name on it. A trip to the casino, no matter how “innocuous” my mind in denial might design it to be, is Trouble that I do not need. Not now. And not again. Not ever again.

because if i don’t write, i’ll gamble

I just got this rush …  this surge of desire … this impetus and wish to gamble.

Wishful thinking.

It’s been since when since my last meeting? About two months though I’d need to dig further to verify.

My absence — and it’s been a necessary one detailed in prior posts — isn’t why I got this sudden urge. Out of nowhere, so it seems.

The reason has a little bit to do with the beer I’m drinking and ore to do, much more to do, with the state of affairs at this time.

I don’t want to write about what’s going on. Don’t feel the need.  This blog isn’t “life journaling.”

The effect that life’s events, the ups and downs, the stresses, failures, disappointments, achievements,  successes, positive gains — those DO relate to gambling.

Because it seems no matter what life brings in light or darkness … no matter how life smushes me out on the mat like a cigarette butt or raises me to a better level … the love of gambling is always there.

The urge to play the slots — which is the ONLY gambling I love, any other form else bores me to death — lurks underneath the surface, deep within my psyche, ready to resurface when the stars misalign or align.

I more than understand the addictions that Robin Williams and Philip Seymour Hoffman carried. Not the addictions specifically (since neither alcohol nor drugs are my chosen poisons and salves), rather the nature of addiction. The nature and the struggles with and the truth that after two years clean or 20 or any amount of clean time, as addicts, we are never in the “free and clear.”

Never.

And what a fucking disturbing thought that is. The thing we love the most, or especially, must always remain out of our arm’s reach by our own choosing or we could die.

What the fuck is the point of that?! And how many non-addicts REALLY get that it IS do or die? Resume the addiction or die.  Or if you’re lucky, stop again and get help, support and save your life AGAIN.

Zero.

I won’t venture to explore why some people become addicts and others don’t, though I could. As both writer and addict, I could pen a book (not that anyone listens to me).

Bingo! A root cause/reason for my gambling addiction.

Invisibility. Fucking invisibility since day 1.

Again, not a journal, this blog. Robin Williams, P.S. Hoffman … I understand. I get it. I get the incredible despair. The depression. The being different, out of place; not a member of the human race rather pretending we are. Donning the mask so others won’t spot us for who we really are. Not from here.

I understand The Angst. The urge — nee compulsion — to inflict pain on the self. To bring harm to the self. To destroy the self. To eliminate the self. Because it’s a relief from pain. Possibly the ONLY shot at peace on this planet.

I. Get. It. Because those drive me too.

I am a gambling addict. That means that I cannot stop at 100 bets any more than an alcoholic can stop at one drink.

It means that even if I do end my evening with 10 pushes of the slot machines or 100 or 1,000,  I WILL want to go back. I will hunger to go back. Yearn to return. Can’t WAIT to go back.

I will want to take everything that I have in my bank account and put it into the slots.

Regardless of the winnings. Regardless of the losses. I will want to and CAN gamble until  there is nothing left. Until all meat is stripped off the bone. Until there is nothing else or left to gamble. And then I would commit sui–de.

I am CAPABLE.

Even very often desirous though thankfully my life has improved and coupled with inner work the depression — Depression — since childhood has lessened. Not gone away. Not left me in peace. Lessened and THAT is welcomed.

Depression. Isolation. Loneliness. All extraordinarily important and impactful themes of my childhood and, eventually, adult addiction.

There’s much more to it than that. Peeling the onion and all that.

Again, here it is. I want to gamble. RIGHT NOW. I don’t want to think about worry. I don’t want to think about the hell is now my “home.”

I don’t want to feeeeel loss. Or pain. Or abandonment. I don’t want to feeeeel the StruggleS of looking for work and having available only the crappiest jobs. I don’t want to suffer like I’ve suffered. Not for myself rather for others for the planet and all living (and non-living) creature inhabitants.

I don’t want to feeeeeel the pain that I know Robin Williams or P.S. Hoffman or Kurt Cobain felt as a human being on this fucked-up planet. I know they felt it too. I know. Affinity. Kindred spirits.

