This is episode one of the Gambling Still Sucks podcast. In this episode, I’ll go over the who, what, where, when, and why of the podcast, so you’ll know exactly what to expect from future episodes.
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, obviously, with this being the first episode, I wanted to just kind of lay out the groundwork, give you an idea of who I am and what this podcast is all about, and just kind of lay it out there. So many times I listen to podcasts, and we may pick them up in the middle, or we’re just not really sure who the person is, who they are talking, what’s their background, what’s their story, what’s their knowledge on the topic. So I wanted to take this first episode to kind of outline that so you have a good idea of who I am, sort of what I look like, because this is audio—you can’t see me. I think it helps; there’s that connection when we actually can sort of paint a picture in our minds of who the person is.
As I mentioned, my name is Jamie. I’m 36. Today is actually my birthday, so happy birthday to me. This is actually a birthday present I’m giving myself—getting this podcast off the ground and running, and I’m very excited to share this. I’m looking forward to this 36th year of my life. Birthdays haven’t always been the most exciting thing in my life. In fact, I sort of didn’t really like them. Birthdays and holidays, for a long time, I didn’t enjoy at all, and I’ll probably touch on that in future episodes. I think we all, it’s just kind of that end of the year or whatever, you kind of look back and say, “Well, what did I do this year?” And when I was gambling, it wasn’t very much, and so that was a very disappointing time.
But now birthdays are fun. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve got some good presents already. We’re going to go out to dinner tonight, so that’s very exciting, and I’m looking forward to it. I live in Akron, Ohio—home of LeBron James, for all you basketball fans out there. Our Cavs are really terrible right now (this is recorded in 2018), and they’re finally winning some games, but I’m definitely a big-time sports fan, huge Cleveland sports fan. Maybe that’s part of my struggle, because if anybody knows anything about Cleveland sports, we’re going to be known as kind of the underdogs and the people that never win. So I kind of lived that life in my gambling life.
Growing up, I played a lot of sports. Like I said, I’m very into sports. I played a lot of golf—I was always on a golf course. In fact, that was probably the first place I started gambling. It was small stakes; I mean, it was quarters and nothing major, but it was just every time we played, we were playing for something. It was kind of that whole “keep it interesting” thing, right? I also played basketball and ended up playing both basketball and golf in high school. I played golf in college, actually, for a couple of years before I ended up quitting a little bit early, but I played for a few years and was pretty good at golf at one point. Now I’m a hack, but I still like to play, and I’m looking forward to playing a lot more golf as my son gets older. He’s really into sports, so we’ll play a lot of sports together.
For work, I have a small business. I do creative work, and I’m always trying and learning new things. I’m self-taught; I’ve taught myself web design and development, just graphic design as well. You’ll see on the website, it probably will always be changing because I’m always tinkering. Podcasting is something new. I’ve seen it from afar, I’ve listened to podcasts for so many years, and I always thought, “Wow, I really want to get a podcast.” In fact, the mic I’m talking to you on is probably about three years old now, maybe almost four years old. I’ve had this mic for a long time, and this is the very first podcast I’ve put out, and so that’s part of my procrastination that I’m working on very, very hard. It’s part of me I’m trying to figure out and get over.
I mentioned I have a son. I also have a daughter. They’re five and three, and they’re wonderful. They’re crazy. They are always running around and keeping us on our toes. My wonderful wife, who you’ll learn is very much a part of my gambling story—we’ve been married for seven years, and she was the one who first got me to go to GA, and so I’m very, very appreciative. She’s wonderful; she’s the one who has gotten me on the right track. So I’m very, very lucky—I have an awesome family and support system around me. For years, I didn’t use them, but now, obviously, I’m using them and realizing how valuable they are, so I’m very appreciative of that.
