Ted Hartwell had learned to gamble from his father. It was a way to relax and have fun. But by the time he had racked up $90,000 in secret gambling debts as an adult, it wasn’t fun anymore. He had told his wife that he had quit years ago and knew that he was on the verge of losing everything.
Mr. Hartwell’s story is far from isolated.
As a student at Texas Tech University, he had supported himself by playing in a weekly high-stakes poker game. After completing his master’s degree in anthropology, he got a job at the Desert Research Institute in Nevada.
“I thought I had landed at one of the best places,” Mr. Hartwell told The Epoch Times.
Las Vegas, the cradle of worldwide gaming, is a magnet for gamblers across the globe. Nevada, the first state with legalized gambling, has about 400 working casinos, almost one-fifth of the nation’s gambling houses. The United States, meanwhile, has about 2,150 casinos, the most in the world and more than a quarter of all the casinos on Earth, according to the World Casino Directory online.
“I only played live poker at first in Las Vegas,” Mr. Hartwell said. “It was years before I hit my first jackpot of $1,000. A large win or a series of wins often changes your mind about gambling. I thought I could make money gambling once more.”
But as everyone knows, casinos aren’t in the business of losing money; that’s what players are supposed to do. And every compulsive gambler knows what happens as the losses mount.
“Once losing becomes a problem, it transitions into a desperation, a desire to increase those betting limits, with the excuse that you’re going to win back the money you lost,” Mr. Hartwell said.
The gambling industry exploded with the legalization of sports betting in many states in recent years. The hidden cost has also risen—a high rate of suicide, depression, and criminal activity by compulsive gamblers. A study published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions in 2018 found that people with a gambling disorder are 15 times more likely to die of suicide.
This often-unseen addiction can be ruinous, but there are successful approaches that countless gamblers have used to regain control of their lives.
“Gambling disorder is a real illness,” said Mr. Hartwell, now 57 and a community liaison for the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling. “It is potentially deadly, because of the suicide rate associated with it.”
Some researchers say that compulsive gamblers have a higher suicide rate than those with any other addiction. Compulsive gambling was codified as an addictive disorder in 2013 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-5, because of its similarities to substance abuse disorders.
Mr. Hartwell said the addiction is just as real as a substance dependence, but that those who suffer from it are more reluctant to seek treatment. There are good reasons why gambling dependence is known as the “hidden addiction.”
“There is a tremendous shame and guilt that can be associated with it,” he said. “Some gamblers have stolen from their families. How could they come out and admit they did this, which was against their own moral compass?”
Bill Johnson, executive director emeritus of the Illinois Council on Problem Gambling, said that there was a 400 percent increase in calls to the state’s help line from 2020 to 2022. A recent study identified more than 1 million Illinoisans—1 in 11 state residents—who have a gambling disorder or are at risk of developing one. The state has 10 casinos, with six more sites approved, and 44,000 video gambling terminals.
A sharp increase in gambling activities in the wake of the May 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing the legalization of sports betting has led to more gamblers finding themselves in distress.
In the five years since that decision—with sports betting now legal and live in 34 states and Washington D.C.—Americans have legally wagered $220 billion, according to the American Gaming Association, a trade group for the gambling industry. Gamblers placed bets of about $95 billion in the fiscal year ending March 2023.
In the early 2000s, Mr. Hartwell met his future wife, who also enjoyed gambling.
“We were going to the casino after work almost every evening,” he said. “There was financial stress as well as emotional stress in our relationship.”
They both decided to stop gambling. After his wife stopped, he followed suit for a few months and agreed to attend a 12-step program meeting. There, he heard the tragic stories of other gamblers, some who had gone to prison for embezzlement and others who had lost their families.
But Mr. Hartwell didn’t heed these warnings and secretly began gambling again. About two years after attending his first meeting, he stepped up his gambling to a higher level. After he had racked up that $90,000 in debt, his wife asked him to seek serious help.
“This woke me up,” he said. “That was the beginning of my recovery process, which I am still engaged in today.
“Treatment is available, and treatment is effective.”
Travis Thompson, a licensed therapist in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, said that gambling addictions are often well hidden, especially now that the internet offers a virtual casino. Many now find it harder to avoid gambling, and most tend to wait until their situation is dire before seeking help.
“By the time therapy is desperately needed, they’ve put themselves into deep debt,” said Mr. Thompson, author of “To Those Left Behind: Helping Partners and Families Understand Addiction.”
It’s easy for compulsive gamblers who place bets on sports games or engage in other online gambling to hide their activities. The financial consequences are often disastrous.
“They end up creating issues that can go on for decades that will affect their spouses. The spouses can be locked into the consequences of their addictions for the rest of their lives, depending on the severity of the addiction. Family members will find out suddenly that they are $80,000 in debt, which they have to deal with. With gambling addictions, even after the cure there still could be crippling debt.”
At the root of addictive behavior is a need to connect to a sense of safety, purpose, and meaning in the world.