Making the choice NOT to gamble, or engage in any other addiction, when the urge and desire are so powerful … when the need for relief and respite from life is THAT STRONG … I don’t know how it’s done.

And I don’t know that it can be done over and over and over again until we addicts die of something OTHER than our addiction. I don’t know whether I’ll last that long staying clean.

I don’t know. I do not know.

I know intimately this moment. The desire to gamble to cope with the pain of living and life is very very very very powerful.

This, I think, is the time to … breathe … and ask for a higher power … whatever that means to me and to you and to addicts … to veer me off the path of self-destruction that IS inherently within me.

And to have support to choose, consciously choose, if not the deep pain that is fueling my current desire, to at least, at the very least, help me choose anything OTHER than gambling.

Because the ultimate sign where that road ends read … appropriately:

dead end

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don’t Gamble for Anything: Underlined and in Neon Lights

What do you do — do I do — when the group itself makes you — me — want to gamble?

Don’t Gamble for Anything.

Number 3, if memory’s correct, on the last page of the yellow book.

I’ve gambled for many reasons. To alleviate boredom, stress, loneliness and  worries. I’ve gambled when I’ve felt inexpressibly lonely and isolated.

I’ve gambled when I’ve felt bad and when I’ve felt good. I’ve gambled when I’ve been really down and out. I’ve gambled to celebrate a good day or positive development.

There’s something unique, however, in gambling — or rather, wanting to go gamble — when something about the group dynamic distresses.

Such it was Tuesday, a few days ago.  Compared to GA groups in other states, my local group is unique and made unique by a recovery house designed for addicted gamblers. Folks come from across the country for a live-in intensive treatment program of 30 days or more.

It’s not cheap; the house and location are really nice and the both individual and group therapy demanding, I’m told. The requirements are many, including attending daily or near-daily public meetings in a facility away from the house

Consequently, with X-number of gamblers in flux living under one roof, bonds are forged and friendships made. Cliques too, the inevitable, unfortunate and to me irksome reality of group living.

I get that.

Very often residents bring house and interpersonal dynamics to the public meetings. They share on or speak to one another on matters specific to the recovery house, thereby excluding gamblers not part of the house.

The weekly house dinner, which is open to all GA members, is imbued with a similar dynamic. For me, being at the house is sorta like going to the high school reunion of a partner or friend.  The classmates have their shared experiences, tales, histories. You don’t know these people. You have little to history. You’re an outsider. You feel perhaps bored. Lonely. Left out.

Or I do. That’s how I’ve felt sometimes at meetings where the house dynamics are the subject of shares. Of course I’m excluded as is any other non-resident. It can also happen at meals, where residents congregate into their cliques.

I reckon that most GA house members are unaware that they’re excluding other gamblers with their home-related shares and dynamics. I feel safe in saying that they don’t mean to be hurtful. However, for me, and perhaps other non-residents, they are.

It has an isolating effect. And when I’m isolated, I withdraw. And when I withdraw, I gamble. The urge to gamble has been particularly strong these past few days. It’s taken awareness to say no to the urges and instead contemplate what’s troubling me with honesty and courage.

More alarming, however, is that a part of me who’s on the outside looking into the house group dynamics has stopped wanting to go to meetings and that raises a major red flag. To be an outsider in life is one thing. No problem. To be an outsider in GA — forced into the position by shares and/or group behaviors that by their nature and content exclude others — is fraught with risk and danger. Isolation. Leads to Withdrawal. Leads to Gambling.

Don’t Gamble for Anything. Not for any one else’s behaviors, be they helpful or harmful.

Don’t Gamble for Anything. Not for being outside in the GA family.

Don’t Gamble for Anything. Even if not a single soul understands that shares on their common experiences do frequently leave other gamblers out in the room.

Don’t Gamble for Anything. Because if nothing else, it’s never made any hurt or loneliness or isolation go away. Ever.

 

Decadence must die for GA recovery to survive

There’s no room for decadence in recovery.