In school, I was always a really good student. I was a 4.0 student, had perfect grades, graduated at the top of my class, and got a scholarship to go to college for academics. I graduated with honors, even though towards the end, my attendance to class was not very good. That was definitely at the same time that I had become drawn into playing poker, and there was no coincidence that my grades went straight down, along with my bank account at the time. We’ll talk about that when we talk about some of my story, but overall, I’m just trying to paint the picture of who I am because I think I probably look a lot like all the other guys that you know in your life. Whether you’re listening to this as a compulsive gambler, I probably sound a lot like you in a lot of ways. We probably have a lot of things in common. Or, if you’re listening to this as a therapist or somebody that’s trying to help someone or have a friend or family member that’s struggling, and you’re like, “Man, they’re such a smart person. Why are they doing these dumb things?”—I’m just trying to paint that picture to realize that gambling is an invisible illness. You can’t really see it.
Unlike alcoholism or drug problems, it’s one of these things that for years I hid from everyone, and on the front, on the outside, it just looked like I was a normal guy. Hopefully, I’ve painted that picture for you so you can kind of get a better understanding of who I am and what I look like and what my day-to-day life is like so you can kind of see that this is something that affects everyone. One thing I’ve learned from going to GA is that there’s no real one demographic that this hits. I think there are certain demographics that probably struggle with gambling more than others, but I have met people from all walks of life, and people that you would never expect to have a gambling problem that have cleared out their 401ks and have no money. That’s one thing I really want to kind of get out into the world is to understand that gambling isn’t a problem that affects just a certain type of person; it can affect anyone in any demographic.
Now, a section about who I am would obviously not be complete, given the topic, without giving you my background with gambling. We’ll go into this in more detail, but I was a poker player. I started off actually way back when I said I played golf and gambled a little bit there, but then there was a time when I absolutely hated gambling. One of my best friends had a gambling problem, and when they had trouble with their finances, who did they call? They called me. I helped, and I helped, and I helped. I tried to put together plans, and this person, they were into slot machines, and I was just like, “Man, just stop going, and all the problems will go away. You don’t have a money problem; you just need to stop going to the casino.” From the outside, that seemed like such a logical answer. There was a time when I absolutely hated gambling. I’m like, “No, that will never be me. I won’t fall into that.”
It’s kind of interesting to look back that I went into this with my eyes open to the fact that there could be a potential problem, and I was very cautious at first. When I first got exposed to poker, I was very cautious, but over the years, that caution went away, and the addiction set in, and my problems became much, much worse. I went from playing just small games with friends to, at the end, playing eight tables at a time. I was playing eight tables at a time with $200 to $400 on each table online. I was playing in casinos and losing thousands of dollars in a day, and it really, really added up over the years. I never lost huge amounts at any one time—I mean, $1,000 is quite a bit—but it was a lot of just continuous losses over time that added up.
To give you kind of a brief history, I started gambling when I was about 22, playing poker. I don’t really consider the early gambling—I mean, it was definitely gambling, but problem gambling for me started when I started playing poker. Then, when I got caught at 28 (which is a wonderful story; we’ll call it the riverboat story), that was at 28, and so the last time I gambled was July 15th of 2010, when I was 28 years old.
Since quitting, I’ve become very involved in my local GA. I’m involved in a lot of the Reddit problem gambling communities—you can find me on there—and also there’s a Discord chat off
of that. It’s something that I’ve become… Obviously, I’m a compulsive person. I’ve become very interested and involved in my recovery, and this is just one more step toward that. Hopefully, this gives you an idea of who I am as a person and also as a compulsive gambler. We’ll go into more specifics of my gambling because I think we all like to hear other people’s stories. When we hear it, it starts to make our own story make sense, and I’ll definitely cover those in future episodes. I just want to give you a slight background so you understand who I am going into this.
Then the next part is what—what’s this podcast all about? I think I can sum it up by saying it’s about bringing awareness to problem gambling. It’s something that, as you look at it—I mean, I found out the other day that there is zero dollars of federal funding for problem gambling, and that was just sort of shocking. It’s all left up to the states, but this is a huge health issue, a mental health issue, but it’s also a huge financial issue that’s becoming such a bigger issue. If we don’t bring some light onto it, we’re going to get caught off guard. That’s really what I want to do with this—bring awareness to problem gambling and bring a voice to it. Because that’s the one thing that’s really missing in the world: it’s something that, like I said, we can do in isolation, and we can keep it very private.
