This is episode 3 of the Gambling Still Sucks podcast. In this episode, we will be discussing my last day gambling, aptly titled, *Running Off the Riverboat*.
Hey there, and welcome to the Gambling Still Sucks podcast. My name is Jamie. I’m a compulsive gambler, and I’m the host of this show. The last day I gambled was July 15th of 2010, or as you will come to know in this episode, it’s the day I ran off the riverboat.
As I get into sharing my story and my history with gambling, I thought it would be appropriate to start with the last day I gambled—July 15th of 2010.
To set the scene, I was in Chicago for a trade show. I work in advertising and marketing, and there was a big trade show in Chicago that week. I had gone up to it, stayed with a friend, and it was the last day—the day I was heading home. I got up really early, before they even woke up, to leave and head out to beat the traffic.
As any of you compulsive gamblers out there are probably already thinking, or smiling because you know, “beat the traffic” is just another way to say “go to the casino.” So yes, I got out of Chicago early that morning. It must’ve been around 6 AM. I’m sort of an early riser as it is, but I left at 6 AM or somewhere around there and started driving home.
This drive to Chicago was very familiar to me. On the way up, I had passed all the signs for the casinos in Indiana. I live in Ohio, and you drive through Indiana, which has casinos. Illinois does not—I believe they had riverboats at the time. Now, actually, Ohio has casinos, so we could go and play cards there. But at the time, in 2010, casinos were not yet a thing in Ohio.
I saw this as a golden opportunity to stop on the way home. Nobody would be any wiser—I could just stop and play a little bit of poker on my way home. I could tell everyone, “Hey, I left around 10 o’clock or whatever, took my time.” If I got home at 6 or 7 o’clock at night, nobody would be curious or questioning where I was all day. As compulsive gamblers, we’re always looking for these places where time and opportunity cross, and this was definitely one of those times.
So I’m driving, and I didn’t have a specific casino in mind, but I knew about where they were in Indiana. Then all of a sudden, I saw a sign, and I got excited. I remember pulling off the highway, driving, and following the signs—billboards everywhere, because casinos want to make sure you don’t get lost. I think every five seconds there was a new billboard with instructions on where to go.
This particular casino was a riverboat casino, and it was as sketchy, dirty, and weird as you can imagine. I parked, walked down the ramp, and entered. It was sort of a tunnel because I was going onto the boat. At the end, there was a guy checking IDs. I pulled out my ID and saw there was a scanner. Now, the places I had been gambling in Ohio were local card rooms that were only open at certain times, and I really didn’t have much experience with these scanners—it freaked me out. I thought, “Wait a second, I don’t want to give them my ID because they’re going to scan me. It’s going to add me to a database; there’ll be records.” And so all those things that we compulsive gamblers worry about—it was like, “This is impinging on my ability to hide this.”
At that moment, I almost turned around and left, but I thought, “No, I’m a compulsive gambler; I’m going to go in. I’ll take the risk. Nobody will know. They’ll send stuff to my current address that’s on my ID, but I’m moving anyway, so nobody will know.”
I went past security, sat down at a poker table, and by then it was probably 7:30 in the morning. It looked exactly how you’d imagine a riverboat casino poker table would look at 7:30 AM. There were only two tables open—maybe even just one—playing the game I used to play, Texas Hold’em. The players were clearly people who had been there since at least the night before, if not longer.
I thought, “Okay, this is cool—they’re all tired, sleepy. I’ll take advantage of them, make a lot of money, and get off the boat by noon so I can get home by 6 or 7 o’clock. Nobody will be any wiser.”
So I sat down and started playing. As I expected, the people were pretty tired, playing loosely, and it was a wild game. As was often the case, I was winning a little bit, playing tight and conservatively—that’s how I usually played early on. Then, the longer I played, I’d get more reckless or if somebody beat me, my competitive side would come out, and I’d try to get them back.
At this point, I was playing pretty conservatively, hit a couple of big hands, and all of a sudden I had doubled or tripled my money. I thought, “Okay, maybe I could leave now.” But, being a compulsive gambler, I wasn’t going to leave just yet.
So I stayed, continued playing, and then I lost a hand that didn’t work out well. I got mad, played another hand I shouldn’t have, and lost that too. The spiral continued, and soon I was down below what I started with. Now I’m really spinning—I could’ve left an hour and a half ago. That conversation in my head was back: “You should have left, but now you’re going to stay and get it back.”