Compulsive addictive gambling is a lifestyle of decadence. It is also one of destructiveness, depression, despair.

decadence: behavior that shows low morals and a great love of pleasure, money, fame, etc. — according to Merriam-Webster.

decadence: an excessive love of pleasure with costs of harm and destruction to self — according to me, this gambler.

Decadence knows no balance and seeks no balance. Decadence cares not for the well-being of the person; the person living decadently cares not for his or her well-being.

I could spend hours and hours inside a smoke-filled casino. Never eating. Never drinking unless it the drinks were free. Pausing only to race to the restroom , annoyed I had to take time away from the slots for anything … even for something as “trivial” and basic as answering Mother Nature’s call.

Hours at the slots never sleeping … indeed forgoing slumber entirely so to gamble until I could gamble no longer. And that was determined not by the exhaustion of an all-night bender but an emptied wallet and maxed-out daily ATM withdrawal.

Decadence cares not for the well-being or balance of its practitioner. I imbibed heavily of decadence when it involved gambling.

One big trigger is exhaustion. I could be wrung out, fatigued, overtired, overworked, drained and depleted by a job (it’s always a job!) and only half cognizant. And rather than plopping down on a bed and falling into slumber like a normal person might do, I’d go gamble. I’d go gamble for hours and hours, forgoing the very sleep and rest I really need. I’d gamble OVER my exhaustion. I’d gamble to GET energy, ironically, in my exhaustion.

And it worked. It worked because I can override almost anything. I can override my body and my mind and what’s right. I can override what’s good and healthful and purposeful.

I can override what is good for ME because when it comes right down to it, I never learned what’s good for me. In childhood, I leaned what is bad for me. And what is bad ABOUT me. The conditioning of abuse in childhood is a marvelous tool for inflicting harm to the self later in life.

+ + +

Would I have become a gambling addict had childhood been positive and absent severe and repeating traumas (and ones begun at an extraordinarily early age)?

I don’t think so.

Decadence is not a permanent solution to what harms, pains and ails us. It is a fine solution and a FUN solution to help us forget what harms, pains and ails us.

It bears repeating: Decadence is a FUN solution in the moment. Did I have fun gambling? Absolutely. Was it exciting? Energizing? Yes and yes!

Then somewhere along the way, I crossed a line — the so-called invisible line — and my gambling took on a whole new meaning. What had begun as fun and affordable entertainment because a NEED that I could no longer control, in spite of the (self-inflicted) extreme damage and destruction that the decadence returned.

Decadence has to give way to balance for successful recovery from addiction. And balance, for so many gambling addicts, is something to learn.

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes it is “personalities before principles” in GA

Principles before personalities.

It’s a cornerstone of the Gamblers Anonymous recovery program . It’s one I adhere to strongly.

However, our personalities and character do reveal themselves within the sharings, stories, chats before and following meetings and friendships that develop outside those meetings.

We each of us feels connections with certain individuals more than others. Though our gambling links us, we are not defined by that alone. We are still who we are: individuals. Individuals. Individuals brought together under one roof for the addiction we share.  brought together under one roof because of our common addiction.

No names. No details. One of the women in group has a personality that’s vastly different from my own, very nearly opposite. She is mousy and passive. She strikes me as one who has minimal awareness of her identify or self. The impression is that her life is all about family. She herself isn’t there. Or here.

Today, while some of us milled about after the meeting, something transpired in our chatting that is niggling at me. For confidentiality, I won’t retrace what happened. Rather, I’ll say that this person is … vacant or vacated. Not sure which. As I expressed something, there was a look in the eyes and face indicating that she had no idea what I was saying. What I was saying wasn’t at all challenging to comprehend. It was in her.

The look in her eyes of someone who isn’t there. Her eyes were glassy and glossed-over. She had the look of someone both absent and unable to understand our native English.

It was a look of drugs. Prescription, not illicit, drugs. When I blurted out “are you on drugs?!”  — meaning prescription — she said no and took such offense that she turned on her heels and stormed off, leaving me holding an empty bag.

