The disease of gambling
"I tried to rob a bank, I was tired of 15 years of lying, cheating and worrying over the misery I was causing my family by gambling. Now I know that I really wanted to get shot." "I took half the payroll, $1,100, and told my employees that the bank had made a mistake. I knew I Was wrong, but I thought I could domble the amount. I went downtown to shoot dice and lost the whole $1,100 in two hours." "At night I stole my wifes jewelry, even her wedding ring. The next day I pawned the pieces for $75. I felt miserable, but I did it anyway; the horse I bet on came in fourth". THE THREE MEN who spoke were not dejected, unshaved criminals standing before bright kleig lights at a police line-up. The bank robber was a respected, soft-spoken public accountant, the embezzler a neatly dressed, modest businessman, and the thief a steady worker in a machine shop. They were-compulsive gamblers, victims of an addiction worse even than narcotics or drink, one which claims a million more people in the United States than its nearest competitor, alcoholism. They were speaking at a recent group meeting of Gamblers Anonymous, a young, nationwide fraternity of men and women who have banded together in self-defense against their strange compulsion. "Our stories are typical," the bank robber said after the meeting: "If a compulsive gambler hasn't already embezzled, faked checks, stolen jewelry and money from his wife, or robbed a bank, he is thinking of it We all owe thousands of loan sharks, finance companies, bookies, and banks. Most of us are rebuilding broken or shaky marriages, and we are constantly battling the urge to gamble. But we admit we are sick. We're the lucky ones."
An estimated six million persons in the United States are gone-wild gamblers who cannot check their compulsion to plunge dollar after dollar at the race track, casino, or neighborhood crap game, even while the gas and electricity have been shut off at home and the refrigerator stands empty. Uncontrolled gambling is blamed for wrecking thousands of families, and medical and police authorities point to it as the cause for many suicides and sudden disappearances with money. It is responsible for an estimated 75 percent of the billion dollars annually embezzled from business. Yet the compulsive gambler is not a criminal; he is a victim of a psychological malady almost too strange to be believed, one which is only now coming to the attention of the general public. "The amazing truth," says psychiatrist Edmund Bergler, pioneer researcher in the motives of compulsive gamblers, "is that they are causing themselves and their families suffering and misery and getting deeper and deeper into debt because they don't gamble to win money, they gamble to lose it Consciously, of course, the gambler believes he wants to win. But, in fact, he gambles to lose." According to Dr. Bergler, a compulsive gambler is venting an exaggerated childhoodv hostility toward his parents, and then paying for this unconscious aggression by losing his money. A gambler is convinced he will eventually made his fortune without lifting a finger, believing all the while that this proves his parents were mean and "stupid" to have made him leave his infantile all-play-and-no-work world.
But his unconscious guilt in trying to show up his parents drives him to debt, more gambling, and heavier losing. "Hie way the odds are against the gambler," Dr. Bergler adds, "the technique for losing is simple enough: the gambler just keeps on gambling!" Rules of chance dictate that in 41 spins of the roulette wheel, about an hour's worth of playing, the gambler will lose $53. The crap table is even more expensive— 45 passes of the dice, around 60 minutes of high-tension gambling, will cost him' $111. But horse players have the worst odds of all, only one chance in 25 of making a profit after 100 bets. It is a tragic fact that if compulsive gamblers were normal, most of them could have quit ahead at one point in their lives and saved themselves and their families years of heartaches and distress. But when a gambler hits one of those unpredictable lucky streaks, his unconscious need for self-punishment forces him to rebet his winnings until they, too, are gone. The compulsion to gamble, and to lose, is so strong that a gambler will bet even when doom is obvious. Dr. Bergler illustrates this point with the story of one of his patients. Mr. X was commuting between his suburb and the city on a moming train when he spotted a two-man poker game; he also spotted one of the men cheating. The cheater saw Mr. X watching and invited him to sit in. "I knew I had to lose with this man, but I couldn't resist gambling," Mr. X said later. He was right about losing, to the tune of $50, all the money he was carrying. While an alcoholic will become an unshaven, red-nosed stumblebum weaving through the streets in dirty clothes, a gambler will keep himself neat right to the day he is arrested for forging checks or embezzling funds. His certain conviction that someday he must win, actually the part of the neurosis which camouflages his real motives, makes him the most destructive of all addicts. Where an alcoholic spends $10 or $15 a day on drink, a gambler can plunge $1,000 or $2,000 in an afternoon and a life's savings in a day and no one will be the wiser except his desperate wife and hungry children. For this reason, most men come to Gamblers Anonymous meetings after they have hit bottom and are willing to try anything to get out "My low came with a jail sentence says one GA member, graduate of an Ivy League university.
