Recovering gambling addict speaks candidly about her addiction

Recovering gambling addict speaks candidly about her addiction
By Erin Steele, Record-Gazette

By the end, "Lauren" was gambling most days. She thought about it often, and planed her daily activities around it – she would hesitate to accept an invitation to an event if it meant she could not gamble for a long time, and hid her addiction as well as her financial activity, from her family.

This drove her to a dark place.

"I was very suicidal, very secretive," she said.

This went on for years and years until she was finally caught twice withdrawing a large amount of money from her bank account by her husband, and finally encouraged to get help.

Although an addiction can be anything to anybody, this story is about Lauren – a recovering gambling addict from Edmonton who chose a fake name to remain anonymous due to the personal nature of this article – and gambling.

The addictive behaviours and thought-patterns behind gambling are the same as those behind other addictions like drugs and alcohol, though many do not see it in such a way, as gambling is a process addiction (in the same category as food and work) rather than a substance addiction, according to Lauren.

Lauren stopped in at the R-G office last Thursday with Alberta Health Services' addiction's counsellor Liz Daigle to discuss her long addiction and then recovery from gambling. As part of the Problem Gambler's Recovery Network, she was invited by AHS Addiction and Mental Health to speak to kids in local schools and tour the area for National Addictions Awareness Week (Nov. 13 to 19).

Although gambling consumed her life for over a decade, now clean for over 7.5 years, Lauren says she still has a hard time explaining exactly why this was her life for such a long time.

"It created all these negative consequences, but the draw was so strong," she said after a couple moments of deliberation.

"The compulsion and obsession superseded everything."

So how does something, whether it is gambling or drinking or something else, that is socially acceptable and does not turn into an addiction for the majority of people in society, destruct certain people's lives?


Lauren, along with many other addicts had previously prescribed to the idea of, 'it can't happen to me.'

"I'm too smart to do something that stupid," Lauren described some of the common thinking as.

"I had really low self esteem," Lauren said, and explained that finally attending Gamblers Anonymous where she not only realized she was not alone, but that there were also underlying issues that pushed her to the point of addiction.

Although she says some gambling addicts she knows are angry at governments for its role in the gambling industry which includes VLT machines (in Alberta), betting, lottery tickets, casinos, bingo halls and the largest growing problem for gamblers: on-line gambling which is already a $25-billion a year industry with over 2,400 sites and is slated to grow exponentially, she keeps her presentations non-political.

"Ninety-seven per cent of people don't have a problem and 3 per cent do," she said as justification that it is up to the addict to learn to live around temptation. Her organization, the Problem Gambler's Recovery Network, is funded by government. At the same time, $65-million is being gambled every day in Canada.

Despite keeping the non-political aspect to it, Lauren says she would like to see more money flow back into treatment and awareness.

And her trip to Peace River is an attempt to raise awareness. According to Daigle, she is hoping to raise awareness about the important issue of gambling addiction and begin a conversation up here in Northern Alberta.