I hastened after her, saying I meant prescription. However, she’d have none of that. She was not interested in listening or pausing to come to clarification. She returned home I imagine quite insulted, miffed, offended, upset, fill-in-the-blank, I don’t know.

It was a scene that didn’t need to happen. It was a scene that could have been prevented had she not over-reacted. It was a scene that could have ended in understanding and peace. It would have required her to pause to listen and communicate. And she didn’t.

Consequently, she might be home bad-mouthing me to others in our shared program and I am home feeling bad, sad and a little angry that she stormed off and created drama where there was none.

When I see her again hopefully soon, I’ll have opportunity to talk with her privately. Hopefully she’ll have calmed down and see that she misunderstood; her subsequent refusal to listen only furthered the static.

Whether she engages is her choice. In the meantime, I gained insight from the experience, which seems to point to mental imbalances. I feel compassion. Plus my sense that she’s not there/here has gained traction. Like a vacant/vacated house.

Principles before personalities. Yes, that’s a cornerstone of the GA program. People are, however, who they are. When personalities clash, when misunderstandings or disputes unfold, when the GA macrocosm  “de-evolves” and reveals itself to be a congregation of  disparate parts, troubles can brew.

Like tonight’s small drama most unexpected in the parking lot.

When “personal encounters” niggle and nag, I can tend to pull back, withdraw, stop going to meetings, isolate. That canNOT be allowed. I cannot give a disturbed person that power, neither can I jeopardize my recovery based on a mousy vague “not-here” person or anyone else.

I must seek her out in the hope that she’ll listen and “clear the air” and keep moving forward. Keep moving forward in RECOVERY. Another’s illness, whatever form it takes, must not derail my recovery. I must not be waylaid even if she talks smack behind my back.

I need recovery more than I need her understanding. I shall do my best to clarify and to forgive her her impetuous childish behavior in a spirit of good will.

And I recognize within myself that incredible tendency to, like I said, pull back, withdraw, stop going to that meeting. Which will only lead to isolation. It’s not right. It’s not necessary.

What is right is: reaching out to her with the intent to communicate and hope that she will listen. Chalking up tonight’s exchange to human folly and personalities. Forgiving. And continuing to choose the principles of recovery one day at a time.

 

Sixty days and struggling and still staying clean.

I’ve just crossed the 60-days clean mark.

It was a hard 60 days and the hardest of the two that I’ve walked. My first three years of recovery, begun in the Pacific Northwest, were weakened by unsupportive groups in Denver and then lost by the loss of my father. Even in my most strident  and solid three years of recovery, I’d feared that if anything could send me back out, it would be that.  I expressed that in meetings. Unfortunately or fortunately, it came to pass.

However, I’m here now. Again. In GA and in a better place, geographically and emotionally. Still, the 60-day passage this time is harder than the first. I’ve been contemplating why.

There are many factors. One is the change of state/town for sure. Leaving Colorado and Denver definitely bettered my chances at GA re-entry and a successful recovery.

Two, my rapport with the community generally and the GA community specifically give me that foot-up back into the saddle.

Three, the loss of my father, while still fresh, well, I’m not now in the immediate throes of it. I’ve regained my normal thinking processes (normal for me).

Four, the groups here really are supportive. Each and every one through the week. (Same couldn’t be said for Denver’s.)

These are all FAVORABLE in my recovery now, this second time around.

So why the struggle?

I miss gambling. I do. I miss the slots as a major stress relief. I miss it to alleviate the boredom. I miss it as a way to fill the void of  being friendly.

I ESPECIALLY miss it as a way to temper the ENORMOUS frustrations of not having landed a job here and the financial worries. Nothing I reckon makes me want to gamble MORE than being deprived of work because I’m born to work.

I go insane without it. I go to the CASINOS without it.

Plus the immediacy of casinos. They’re here in my town, 5 to 10 minutes away. Quite a change from the 45-minute drive required in Denver (where I went back out, BIG TIME).