"I embezzled money from my job to gamble, and I told myself that I would pay it back after my big win. I got caught in surprise audit, but that's not when went to jail. The judge set up a testitution committee, and I paid it a certain sum each week. But I still couldn't control my gambling. "I wrote the committee a check for $300 but used the money I should have deposited for gambling and lost When the judge found out I had given his committee a phony check, he sent me to Sing Sing. While in jail, I finally realized that I must be sick if I couldn't control the gambling urge." 'My low came," recalls another GA member, owner of a small toy factory, "when, at a time that I owed thousands to bookies, loan sharks, finance companies, and banks, the Government put in a huge claim for back taxes and social-security funds I lost on the horses. I broke down in front of my famiy. I let everything loose and told them about all my debts. My brother wanted to hit me, but my kid sister yelled, 'Can't you see he's sick?' That was the first time I realized I was sick. After that I sought help from our local GA." One of its first steps is to help the gambler get back on his feet financially. "Gamblers Anonymous helped me talk to the loan sharks, finance companies, and banks," one gambler recounted. "When they saw I wasn't running from them any more and that I really wanted to pay back what I owed, they all came to easier terms, even the corner bookie. That was my first help. The moral one was even greater. When you see guys worse off than you are, you realize that no situation is so bad that another "bet won't make it worse."
After encouraging a new member to make a list of creditors and aUottingJime payments to each one, often just $1 or $2 a week, GA suggests that the gambler start a bank account "After three months of saving, I have $21 in my account," said a GA member. "Not much, I know, but I'm as proud of that $21 as I would be of a million." GA stoutly maintains that the only cured compulsive gambler is a dead. one. For this reason, gamblers keep coming to meetings long after they v have stopped betting. "I haven't gambled in two years," one East Coast member says, "but I still need to come to meetings. I get more determination than ever to keep clean when I see all the misery a new member is in. I know that it wouldn't take much for me to become him again. In turn, I talk to each of them, and they get hope from seeing that I've been off gambling for so long." Gamblers Anonymous members sometimes have setbacks, but they are usually lighter than their old flings. "Take the case of a member last week," said a West Coast chapter leader. "He bet his monthly payment on his home with the bookies and lost $65. But if he didn't belong to GA, that would have been just the beginning. Soon there would have been a loan on the house as he tried to win back his losses, and then complete disaster. Thanks to the moral support of other GA members, however, he stopped. Two years ago he would have ended on skid row. I know—I'm the man." GA is trying to show mat the compulsive gambler is not just a legal problem but a medical one, too a problem, worsening yearly as people find more leisure time and more money. GA is working hard, and succeeding in proving that as bad as this problem is—it can be cured.
An estimated six million persons in the United States are gone-wild gamblers who cannot check their compulsion to plunge dollar after dollar at the race track, casino, or neighborhood crap game, even while the gas and electricity have been shut off at home and the refrigerator stands empty. Uncontrolled gambling is blamed for wrecking thousands of families, and medical and police authorities point to it as the cause for many suicides and sudden disappearances with money. It is responsible for an estimated 75 percent of the billion dollars annually embezzled from business. Yet the compulsive gambler is not a criminal; he is a victim of a psychological malady almost too strange to be believed, one which is only now coming to the attention of the general public. "The amazing truth," says psychiatrist Edmund Bergler, pioneer researcher in the motives of compulsive gamblers, "is that they are causing themselves and their families suffering and misery and getting deeper and deeper into debt because they don't gamble to win money, they gamble to lose it Consciously, of course, the gambler believes he wants to win. But, in fact, he gambles to lose." According to Dr. Bergler, a compulsive gambler is venting an exaggerated childhoodv hostility toward his parents, and then paying for this unconscious aggression by losing his money. A gambler is convinced he will eventually made his fortune without lifting a finger, believing all the while that this proves his parents were mean and "stupid" to have made him leave his infantile all-play-and-no-work world.
