How Times Change!

My name is Donna Z., and I am a recovering compulsive gambler. I lost my family and my marriage of 36 years, and I am also a convicted felon. For 12 years, I looked in the mirror and neither recognized nor liked the person looking back at me. After a suicide attempt, I knew I had to quit gambling somehow.

I began a Bettor Choice gambling program in Conn., self- excluded from both of the casinos in our state, and began my road to recovery.  I didn’t like it but knew if I did not get help I would either be dead or end up in prison.

Today I run a Gambling Intervention program in our state prison, for women who have committed gambling crimes.  It is the first program of its kind in our state.  These women range in age from mid-20s to late 60s. They are mothers, grandmothers, and sisters, and they could be your next door neighbors.  Many of these women held top executive jobs, but got caught up in the high of the addiction.  Like all of us in recovery, they made some pretty bad choices, and there are consequences for those poor choices.

I do not go to GA meetings, but I do work as a peer counselor at a bettor choice gambling program.  I am the first contact the gambler or family member talks with before treatment starts.  I also am on the national task force for the National Council on Problem Gambling, working on bill HR2906.  I have spoken at the House of Representatives on this bill and also spent a week in DC talking with Reps. and Senators seeking their support.

Today, I am not proud of what I did, but I am proud of what I am doing.  As you all know recovery is not easy; it’s a struggle every day, but today I like who I am, and the person looking back in the mirror looks like someone I knew from long ago.

Donna Z., Connecticut

                             

 Thirty-two Days and Counting

Hi Everybody! I am a compulsive gambler who hasn't gambled for 32 days, and I am amazed when I read letters from women who have gone 5,10, and 25 years!!  I am just beginning but taking one day at a time with the help of this newsletter and e-mails from many other people I have met online.  Of course, I have to include my loving husband and two daughters, now adults. 
 
After reading the letter form Helene in Arizona, I realized I could see myself through her eyes.  I also went to the casinos to escape from life situations: a bad day at work, even just worrying about my daughters’ lives, and of course the old “you deserve to go because you did all of your ‘chores’ at home.” I deserve a reward for mowing the grass, cleaning the house, even paying bills, which include the credit cards I used at the casino!!
 
After reading Helene's article, I also saw that I have unhealthy anger.  It has been a real problem for me at work, and I am trying to get a better grip on it.
 
Well, good luck to all of the women gamblers that read this article!  Have Faith, and remember: One Day At A Time!

Sincerely,
 

Alice
 

The intent of Women Helping Women is to support and inform women in recovery from a gambling addiction.

The opinions offered by lay-people as well as professionals are based on their own experience and research and

may not reflect the opinions of the editors.

An E-mail to “Mom”

A WHW reader, who has been abstinent from gambling for 2 years, recently decided to share some articles with her mother, whom our reader believes to have a gambling problem too. Here is the e-mail she sent to her mom.

Subject: Whenever if ever, you want to go to the Friday evening meeting of women gamblers, I will take you. The women are kind and amazing and come from all walks of life, but all have lost at the slots.

Here are a couple of articles, brief, I thought you would like to read. My friend, Marilyn L., began the Friday night group over 17 years ago, and she wrote that red book I think I lent you, with the slot machine that rang up three big bright 7's on it. Remember? “Gripped by Gambling” tells her story of embezzling from the fertilizer company for which she had done the books for ten years, not to steal, but honestly, just to repay her debts and then repay the company. She never intended to get caught and thrown into prison for 2 years. She met another gal in prison, whose husband was dying of cancer. She was allowed only one visit with him during her sentence ... on his deathbed, or at his funeral. She chose the first, and so missed her husband's funeral, leaving the kids with all the details of dealing with their father's death without her. Very sad....

Not everyone is as far down the well as these two, of course, but there are also some who have just begun to feel it spinning out of control... feeling the pull to go there and missing nights of sleep... sneaking in and showering, hoping no one notices how long they've been away from home, feeling that dread that only hits you when you reach the car and it ceases to be "monopoly money" as I call it... and instead, turns into the very real money you had in your checking account and the extra cash you brought along just in case it took the machines a while to "warm up" and instead, you went again and again to the ATM or the window to draw from a credit card... I know this addiction.... I am pleased and thrilled to tell you that I have not returned EVER to gamble since that time you and Dad and O______ and I were at the cabin and you and I went and I could not win a thing... Even when I did, I could not put it in my pocket and leave... even though I broke even several times... I just couldn't get ahead...and it was painful.

Gambling had ceased being fun long ago... not long after that one night when O_____ was an infant and I won jackpot after jackpot ... the night, the only night, I could not lose..... and how many thousands have I lost since then? When I am absolutely honest with myself, I know that gambling cost me our dream home and stupidity and fear caused me to toss in the car as well.... in a desperate, futile attempt to think I could somehow pay down the home equity loan, and me carless!! It was all because I was afraid of the car insurance bill that had gotten out of control, because I had turned in every little ding and whisper on that car. At least, fear of the insurance bill was the “reason” I used to go on that particular … tens of thousands … binge... but I was not sane about anything financial by then....
 