Thus the temptation is increased. Thankfully, I never did well at these in town. Neither do they excite or impress as far as casinos and slots go. Fortunately, that tamps down the urge. Fortunately. Thank god for small favors. And big.

Missing gambling is a reality many, if not most of us, experience. I don’t know that it ever vanishes. It didn’t during my first three years clean. I had to choose many, many times — many — not to gamble. I had to choose not to gamble consciously and with clarity.

That is the gift that GA returns to us who work the program: Choice.

But the desire, oh the desire. It’s even stronger than the best chocolate cake on the entire planet to a dieter! The sweetness of the frosting can’t compare to the sweetness of the sound of the slots.

And the relief from stress, worries, frustrations and boredom that they bring.

Recovery — choosing recovery — isn’t necessarily easy. Or always easy. No.

However, being honest with one’s self when the yearnings and temptations to pick up the drug again is the first gift that we can give ourselves.

The second is choosing recovery for our better selves.

Every day can be Easter in GA

The power of the right groups and the right location cannot be underestimated in recovery.

Likewise, the potentially destructive power of the wrong groups and/or the wrong location cannot be underestimated in recovery.

Today is Easter Sunday, April 20, and due to the holiday, eight attended the meeting, which is about half the average. Since the usual leader was absent, I happily volunteered to lead. I’ve a lot of experience in that in Puget Sound so it was a pleasure and blessing to step forward given the opportunity.

Two of the sharings, mine included, were particularly poignant and painful and raw. Normal (or non-) gamblers listening to our experiences would think us insane, very likely judge us and be completely unable to wrap their minds around at how profoundly we are the masters of our own destruction and demise.

And still, in the very worst of it, when the reasons to stop gambling are so very evident to all, including ourselves, we cannot.

Tonight I shared on a binge two months ago in Nevada. I don’t care to recount it at this time, rather on the aftermath. The “old” feelings that I’d buried to survive and cope came pouring back. I felt, as I had at the time, nauseous and on the verge of vomiting — a natural response when deep down you KNOW something is grossly wrong or has crossed some line. Think of cops who throw up at crime scenes or accidents; it’s the same mechanism.

I wanted to sob but I couldn’t. I wanted to turn back the clock and NOT commit all that WRECKAGE that I’d created in two short days. I wanted to.

I wanted to forget the horrible things I’d done … two days of max withdrawals from the bank … my well-intended but delusional conviction that I could spend three days and two nights in a Nevada casino town, comped “for free” at the hotel, and NOT gamble!

I wanted to erase the fact that I’d spent WAY more money than I could afford … valuable funds needed for travels and moving and unemployment. Most dearly, I wanted never to acknowledge or remember the source of the money I so wrecklessly threw into the slots. It so pains me still, I can’t write it.

Sharing our horror stories is important in recovery. Honesty is healing. Sometimes, however, they come at a cost. By reopening the wounds, Pandora’s nightmares are unleashed. Freed from their shackles that help salvage my sanity after gambling binges, my demons cackle and soar, dumping their darknesses and painting me black.

Remembering the wreckage I wrought is hard enough; speaking on it, while cleansing and liberating on one hand, also invites all that blackness in — if only for a short visit.

I’m finding it hard to articulate the pain and anguish and remorse evoked in sharing some parts of my past … the things I did just for one more spin … the money I used all for ill …

Learning to live with the horrors that I, and I alone, committed is a challenge in GA;  I’m with many gamblers in that personal journey.

Learning to live with our pasts … learning to live with my past … is not only a fundamental part of GA, it is, I think, the only way to heal … to move forward. To forgive myself — to forgive ourselves, each and all of us — is the key.

Empty words, studied words or popularized words these are not. It is Easter Sunday and while I’m not Christian, the teaching of forgiveness from the man called Jesus (whom I’ve come to believe did exist as a real man) is not far from my thought.

Easter and forgiveness. Every day should be like Easter in GA.

 

A gambler’s born on a nickel jackpot.

No gambling addict starts at max bets or pouring entire paychecks into the games.