Then the stress went through the roof when I looked down and saw my phone vibrating in my pocket. It was my fiancée calling. She thought I had quit gambling years ago. She didn’t know that I had been playing poker again in card rooms in Cleveland or doing some online gambling.
I definitely wasn’t going to pick up the phone at a casino on a riverboat. I didn’t want her to hear anything in the background, so I let it go to voicemail. But she kept calling, leaving voicemails. I checked my phone and realized I had accidentally dialed her. It was a two or three-minute call. Obviously, it was in my pocket. I had no clue what she heard—did she hear the chips? Did she know I was at a casino? Is that why she was calling? I freaked out.
I got up from the table, ran to the cashier, and got the $100 or whatever I had left. I remember telling the cashier, “Just give me whatever.” At that point, I would have taken anything—she was counting out the individual chips to give me the exact amount. I took my money, ran up to my car, got in, and realized I had to call my fiancée back.
Eventually, I called her, and she was frantic. She didn’t know what was going on with me. For all she knew, I had been kidnapped or something. As I was driving away, I remember telling her, “I’m so sorry. I stopped, I was playing poker. I don’t know what you heard.” I came clean and spilled the beans. I didn’t come clean until I got caught, but once I got caught, I started telling her everything. Needless to say, that was not a conversation either of us wanted to have. She was at work and said, “Look, I can’t do this right now. We’ll talk when you get home tonight.”
After I hung up with her, I began what was the longest and most sobering drive of my life—about a five-hour drive home from Indiana to Ohio. Along the way, I started calling people. I called my mom and told her what was going on. I called my sister, who knew about some of my problems, and she lived along the way. I stopped, talked with her, and she gave me some of the best advice. I’ll probably cover this in more depth, but at one point, she said, “Jamie, you’re saying all the right things, but deep down, it still sounds like you think you can do it.” I remember her words exactly, and she was right. I was saying all the right things because I got caught, but deep down, I still thought I could do it. Her calling me out was a huge turning point—it really made me realize I needed to change.
I also called one of my poker buddies who I used to go play poker with. We didn’t really hang out outside of gambling. I called him and said, “Look, I’m done. Don’t call me, don’t text me. I’m not going to go.” He chuckled, “Oh yeah, sure, you’ll be back.” That was the last time I ever spoke to him. It’s interesting how the people you gamble with, once you’re done, you’re only friends with them because of gambling. Severing those ties was very uncomfortable but very effective.
I drove home, met up with my fiancée, now wife, around 6 or 7 o’clock at night. She looked at me and said, “You have a problem, you need help, and you’re going to GA.” She laid out the things that were going to happen for us to stay together. Needless to say, I felt as crappy as possible because this was just 60 days before we were set to get married. What a great guy—dropping this on his fiancée just months before their wedding.
This was obviously a low moment in my life, but I have to say that the fact she reached out and said, “I know you have a problem
, I know you can get help,” gave me a sense of belief that I didn’t even have in myself at the time. Her words changed my life. It allowed me to start seeing that maybe I could change if she believed in me. It set me in motion—going to GA, going to therapy, starting to come clean about all these things that needed to change.
So there it is—that is the day that I ran off the riverboat. It’s the last day I gambled, July 15th of 2010. Hopefully, it will be my clean date for the rest of my life.
In the next episode, we are going to discuss how I went from being someone who hated gambling to becoming an addicted poker player. We’ll do the first half of my story and explore how I became a compulsive gambler.
Finally, before I let you go, please subscribe if you haven’t already. If you’d like to continue receiving updates when new episodes come out, subscribing is the best way to do that. If you have a chance, I would be very thankful if you could leave a review. Reviews help spread the message and help this podcast rank higher on platforms like iTunes and Stitcher. It would mean a lot to me.
As a disclaimer, this podcast does not provide legal or medical advice. I’m not a doctor, an attorney, or a therapist. I’m just a guy who had a gambling problem. While we will discuss many topics and I’ll provide insight into what worked for me, please seek the help of a professional. Go visit a lawyer, doctor, or therapist to help you deal with your gambling problem. The information we discuss is for informational purposes and should not be taken as professional legal or medical advice. 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, and it is licensed under Creative Commons.
