The Big Con

I'm doing this to keep myself sane. Keeping my mind focused so that I don't obsess about gambling, but instead stay real with myself. Gambling is like a worm that crawls beneath you skin causing an itch that can never be fully scratched; its like a low grade fever that doesn't knock you off your feet, but still saps your vigor.

It is every bit as compulsive as drug abuse, cigarettes, alcoholism, and overeating. It is actually more insidious because there is not the physical symptoms that usually accompany chemical abuse. But if you look closely it is there: the slight edginess, the hint of distractibility.

My father once said, "gambling is the real mistress," except what he didn't say is that mistresses eventually leave you or you leave them, but this one doesn't. The gambling whore is always there looking for a little action, sometimes leaving you high and sometimes blue, but she is always there because she knows you are coming back.

The gambling whore never really disappears. You can swear her off and she will go away for awhile, but she knows when you need her and she has the knack of showing up when you are desperate for her.

There is always a craving for her. It may not be as physical and as tactile as the urge to drink or use, but it is more psychological, expressing itself in a need to belong. To be among the boys at the track or at the card room. To lose yourself for hours at a card game or in front of a TV watching a football or basketball game. The one sure bet with gambling is that you will lose yourself; anesthetizing yourself from your feelings every bit as surely as if you were soaked with booze.

But there are ways to break the spell, from the con that is gambling. One of them is to do what we are doing here. Getting open and real. That's what this blog is going to be: a place to expose the con of gambling.