At one time, I was a nickel gambler. Like 15 cents … 45 cents … perhaps as high as 75 cents for the occasional max bet. And that was satisfying.

Back then, the penny machine was still fairly new and by current standards cheap. Now you can easily max bet at $5 or more on a penny machine. Point being that  in the early days, the basic nickel machines with the likes of the old-fashioned three 7’s gratified.

I still remember when I won my first jackpot. It was on the low-cost nickel machine in Mesquite, Nevada, where, in retrospect, my liking of gambling developed into a love. I didn’t even know I’d won it! The person sitting beside me had to point it out!

I was extraordinarily calm, cool and collected about it. I didn’t hoot, holler and make a fuss. In fact, I hate that in gamblers!!! It’s tacky and indicative of an amateur gambler. I wasn’t nonchalant but I certainly didn’t make a scene. And I didn’t like people hovering or congratulating me.

And I was like that for any big winning in years that followed. I’m not a “look at me!” person. I’m a reclusive loner, which is a highly-pertinent characteristic of a potential addict.

For me, the slots are a solitary affair. I didn’t go to casinos to socialize. I went for the lively action lacking in my own life. I wasn’t interested in talking with patrons or mingling. Reason #1 why the tables had NO appeal! Like I’ve often said, if (a) slots (b) in casinos didn’t exist, I wouldn’t gamble. Period.

That first win of $500 on a nickels machine happened before the gambling took hold. At that time, I was pleased and surprised like a normal person. It didn’t trigger more gambling; that is, I didn’t stay hours longer at the casino, placing ever larger bets and eventually putting it all back in … if not that day, then at the next opportunity I could get to the casino. I packed it up and went home.

That’s a ghost of a memory. I’m no longer that sane and normal gambler and I haven’t been for years. Somewhere I crossed a line.

And I remember that moment too. Of that I’ll write another time.

No one — and I mean no one — starts off at max bets and compulsively gambles everything … the winnings … the max daily ATM withdrawals … cash in the wallet and the pockets and in my case the emergency $20 gas money in the car … JUST FOR ONE OR TWO OR THREE OR FOUR MORE SPINS!

No one starts off an excessive gambler just as no alcoholic starts off drinking a fifth of vodka a day … just as no drug addict starts off shooting up two bags of heroin a day … just as no shopping addict starts off at ordering hundreds of dollars of merchandise off the Internet.

Addiction is progressive. This I’ve not fully explored or come to grips with, which is indicative of my own blind spots in the disease, I guess. I just know it to be true.

See, I know about alcoholism — not because I am one, neither could I become one, but because of another’s intimate descent into it. Like gamblers, alcoholics start off “small” and then progressively drink more and more and more … amounts that I personally couldn’t conceive of or accomplish.

But that’s because I’m not an alcoholic.

The same can be said of gamblers. We don’t start off at the equivalent of a fifth of vodka a day into our games. We start off like you … if you’re a normal gambler … and we become … well, excessive is one word. Like alcoholics, we cross a line.

That line’s individual and unique. And in the process, we lose our “normalcy.” We grow into our addiction. We submerge ourselves in our drug of choice. We are no longer normal. We no longer have the ability to stop on our own volition.

And if we do stop, it is only because we have traveled, naked, raw and roiling in self-hatred  and shame and self-destruction, into hell. If we’re lucky enough to have survived it.

+++

I couldn’t say that that first $500 winning on a nickel machine set my course as a gambler. Hell, a lotta folks could take it and leave it at that … exit, enjoy it, maybe pay some bills, whatever.

For me, the voids in my life were so great, the loneliness so profound and the proclivity for an addiction so strong that I pose the same question to any one who gambles — normally or addictively: Who doesn’t like to win?

That, in retrospect, was hook 1.

 

 

 

 

the monster in my wallet

I’ve wished I could be an alcoholic instead of a gambler.

I say that somewhat facetiously (and in no way to diminish the hell that is alcoholism). While I enjoy my drink, I don’t have it in me to become an alcoholic for many reasons.