“We mostly find that in relationships,” Mr. Thompson said. “With addicts, they feel their relationships are not assured.”
While many people think that gambling is about the excitement, for most gamblers it’s a kind of numbing relaxation. It soothes them. For people with traumatic pasts, this distraction often feels essential. Unfortunately, as debts mount and shame grows, too many gamblers resort to suicide.
“For some people, that is the way they see out of the financial ruin for them and their loved ones,” Mr. Thompson said.
Luke, who isn’t sharing his last name in accordance with the traditions of Gamblers Anonymous, is a 46-year-old manufacturing service technician who lives in suburban Chicago. He visited a casino for the first time while he was in college.
“I didn’t have much money—maybe $40 or $50—so I played slots. So when I lost it, it was gone,” he said.
After Luke graduated, he had more money for betting, and access to several casinos within driving distance.
“I learned how to play blackjack,” Luke said. “I started going by myself, rather than going with friends. When you start going by yourself, and it’s more frequent, it’s problematic.”
He no longer bet just the $100 in his pocket. If he lost his stake, he would stay around to try to win it back.
“I would go back to the ATM to get more money,” he recalled.
Luke’s job performance suffered, and he became distant from his family.
“I was losing all my money,” he said. “Sometimes, I would lose my entire paycheck in one night at the casino. I got paid monthly, and I had to pay my mortgage and my car payment. Then I had to go to my parents for money, just to live. Or I raided my 401(k) and used that to live on.”
Luke began to suffer from depression and sought help in 2007 to gain relief from the dark thoughts.
“Gambling was very much affecting my mood and my quality of life,” he said.
There were times when he thought that he would be better off dead.
“I felt hopeless and worthless,” he said. “After another gambling binge, I decided to exclude myself from the casinos. In Illinois, you can put yourself on the voluntary exclusion list. It is a lifetime ban from all casinos. If you enter a casino, you can be arrested for trespassing.”
When he went online to find out how to ban himself, he was referred to a counseling center, which offered therapy for substance and gambling addiction. His psychiatrist recommended Gamblers Anonymous.
“I felt like I fit in right away,” he said. “I started going to a couple of meetings a week. Gamblers Anonymous became a big part of my recovery right away. It was indispensable.”
Luke said that he hasn’t placed a bet since he began attending meetings regularly 11 years ago.
“To get any genuine recovery and have success, you need to attend meetings with regularity,” he said.
Chris also found recovery through Gamblers Anonymous. Now 66 and a retired Chicago attorney, he was introduced to casino gambling during a 2004 fishing trip with his family in Wisconsin. He went back the following year and began enjoying the dice game of craps. His gambling increased when his office moved closer to a casino and he could gamble at lunch or after work.
“For the next six years, it went from once every couple of weeks, to four times a week. I started out losing a couple of hundred a week, to more than $1,000, then as much as $1,400 during some sessions,” he said.
Then Chris took early retirement, which gave him more free time.
“I started gambling every day at the Rivers Casino in Des Plaines. I would also drink; I had that addiction, too. That kind of fueled it,” he said.
Table craps was the only game that Chris played.
“The strategy of it fascinated me, in terms of all the different kinds of bets you could make with the dice. It was exciting. You play it around a table with eight to 16 people. There is a camaraderie, and people whoop it up when everything’s going well. From 2007 to 2014, I was playing craps all the time.”
The most money that Chris ever won in one session was about $4,000. He often lost as much as $1,400 in one day. The losses far exceeded the wins, and Chris became stressed about where to find the money to cover his losses.
“My wife didn’t see what I was doing, taking money out of my checking account and my 401(k). The worst thing was the all-encompassing focus on where I was going to get my next money for gambling. I couldn’t think about anything else but that,” he said.
Chris’s luck changed when he checked himself into CORE, the Center of Recovery, an in-patient facility for compulsive gamblers in Shreveport, Louisiana.
“CORE treatment was very successful,” he said. “There was intense counseling with eight other people in the group.”
Each gambler explored how he or she became powerless over gambling and used it to soothe uncomfortable feelings.
“We worked with that,” Chris said, “how could we explain that and be honest about it? How did it affect our relationships?”
Chris attended Gamblers Anonymous meetings each night, and had one-on-one counseling with a counselor who was assigned to him.
“I understood that I lost myself in gambling. It was the thing that would take over so I didn’t have to deal with the depression and anxiety,” he said.
That was nine years ago. These days, Chris attends a gambling counseling group at the Way Back Inn, an outpatient facility, once a week. He talks with his counselor once a month.
“Continuing counseling and the CORE in-patient program have been the most effective for me,” he said. “In Gamblers Anonymous, you’re hearing the stories of other people, what they went through, how they went through it, and what’s been working for them.
“And you play that in your mind and think, ‘If I went back there and went through that again, I’d end up right back where they did.’ When you work with other people, you stay close to the problem. You remember how it was.”
Any gambler or family member who is seeking help may call the National Gambling Helpline: 800-426-2537 (800 GAMBLER)
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