Falling Down

I fell off the wagon. I went on a gambling spree. Got lucky and made money. I should be happy, after all, I had my fling with the gambling whore without being left for dead. But what is amazing is that when I was on the spree, I didn't feel high, I felt numb. It was like I was in a state of suspended animation. It is as though I checked out from the world while life went on around me. I stepped aside while real people continued to negotiate the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows of life. Except when I gamble, I see none of that. I don't want to feel any of that. All I want to do is coordinate my life sitting around the card table for hours chasing the high. Well I got lucky and got the cheese, but it did not add to my quality of life. If I said anything when I walked away flushed with cash was "this is not reality."

I've come to realize that I am a "maintenance" gambler. I don't gamble myself into oblivion, rather I gamble because it helps to "get me through the day." If I know I can gamble then everything else is tolerable. Issues with my wife, work, and this absurd world are not as critical, because I know I am going to be "high" at some point during the day. During this last spree, I literally planned my day around gambling. When I was doing it, I thought this routine was perfectly rational. Now that I am sober, I think how insane insane it was.

Gambling for me isn't the "road to ruin" as it is for most who are addicted - it's even worse. It is the adoption of a lifestyle that puts every other priority in my life second. I don't want gambling to be the most important thing in my life or the elixir with which the bitter pills of life go down easier. Yet every time I gamble, I realize that is exactly what it is: I am losing myself in the haze and compulsion of gambling.

There is nothing wrong escaping every once in a while. But for me when I escape I lose the map with the directions on how to get back. It is a slippery slope: take one step and I am tumbling down the stairs of gambling oblivion.

Real life requires participation, getting into the game, not running from it. Fortunately, my bottom this time did not require scrapping the remnants of my self esteem and dignity off the floor. Still, I have some amends to make and miles to go as I fight this addiction and illness.

Labor Day- No Rest for the Addicted

Gambling is such a powerful drug that we chase the high despite the countless financial losses, the unmeasurable guilt, and the loss of self esteem.

It is not any different than the crack addict who risk his or her safety, financial ruin and personal collapse to chase down the next hit for the intense high it brings. Gambling is more dangerous in that the denial of its destructiveness is more institutionalized because of its economic impact. Politicians are the pimps and the gambling institutions are the whores waiting with open arms into which we run. But it is legal. Casinos, race tracks, card rooms and lotteries exist as though there are no problems. But we all know that underneath the fragile smiles of gamblers lies an an uneasiness. It is as if the gambler knows he or she is walking on a narrow bridge when at anytime she can fall into the abyss. Scratch the surface of any gambler with small talk about their gambling and you get the nervous laugh or cavalier response which belies the denial.

Gambling, like any addiction, will find the chink in your emotional armor. It's a strong drug for the uneasiness with which we all live and the daily struggles. I realize that now, but still breaking the addiction and resisting the attraction of that powerful high is hard. It is so easy to get on that merry go round of chasing the high, and God forgive you if you go on a winning streak, because the addiction grafts that much stronger to your emotions.

The longer you stay away from gambling that is one day less the addiction has hold of you.

Good luck on this Labor Day.