GSS 011: An Episode to Share with Family, Friends or Your Significant Other

Full Episode Transcript

This is episode 11 of the Gambling Still Sucks podcast. This is an episode for family and friends.

Hey there and welcome to the Gambling Still Sucks podcast. My name is Jamie. I am a compulsive gambler and I’m also the host of this show. The last day I gambled was July 15th of 2010.

Now, if you’re listening to this because a friend, a family member, a significant other has sent you this episode, I just want to introduce myself. I started this podcast to help other compulsive gamblers, just to sort of get the message out that they’re not alone. They’re not dumb. They’re not any of these things. They just have a disorder, and compulsive gambling is classified as a disorder.

The good news for you at this point is that it is completely treatable. I always like to stress the fact that gambling disorder is completely treatable. I am one of the people that have been treated and have found a successful life, and I no longer struggle on a day-to-day basis.

As you can probably already guess, the person that sent you this has a gambling problem. Why I created this episode is because, as gamblers, we struggle with how to bring this up to family, friends, and loved ones. So I wanted to create this episode that somebody could just share because, in the grips of a gambling illness, we’re not strong enough to share. It’s not that we don’t want to, and that’s one thing I want to get very clear up front.

We desperately, desperately, desperately want your help, your love, your support. We just aren’t able to ask for it. It’s part of the addiction. It’s part of the illness. We feel like we need to fix it ourselves, and then once we fix it ourselves, nobody will have to know about it, and we won’t have to inflict any additional pain because, in a lot of times, we’ve lied to you. We’ve cheated you. We’ve done things that we’re not proud of.

So that’s part of why we’re not able to come clean to you—we’re so ashamed, we’re so embarrassed of all these things that we’re not able to tell you the truth. And yet we desperately, desperately want to, because everybody in recovery, when you ask them, “What should you do?” one of the first things is, “You need to tell your family. You need to tell your significant other.” And it’s by far the hardest thing.

I personally was not able to just come out and do this on my own. It took me actually getting caught gambling in order to come clean to friends and family. I’d gotten to a very, very low point in my life. Again, I’ll go back to the fact that I wanted help, and I reached out a few times, but I didn’t fully come clean. When you have those little white lies, it just makes it even harder and harder to share and to actually come clean to your friends and family.

I just want to emphasize that your friend or family member, they’re struggling, they’re hurting, they’re probably having financial struggles, but even more so, it’s the emotional struggles. The weight of an addiction, and especially a gambling addiction, is incredible. It just feels like you have no way out.

The only way out that we can see is to go back and gamble. We think we need to get this money, and we think it’s a money issue. We think that we just need to keep going back. And while we lost before, we probably at some point had some significant win, and your significant other will probably share with you that significant win and how it changed their thinking. It made them think, “Okay, this could be a different way to get to the success that they want.”

That sort of segues into my personal story. I know a lot of my compulsive gambling was tied to trying to please other people. I wanted to be successful. I wanted to be viewed as successful. I didn’t want to be viewed as a failure. I wanted to get to that success quickly.

Eventually, I took to poker, and I was pretty good at it. It was something that I thought, “Okay, hey, this is something that I can do to make money and get to this level of success.” We do it—it seems like such a selfish act. And I know right now you’re probably thinking, you’re probably mad already, you’re upset—how can they possibly fall for this?

I just want to say millions of us fall into this trap. And as you’ll learn, I mean, the casinos and the game makers make it very easy for people to fall into this trap. A lot of very, very intelligent people, very high-performing people, get caught up in a gambling addiction.

I’d like to consider myself one of those. I was a 4.0 student. I graduated cum laude from college. I started my own business. I was good at sports. All these different things in my life don’t really add up on the surface to what you would imagine as a compulsive gambler or a problem gambler.

So as I mentioned, the person that sent you this—they’re hurting. They don’t know how to say it. They want to come clean to you. So I created this episode as a way for people to send it off. Hopefully, I can be their voice. I can be that intermediary that can sort of prep you and get you to understand the illness and the disorder a little bit more before you even talk to them, because they’re so hesitant.

One of the things that we’re hesitant about is that we just don’t want to feel disconnected. We don’t want to be cut out. One of the biggest concerns I see, especially from kids, when it comes to telling their parents, is, “Look, my dad’s going to be so mad at me. They’re going to throw me out of the house.”

As a parent myself, I have two young kids. They can’t understand what I see, which is, yeah, I might be disappointed. I may even be really upset about it. But I just want them to get help. And as long as they’re taking steps to get help, then I’m okay. I can understand that, hey, they got caught up in something—it became bigger than they ever expected.

And really, that’s what gambling is. It’s a snowball that starts really small, but then it starts to pick up steam, and more steam, and it gets bigger and bigger. All of a sudden, you’re left holding this giant boulder, and you’re not sure how to get rid of it. The only way in our mind, as I said earlier, is just to keep gambling.

That’s a little bit about the background of myself, and I hope it provides you with some insight and starts to prepare you for the conversation you’re going to have with them.

I want to make this very, very clear. I do not advocate giving money. If I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t give a person money for six months, maybe even a year, to help with financials. I know that yes, they probably have credit card debt or high-interest debt. If you are in a position where you can help them, you may want to help them, but I would encourage you to delay that.

Part of that is because they need to take the steps they need. Just getting a bailout isn’t going to help them. I know I had that bailout. I used that. I’ve used that several times, and because I didn’t treat the problem—I just treated the financial end of the problem—the problem kept coming back.