For years, the people closest to me sort of knew I gambled, but they didn’t really know that I gambled, if that makes sense. We can do it and hide it, but when we hide it, nobody really starts to learn from it. Nobody’s out there saying, “Here’s my story,” and being very public with it, because there’s so much shame and stigma around that. I’m hoping that in bringing this out to the world, other people can start the conversation. I think Problem Gambling Awareness Month is coming up in March this year, and I think the topic is “start the conversation.” This is my way of starting the conversation.
Obviously, with that, me sharing my story—this podcast is about helping other people, whether it’s directly by people that have a problem with gambling tuning into the show, and maybe they hear something that worked for me and use it in their life to help, or it’s helping people who are creating problem gambling campaigns or who are on that end of things, therapy, and health professionals to start to say, “Okay, listen to my story and pick it apart and learn from it.” It’s just another story out there that they can use to grow their knowledge of how problem gamblers think, what we do, and the warning signs or red flags to look for in a problem gambler.
Also, in the “what” topic, what type of episodes can you expect? A lot of it will be personal therapy, so it’s going to be me sharing my story. Like I said, I had the riverboat story, which is an interesting one—that’s the last day I gambled—but also just other experiences. Personal therapy is a huge thing; it’s going to help me quite a bit, and I know it helps others. I love to hear other people’s therapy. So there will be a lot of personal therapy, but then we’re also going to have a lot of interviews. I’m hoping to start the conversation within the industry and have this be a place where people come to discuss gambling, to discuss how it impacted their lives, the lives of others, or how they are working to reduce that impact and help others abstain from a gambling problem or create new laws and regulations around gambling. So anything that is newsworthy—I would love to have an interview about it. If you’re interested in coming on the show, by all means, email me, reach out to me—I would love to have you on.
So now you have a little idea of who I am and what I’m trying to do with this. The next question is where—where can you find it? Obviously, if you’re listening to it, you’ve already found it somewhere. I’ll try to get it up everywhere. It’s already on Stitcher, iTunes, and, obviously, the other place you can check is the website, which is gamblingstillsucks.com. So check out the website—you can sign up for the newsletter there, which will let you know when new episodes come out or when new blog posts come out. If there are new things, like Problem Gambling Awareness Month, I’ll be sending out emails to subscribers to keep you up to date with all topics around problem gambling.
Then the next question would be when—when can you expect future episodes to come out? My goal is to release an episode a week. We’re going to start off hopefully with the first five just to get things rolling so you have a few that you can listen to and get a feel for what the podcast is, sort of what to expect. Then from there, this will be a weekly podcast and will release on Friday mornings. My thought is, I know most of my gambling happened on Fridays and into the weekend because that’s the availability. When you talk about gambling, you need to have available time and opportunity. So I feel like releasing it going into the weekend is a great place to provide people with that one thing to listen to, and hopefully, it helps get through the weekend to Monday, back to a more structured routine.
And then finally, why—why am I creating this podcast? Why am I sharing my whole story with the world? I already covered earlier in what it’s all about that this is all about bringing awareness, and that’s definitely true. But the other part of the why is that this is going to help me tremendously. In sharing my story, it’s like taking off the chains and becoming free. There’s so much shame and stigma around problem gambling. Even now that I have seven and a half years of clean time, I still don’t feel like I’m completely comfortable sharing everything. For me, it’s sort of sad because I can help other people, and it’s something that now I should be proud of. I think by sharing it—and I found over the years that every person that I share my background or my experience or the fact that I’m a problem gambler with has just made it so much easier for me to stay quit.
