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I have a very addictive personality. So I have to watch out for pretty much any mood-altering item. That includes drugs, alcohol, sleep medication, gambling and even stuff like food and money. If one is good, then more is better… right?
I’ve specifically been thinking about how the legalization of gambling must be so hard on gambling addicts these days. It’s everywhere. You used to have to drive to a casino to bet your life savings away. Now it’s on your phone, your computer, your TV, all over the place. In my active addition days, I used to occasionally gamble, and it was never responsible in any way. Even though drugs and alcohol were my go-to addictive behaviors, I know for sure that in a parallel universe right now I am a raging gambling addict. It could have easily happened to me because I felt the same highs doing it as I did taking opioids and drinking beer.
It made me grateful for the way I have managed to stay away from drugs and alcohol. I don’t just mean that I haven’t drank or used drugs; I’m actually rarely around them any more. So even if I had a five-minute mental slip-up, I’m not within five minutes of alcohol or drugs at almost any point in my life.
Now think about what gamblers are battling. You can bet so much online these days, with a slew of different apps and web sites, that it would be my worst nightmare if I got involved in it. At least with drugs and alcohol, you have to go somewhere and purposely get it and then consume it. With gambling, you can’t even make it through a basketball game without being constantly reminded that you are a click away from becoming a millionaire. Then you throw in all the free giveaways to new customers, and it’s like the old drug dealer thing about letting people take the first taste for free. They want you hooked.
I have been thinking about it a lot recently because we’re only a few years into the legalization of gambling in most of the United States, and we’re already seeing sports betting scandals involving athletes. It really is moving at 100 MPH as a part of American culture, and it sure seems like the downstream impact of needing lots of social safety nets for those who overindulge haven’t kept up with the rush to get it legalized. My guess is, 10 years from now, we’ll be seeing rehabs and 12-step meetings that have far more people with gambling issues than right now.
That all makes me grateful for a “boring” life. I put “boring” in quotes because it’s not actually boring to go to bed at reasonable hours and pay your bills on time and show up at your kids’ parent-teacher conferences. It’s a beautiful way to live my life, actually. But I have that part of my brain that says maybe I need something more exciting—as in, maybe I should grab a few beers with some buddies and bet some money on the game tonight. Luckily, so far I have decided that boring is better, and I watch the game in my recliner, excited to go to bed… even as all the gambling ads blare during the commercial breaks.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
The field sobriety test proved to be too much when the police officer asked, "Was Mickey Mouse a cat or a dog?"
(Credit: Grapevine, May 2008, by Richard M. of Golden, Colorado)
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