Down for the Count

I regret that it’s been so long since my last post. While the absence of activity can have the appearance of, well, the absence of activity, the opposite is actually true. Much has happened in the past year, both in the field of problem gambling prevention and treatment, and in my personal journey. The past year has been a whirlwind of conferences, workshops, public forums, and other activities all aimed at tackling the alarming rate of problematic gambling in our communities. If you haven’t seen the Illinois STATEWIDE GAMBLING AND PROBLEM GAMBLING NEEDS ASSESSMENT, you really should check it out. About 10% of adult Illinoisans were found to have either gambling disorder or at-risk gambling behavior. That’s over 1 million people, and doesn’t include minors or incarcerated individuals (two groups that were not included in the study, but have been found to have an even higher rate of disordered gambling than the general population)! So, to say those of us in the prevention and treatment space have our hands full is an understatement.

In addition to this, I’ve taken an important step in my own process. You see, when I speak about problem gambling, I’m not only talking about what I’ve learned from training, professional development, and working with clients. My own experiences with problem gambling span over a decade. That’s about 12 years of acting in ways I couldn’t understand and felt ashamed and scared of, followed by another 10 years or so NOT gambling, but not exactly recovering either. It’s only in recent years, as hiding and compartmentalizing my own history has become increasingly uncomfortable that I realized NOT gambling is not the same thing as recovering. When I attended trainings on treating gambling disorder and saw myself in the examples they shared; when I filled out self-exclusion paperwork with someone I used to play Caribbean Stud next to, sitting there sweating, terrified he would recognize me; these are the types of events that told me I hadn’t actually healed from the long years of compulsive gambling. About a year ago I was checking into my room at a Responsible Gambling conference in Las Vegas. I was a speaker, and my room was covered by the conference. When the clerk looked up my name, paused, looked at me, then said she needed to check with her supervisor, I was flooded with panic. I thought “Do they remember me?! Did I do something here that is in there system?” Now, I never got so upset losing that I cussed out a dealer, or threw my cards, slammed my hands on the table or anything like that. What I thought I could have possibly done that the casino would “know” about all these years later, I have no idea. But I stood there stick still, feeling “found out” until she came back and explained there was confusion because the conference organizer had booked my room. Anyway, the cigarette smoke smell of the place had taken me back to long, sleepless nights, where I would toss and turn thinking about all I had lost during a night of gambling. That, combined with the confusion at check-in, took me quickly and unexpectedly to a dark and shameful place. So, I now selectively share my own experiences. I go to meetings, and connect with others who’ve been impacted by problem gambling. I have come onboard working part-time with an incredible company where former athletes who are recovering from gambling addiction share their (our) stories to help educate young athletes about their unique risks. I work on the shame and guilt that seems to have hung out in the back of my psyche for all these years, waiting to pounce. So, don’t count me out. I might have taken a knee. I may be a little punch-weary. But there’s still a lot of fight left in me.