It’s almost like creating this giant system of accountability, right? I mean, if you tell somebody, you’re going to know that they’re going to kind of keep an eye out for you. If you’re ever going out with them and someone says, “Oh, let’s go to the casino,” they could be someone who can be an advocate for you and say, “No, no, no, we don’t want to go there.” So the more people I tell, it’s just going to make my life easier. But it’s also just going to help me to get these stories out. I know that in dealing with my problem gambling and also some other mental health issues, I get in trouble when I try to do things on my own, when I try to talk everything through in my head. When I get it out, everything becomes so much clearer and easier and freer.
There have been so many times where I’m really stressed out, and when I finally just say something to somebody, all of a sudden, the next day, I wake up and I’m not even stressed out about that anymore. I didn’t really do anything about it other than just bring it up and get it out of my head. So that’s going to be a big part of this—just getting all this stuff out of my head and sharing it to help myself. If, in helping myself, I can also help others by providing this resource that people can check into, I think that would be great. I know there’s another problem gambling podcast out there, and you should definitely check it out—it has helped me out tremendously. I listen to it every time there’s a new episode, and I know how much a podcast can help people. So hopefully this will also be able to help others.
That’s the other half of my why. In summary, sometimes I just think, look, we’re all dying. If I were to die tomorrow and still had this story inside me, I think it would be my biggest failure. I don’t want to have that regret, and regret is a big piece of my life—doing things so I don’t have regret at the end. Looking back in 30 years, if the landscape of gambling completely changes and there are all these problems, and if I see it affecting others that I know—my family or friends—and if I think back, at that point, I won’t know, and I’m not going to be able to impact everybody’s life, but that thought of, “Man, if I would have just said something, could it have helped them?”—that thought would sting me. It would be painful. I wouldn’t want to have that, and I don’t want to have that. So now if I share all this stuff and get it out there to help people, they’re going to make their own decisions at the end of the day. But I feel like I’ve done my part. I’ve paid it forward. I’ve taken my negative experience and used it as a positive to help others and put it out there. All I can do is do my best with it. What other people do with any of this content, listening to it and applying it to their lives—that’s out of my hands, but I can control sharing my message. That’s why I’m here.
So that’s it—that’s the who, what, where, when, and why of the Gambling Still Sucks podcast. I’m glad you stopped in, glad you listened, and hopefully, you’ll tune in to the next episode. The next episode is an important one. It’s one where I’m going to share the steps and actions I take in my day-to-day life that have allowed me to finally quit gambling. I’d like to think for good, but I’m aware that it’s a constant process. I’m very, very confident that if I continue following
this plan and the actions I have in place now, the seven and a half years I have will just continue to build on that, a day at a time. I’ll be sharing those things with you and look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in.
Finally, please subscribe. If you can subscribe to the podcast, that would be awesome—that way, you’ll be notified when new episodes come out. The other thing, if this at all appeals to you and you feel like it might help others, I would really, really, really appreciate it if you would leave a review. I know I’m guilty of not leaving reviews for people, so it’s weird when you ask for one. But the thing is, when people leave reviews, it really helps to spread the word. It’s what iTunes, Stitcher, and all these different platforms use in their algorithms to figure out which things they want to show people. The more reviews the show gets, the more likely it will be featured and the higher it will rank in order to let people find it. Obviously, in the topic of gambling, most of the podcasts are going to be about how to find the key bet for the weekend, not how to not bet. So we’re already sort of up against it, being the one pushing back against the big-time gambling advertising. If this one little small thing, this huge request from me, is just to subscribe and also leave a review, it will help get the message to more people. So I thank you, I appreciate you, and I look forward to talking to you in the next episode.
As a disclaimer, this podcast does not provide legal or medical advice. Look, I’m not a doctor, I’m not an attorney, and I’m not a therapist. I’m just a guy that had a gambling problem. So while we’ll discuss a lot of topics and I’ll provide a lot of insight into what’s worked for me, please seek out the help of a professional. Go visit a lawyer, a doctor, or a therapist to help you deal with your gambling problem. The information that we discuss is for informational purposes and should not be taken as professional legal or medical advice, and reliance on the information appearing on this podcast is solely at your own risk.
The music for this podcast is “Something Elated” by Broke For Free. It is licensed under Creative Commons.