But his unconscious guilt in trying to show up his parents drives him to debt, more gambling, and heavier losing. "Hie way the odds are against the gambler," Dr. Bergler adds, "the technique for losing is simple enough: the gambler just keeps on gambling!" Rules of chance dictate that in 41 spins of the roulette wheel, about an hour's worth of playing, the gambler will lose $53. The crap table is even more expensive— 45 passes of the dice, around 60 minutes of high-tension gambling, will cost him' $111. But horse players have the worst odds of all, only one chance in 25 of making a profit after 100 bets. It is a tragic fact that if compulsive gamblers were normal, most of them could have quit ahead at one point in their lives and saved themselves and their families years of heartaches and distress. But when a gambler hits one of those unpredictable lucky streaks, his unconscious need for self-punishment forces him to rebet his winnings until they, too, are gone. The compulsion to gamble, and to lose, is so strong that a gambler will bet even when doom is obvious. Dr. Bergler illustrates this point with the story of one of his patients. Mr. X was commuting between his suburb and the city on a moming train when he spotted a two-man poker game; he also spotted one of the men cheating. The cheater saw Mr. X watching and invited him to sit in. "I knew I had to lose with this man, but I couldn't resist gambling," Mr. X said later. He was right about losing, to the tune of $50, all the money he was carrying. While an alcoholic will become an unshaven, red-nosed stumblebum weaving through the streets in dirty clothes, a gambler will keep himself neat right to the day he is arrested for forging checks or embezzling funds. His certain conviction that someday he must win, actually the part of the neurosis which camouflages his real motives, makes him the most destructive of all addicts. Where an alcoholic spends $10 or $15 a day on drink, a gambler can plunge $1,000 or $2,000 in an afternoon and a life's savings in a day and no one will be the wiser except his desperate wife and hungry children. For this reason, most men come to Gamblers Anonymous meetings after they have hit bottom and are willing to try anything to get out "My low came with a jail sentence says one GA member, graduate of an Ivy League university.
"I embezzled money from my job to gamble, and I told myself that I would pay it back after my big win. I got caught in surprise audit, but that's not when went to jail. The judge set up a testitution committee, and I paid it a certain sum each week. But I still couldn't control my gambling. "I wrote the committee a check for $300 but used the money I should have deposited for gambling and lost When the judge found out I had given his committee a phony check, he sent me to Sing Sing. While in jail, I finally realized that I must be sick if I couldn't control the gambling urge." 'My low came," recalls another GA member, owner of a small toy factory, "when, at a time that I owed thousands to bookies, loan sharks, finance companies, and banks, the Government put in a huge claim for back taxes and social-security funds I lost on the horses. I broke down in front of my famiy. I let everything loose and told them about all my debts. My brother wanted to hit me, but my kid sister yelled, 'Can't you see he's sick?' That was the first time I realized I was sick. After that I sought help from our local GA." One of its first steps is to help the gambler get back on his feet financially. "Gamblers Anonymous helped me talk to the loan sharks, finance companies, and banks," one gambler recounted. "When they saw I wasn't running from them any more and that I really wanted to pay back what I owed, they all came to easier terms, even the corner bookie. That was my first help. The moral one was even greater. When you see guys worse off than you are, you realize that no situation is so bad that another "bet won't make it worse."
After encouraging a new member to make a list of creditors and aUottingJime payments to each one, often just $1 or $2 a week, GA suggests that the gambler start a bank account "After three months of saving, I have $21 in my account," said a GA member. "Not much, I know, but I'm as proud of that $21 as I would be of a million." GA stoutly maintains that the only cured compulsive gambler is a dead. one. For this reason, gamblers keep coming to meetings long after they v have stopped betting. "I haven't gambled in two years," one East Coast member says, "but I still need to come to meetings. I get more determination than ever to keep clean when I see all the misery a new member is in. I know that it wouldn't take much for me to become him again. In turn, I talk to each of them, and they get hope from seeing that I've been off gambling for so long." Gamblers Anonymous members sometimes have setbacks, but they are usually lighter than their old flings. "Take the case of a member last week," said a West Coast chapter leader. "He bet his monthly payment on his home with the bookies and lost $65. But if he didn't belong to GA, that would have been just the beginning. Soon there would have been a loan on the house as he tried to win back his losses, and then complete disaster. Thanks to the moral support of other GA members, however, he stopped. Two years ago he would have ended on skid row. I know—I'm the man." GA is trying to show mat the compulsive gambler is not just a legal problem but a medical one, too a problem, worsening yearly as people find more leisure time and more money. GA is working hard, and succeeding in proving that as bad as this problem is—it can be cured.