Staff Blog
Lost in the Wash: A Gamblers Anonymous meeting offers a human perspective on gambling addiction
 |
| Evan M. Lopez |
One of the most frustrating things about reporting a long story is everything that gets left out.
While writing yesterday's cover story, Meet Your New Neighbor: How Slot Machines Are Designed To Seduce and Destroy You, I attended a meeting at a chapter of the Delaware Valley Gamblers Anonymous, to which I had been invited by the group's "public relations" guy, a recovering compulsive gambler who I'll call Bob.
The meeting was held at a church in Havertown. About 12 people showed up — a small group, Bob told me. One attendee was new — a young man, probably in his late thirties or early forties, with bags under his eyes.
"Here for GA?" Bob asked cheerfully.
"Yeah," he said, looking a little nervous.
Those who defend the efficacy of the state's and casinos' measures to prevent "problem gamblers" from "problem gambling" at casinos might want to attend a GA meeting: The first woman to speak (let's call her Marcia) said, "I had a bad day today. I woke up, and I kept thinking about going down to Chester."
She didn't need to say that by "Chester," she meant Harrah's Chester, which opened its doors a year ago.
All day, Marcia fought the urge. Her husband had recently received his holiday tips, and a pile of money was lying on the kitchen counter. She could take a few bills, she reflected, and he'd never know.
But she didn't. She drove herself to her folks' house and spent the whole day there, fighting temptation.
"If I had gone there, I'd be on the streets," she said. "I would have been sleeping that night in the Chester parking lot."
Gamblers Anonymous is a 12-step program, modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous. They don't accept money from the state or any other group — "Because we don't want to owe anybody," Bob explained.
They also don't take a position on casinos, legalized gambling, the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, or anything else I was writing about. That's partly why the meeting never made my story.
As one man explained it, "Our job is to change ourselves, so that we can live in a world with casinos and not gamble." It was moving, and humbling, to see the dedication with which these people were trying to tackle their problems. And I'm sure that man was right — for him, the issue was him, not casinos.
But the statistics, as I reported, tell another side of that story. Half or more of all casino revenues come from problem gambling, according to several prominent studies. When we talk about the financial benefit of bringing slots to a community, it's the (pre-GA) Bobs and Marcias who are supplying much of that money. And yet, as I also noted in my article, Pennsylvania appropriates only $1.5 million (or .1 percent, whichever is greater) of all gambling revenue toward addiction services. You might compare that to about $300 million it gets to treat drug addiction.
When Harrah's first opened in Chester, Bob said, the group saw a spike in attendance. But most of those people didn't come back. He worries that there are a lot of people with gambling problems who aren't getting any help.
Despite the group's official non-position on casinos, Marcia leaned over to me at the break, after I had explained the gist of my article. "If they bring those slots to Philly," she said, "that'll be the downfall."
The meeting ended.
The new guy said he'd come back.
"We hope you do," Bob told him.