Being a renter and truly not gambling, except for that one slip where I cost us every penny I had managed to save, has been very good for me in terms of coming to the realization that I can never gamble again.... these offers of trips to Vegas are not even tempting to me. I am terrified to ever travel there again... there where I had such fun with you as a young person.... with S____ many times... with M___ and M___. But it was still a choice then... not easy to get to.... had to go to Laughlin or Vegas in those days... so it was not quite as easy to get gripped... as it is now. And I bet if I went back, there would be people working there who would still remember my name and tell me how much they had missed me, etc... and the same loser couple that always sat with me all night (I don't know who watched their four kids) and carried up my winning slips for money as I just couldn't stop to do so myself ... until I just got so sick of them... waiting around for a hand-out or a beer from me ... having nothing to gamble with, but just as addicted to being there as was I ... it was sad... It was painful ... it was terrible for my health ... but I did it anyway.
 
I couldn't help it ... I was as addicted to gambling as I ever was to drugs... same disease, different substance...
 
So, here are the articles I thought you would like to read ... there is no shame at all in going to the meeting ... you will feel so good there and afterward ...just pray about it ... I would love to have times at the cabin with you where you didn't need or want to escape to the casino ... even if it is just a couple of hours. I would love for you to be free ... you won't believe how quickly those debts are gone and your household income burgeons .... it is truly a gift of God for being a good steward of all he has given to you and Dad.
 
Love you,

Annymous

     

Scheherezade’s Sisters is a women’s support group for gambling addicts. It is the heart of my memoir/self-help guide, She Bets Her Life, Seal Press (2010)

Chapter 2: Crossing the Line: How a Woman Knows She’s Hooked—You can fool a fan, but you can’t fool a player.—1970s street wisdom

There is a moment in Scheherazade’s when every gambler says to herself, “I can finally remember when I crossed the line.” When we talk about this in the group, every woman nods. “Crossing the line” is the moment or moments when you realize there’s been a priority shift—when you’re playing a slot machine, watching the roulette wheel spin, holding your breath while the dice fall into place, spending half the grocery money on lottery tickets; when stealing a minute, an hour, an afternoon from your boss to check your stocks goes from being fun to being the raw necessity for staying alive. In fact, risking your money has become the only necessity.

“I played out my last buck at the blackjack table,” Candace says. “Credit cards tanked; my pal the pit boss just shook his head when I asked for another marker. I was over my ATM limit till morning. I felt like everybody was watching—and feeling sorry for me. I scrounged in my purse. Four pennies. And these days you can’t put the actual coins in slot machines, so that was it.”

At that point she turns to us and says, “I got up and had to grab the machine to steady myself.” Candace is the one with the dancer’s lithe body. She’s hardly a feeble woman. She laughs. “You know—how your legs go numb? I pretended I had bumped my foot on the stool. I couldn’t bear to look at the people on either side of me.”
“As if they gave a damn,” Nora says. We all laugh.

“Yeah,” Candace says, “I was past thinking. I remember walking past the security guard and recognizing she wasn’t the same person who’d been there when I came in. And then, all of a sudden, the smoky air seemed unbearable. I pushed through the doors, and damn me if the sun wasn’t coming up behind the mountains. I remember a thought, more like a ghost of a thought, flitting through my mind. I am in deep trouble. But then I realized I had a two-hour drive to get to work and one hour till I was due for my shift, and I didn’t have time for belly button gazing. It was five years before I could look back and see the line that was only a shimmer that morning.”

“Isn’t it strange,” Barb says, “that you knew and you just blew by it? I did the same thing. In fact, I probably thought, I’m in deep trouble a hundred times. But then I’d hit a jackpot, or I’d make it home okay, and the next morning I’d figure out how to cover my ATM withdrawals, and I’d forget.”

“I knew I was hooked years before I finally walked in here and said, ‘I’m addicted to gambling.’” I tell the group. “I just didn’t care. It was the most fun I’d ever had. I figured it was a way to get old. A woman’s desirability is doomed, but a great slot machine doesn’t care whether I look like a shar pei. All it wants is my money. That’s a clean deal compared to dating most men my age.”

Nora punches me on the arm. “You go, Feminist Hag.”  (This is part I of a two part article. Be sure to read part II in October's issue of the newsletter.)

Mary Sojourner, Novelist/NPR commentator, author of  "She Bets Her Life", memoir.    

 

 

Gripped by Gambling     http://www.grippedbygambling.com

I watched the officer walk across the driveway where my daughters stood, their arms wrapped around each other.  Whatever he was saying to them didn’t seem to help. Juannie and Kathy just nodded while Tyler looked up at his mom, seeking reassurance. I slipped lower in the back seat and struggled to catch my breath.  Hyperventilation!  I needed to control it.  Control one small thing in a world that was spinning off its axis.   

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