Many, many years ago, I had a longtime food addiction and a sweet tooth out of control. Even in the worst of my eating disorder, I never got fat; I carried around 20 extra pounds. And I wasn’t doing the binging-purging thing. I’d overeat and then deprive myself for days and that’s how I maintained a “reasonable” weight.

Eventually I outgrew the disorder and it’s no longer an issue — although there are still those rare moments when I turn to food during severe stress — and I’m well aware that I’m doing so. But the whole guilt thang and “eating over emotions” and “stuffing emotions” and food compulsion are gone, finished, done. I’ve really moved on and I did it entirely on my own.

The addiction of gambling, however, has proven to be a beast of another breed.

I took a real liking to gambling later in life compared to the food addiction, whose seeds were planted by a mother with a remarkably dysfunctional relationship with food and body issues.  In many ways, I was “primed” for troubles with food and nourishment issues. Ultimately, the more I addressed and resolved the extremely damaging and toxic relationship with my mother, the more those issues abated, lifted and ultimately faded away.

Gambling, in comparison, has been “entirely of my own making.” I know of a couple family members who enjoyed gambling like normal people. Whether there are problem gamblers in my family tree I don’t know. I do know, however, that that tree’s not void of addictions so it wouldn’t surprise me if there were some in there.

The point is that I’m not a stranger to addiction and while the food addiction was a rough one for a very long time, it still was NOTHING like gambling.

Like I said, a beast of another breed. Another time I’ll explore that further. For now, suffice it to say that replacing a gambling addiction with drinking has its appeal. It’ll never happen though, leaving me with this devouring monster on my back … in my head … in my internal space … in my financial security … in my wallet.

How to spell relief from stress? S-l-o-t-s.

Nothing spells relief from stress and anxiety like the slots.

That’s not entirely true. Yes, gambling takes the edge off of worries, fears, stresses, boredom, frustrations, loneliness.

It’s all fun ‘n’ games and relief from the angst of just being alive until I’ve drained my wallet, exhausted my daily withdraw limit and sunk it all into the machines.

Then the party comes crashing down with a thunderous roar and now I’m Stress on Steroids. I’m left crushed and defeated in a field of flaming and smoldering debris as ugly and demoralizing as a war zone.

Just one difference between the lands laid to waste by the military and by me. I am the solo general, the battalion chief, the sergeant and the troops. I’m a one-person army with no one but myself bringing ruin to my self and to my life.

Ahhh, but at the time when stresses take over … when frustrations are too oppressive to bear … when anxieties are too numerous to count … the respite and refuge of casinos and slots are like no other.

Many, many is the occasion when going for a walk among trees or sitting at a lake would be the natural outlet. That’s a healthy response, if not a common one among “normal” people.

However, gamblers don’t look at it that way. Our views of stress-relief are distorted either by our addiction or because of it or both. My solution to stress is not a healthy hike but a $100 bill inserted into a slot machine.

How fucked up is that?

And even when I can predict how the story will ultimately end — with all my cash and winnings back into the machines — I’m gambling with tunnel vision. I’m not thinking how I’ll feel when I walk out of the casino … crippled, defeated, raging with self-hatred and -punishment, regret and remorse and promises to not gamble anymore that, outside of recovery, will be broken.

I’m thinking ONLY OF THE MOMENT. And the moment is relief from stress at the slots … pressure relief … entertainment … fun … the thrill of the ride and the risks.

The crash of reality that’s ahead is vanished by not only the passion for slots but the amnesia of the consequences that enables addicts to return to their vices time and time and time and time again.

I’ve been keenly stressed the past few days and that’s triggered impulsive thoughts of gambling. Thoughts is all they’ve been; I’ve not acted on them. I’m back in GA recovery — two weeks clean! — and I want to continue this path.

Unlike the amnesia of addiction, recovery does not erase thoughts or impulses to gamble. However, it does return to me and other gamblers a modicum of sanity and clarity and the power to choose.

And the power to choose NOT to gamble when the stresses would otherwise deliver me unto the slots is indeed Recovery in Action.