By no means am I telling you to bail them out financially. In fact, quite the opposite. Put some stipulations on it that you feel comfortable with—that you’re not going to financially help, even if you can, for a set amount of time. What they need to do—and really, gambling is a habit that we develop over time—they’re going to have to break that habit over time, just like any other habit. It’s going to take some time for progress to be made in reprogramming that habit and kind of removing it, and replacing it with more positive habits.

This is by no means me telling you to bail them out financially. In fact, as I said, I would suggest not to do that and to delay it as long as possible. Even if you’re a smart financial person and you say that doesn’t make financial sense, I know. But it’s what works.

How do you bring this up? How do you address it? I’ll just speak from my personal experience.

When I got caught, I was very lucky. I had a fiancé at the time—this was right before our wedding—and she looked at me and she said, “You have a problem. You’re going to get help.” She even mentioned that I was lucky that she watched a lot of Intervention. And it’s true. She had seen people that had problems with addiction, but they went and got help and were able to live a normal life.

There was no judgment. Of course, there was disappointment. Sixty days before your wedding—it’s pretty disappointing to find out that your significant other, who you’re planning to spend the rest of your life with, is back gambling when you thought they had quit. There was a lot of disappointment, a lot of frustration, and this came from all my family members. But they told me they believed in me.

Share your feelings, your beliefs. Let them know you believe in them, but also emphasize that they need to do the work. They need to take the actions necessary to facilitate the change they want so desperately, and that you want to see in them.

Another thing I think is important, and maybe part of your discussion, is to share a few of your struggles. We all look up to our parents or significant other. We’re in a generation where everyone sees highlights

—Facebook, Instagram. We see all the good things, but we don’t always see the struggles.

So share your experiences. Tell them no one is perfect. We all go through things. Part of being human is that you have made mistakes. It’s hard for people to see this from the outside because we don’t always share those struggles. If you have a struggle or two, use this as a time to share it. It will strengthen your relationship.

The person who sent this to you really cares about you. The fact that they’re willing to share this shows they’re finally ready to get help. They think this is a way to introduce it to you, to soften that introduction, because they just don’t know how. They have the words in their head, but they’re just frightened. This is the step they’re taking to hopefully create a bridge between the two of you.

Gambling is often viewed differently from substance abuse. With substance abuse, we believe that if you take something long enough, it creates a hook, and you lose control. But mental health issues, and that’s what gambling is—a mental health disorder—we view differently. We expect people to have control over it, which just isn’t realistic.

I hope that this episode provides a resource for your loved one to reach out for help. I hope you can understand, show empathy, share your struggles, but also be tough with them. Tell them they need to get help.

My advice is always to come completely clean. Don’t leave anything behind because it will always come out in the end and ruin your trust. Hopefully, they’ll share every last detail with you, and you can create an environment where they feel comfortable doing so.

They need to get it all out, and they need to start taking action. I always advocate giving up control of money. It’s very difficult to gamble without access to money. Set up a system where they are more responsible with their finances by giving up the reins.

Help them get into treatment. I’m a big believer in Gamblers Anonymous. A lot of people push back, they don’t want to go. No one wants to go, but it can be life-changing. One-on-one therapy is also very helpful. Most addictions have some underlying condition or experience, and personal therapy can help them work through those struggles.

Thank you for listening. I really hope this helps and lays the foundation for a stable recovery. Gambling addiction has a very high rate of suicide, and it often feels like there’s no other way out. I hope this dialogue can help prevent that outcome, and that your loved one can get the help they need.

Be tough, but love them. Dig in and learn more. Read, listen to other podcasts. The more you understand, the better you’ll be able to help.

Thank you very much. Please reach out to them. Tell them you love them. Let them know they can recover, but they need to start taking action. You will be there to help.

Now, before you go, I’d like to go over a few very important things.

First of all, I think it’s important to remember that problem gambling is a treatable disorder. There’s no scientific evidence or study that suggests that this is just a terminal condition and that we’re going to be forced to deal with the negative side effects and results of our actions for the rest of our lives. While I know that in the moment it feels like this is something you’re going to struggle with forever, science just doesn’t back that up. Recovery is real, but we need to seek out treatment.

This brings me to point number two: help is available. Many of the states here in the United States actually offer free counseling and therapy for not only gamblers but family members as well. You need to know that these programs are available. The best way to start finding out more information is to call the hotline number: **1-800-522-4700**. Again, that’s **1-800-522-4700**. This is the number run by the National Council on Problem Gambling. It covers all 50 states, and they will have information to start guiding you on the path to seek help where you live.

These hotlines aren’t just available in the United States—they’re available around the world. Open a web browser, type in “gambling help” or “gambling hotline,” and you can find information for your local area. In addition to the hotlines, there are numerous places online where you can find gambling support and information. If you go to **gamblingstillsucks.com/help**, I’ll list some of these things, and I’ll continue to add to it as I find new resources—whether they’re chat groups, forums, or just great information.

**Disclaimer**: This podcast does not provide legal or medical advice. Look, I’m not a doctor, therapist, or attorney—I’m just a guy who had a gambling problem. We’ll discuss topics, and I’ll provide insight into what’s worked for me, but please seek the help of a professional. Visit a lawyer, doctor, or therapist to help you deal with your gambling problem. The information discussed here is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as professional legal or medical advice. Reliance on the information appearing on the podcast is solely at your own risk.

The music for this podcast is “Something Elated” by Broke For Free, licensed under Creative Commons.