Be Careful For What You Wish

"Gamblers and fools bet, smart men play the percentages," my father once said.

My father was a bookie and he made a living from balancing the bets among bettors and taking the 10 percent commission. It was a business to him, nothing glamorous. Somewhere, along the way I got my wires crossed and fell on the wrong side of the equation and my father. I became a bettor myself, taking the worst of it just for the privilege of picking between two teams, rolling the dice or playing black Jack.

What I never understood was there was a huge difference between gambling and being the house. It took me a long time before I knew why a fool and his money were soon departed while casinos everywhere were raking in huge profits.

If there is a line between recreational gambling and compulsive gambling it is not only a fine one but also a slippery one. It is a line that I never was able to keep in front of me. I crossed it at 15 when I made my first bet on a horse which won paying $33.00. Until then life was ordered and made sense. I was a child athlete who had countless adrenaline rushes playing sports. The adrenaline rushes of competing athletically were accompanied by a sense of accomplishment, pride and well being. But winning $33.00 on a two-dollar bet short-circuited my brain's reward system, providing me a sense of well being 10 times more intense as hitting a game- winning home run and I did not have to do the hard work as well. The intense rush of winning pushed out any need for a sense of accomplishment and pride. Well being, I quickly learned, could be pimped for a winning bet.

What it took me years to figure out after getting my teeth bashed in at the casinos, race track and card rooms, suffering from guilt and shame over the losses was that gambling was a drug. Every bit as compelling, addictive, and illusory in its promise as crack cocaine. Winning money at the end of the day was not the prize, it was just being able to have enough money to go back again and be in action, to be lost in the haze of the action in search of that intense rush.

I can only imagine the pain my father felt when he saw my eyes after winning my first bet.