How I Quit Gambling

Projectile vomiting can be your friend. I never should have found myself inside casinos in the first place. As a former alcoholic, cigarette smoker, and drug abuser, taking up gambling does not, in retrospect, sound like a solid life plan. But in my addictive heyday, gambling was definitely a part of my life. I would go the casino, stand inside the entrance, gaze out across the dark, jangling world of the slot machine floor, populated by solitary figures seated on stools, busily drinking and smoking cigarettes, and mutter: “My kinda people.” And they were. Lurking out there were a significant number of fellow addicts, as I now understand. They weren’t there to have fun, to play games, to be entertained, or to quit while they were ahead. They were there to experience the act of risking more money than they intended to—more money than they wanted to lose. They were self-medicating with machines, as I had learned to do. The money bought you time on the machine, and the time on the machine was the medicine. The money had less to do with it than you might think. The money was only the means. My spell as a compulsive gambler was nasty, brutish, and short. The extent of my losses is classified. It’s not a well-known fact, but addicted individuals who compulsively gamble tend to prefer the machines to the tables these days. Table gambling—blackjack, roulette, poker—requires a level of social interaction that is the opposite of what the pathological gambler is seekin...
Source: Addiction Inbox - Category: Addiction Authors: Source Type: blogs