All Bets Are Off Read online

  Finally, we wish to acknowledge and thank all those who walked the path of recovery before us, for their guidance, love, and encouragement.

  INTRODUCTION

  THIS BOOK HAS BEEN three decades in the making. I’ve wanted to write this story of the complete devastation of compulsive gambling, and the complete transformation through recovery from it, for everyone affected by this disease. Come to think of it, compulsive gambling wasn’t even classified as a medically recognized addictive disorder until several years after I first began thinking about this book.

  I’ve been encouraged in this effort over the years by several other writers, as well as literary agents and publishers. But the timing was never quite right, it seemed, and neither were the resources I needed. I think that’s how it is with most things, including the acceptance that a gambling habit has gone from exhilarating to demoralizing and that it finally has to end—you’re just not ready ’til you’re ready.

  But I’m ready now, with the help of my writing partner, Steve Jacobson, whom I’ve known for years, and the support of my publisher, Central Recovery Press, which understands the stigma of addiction and wants to carry the recovery message of hope to others.

  Most people look at gamblers as bad people or crooks, and not as addicted people in need of help.

  The message I want to get across is that people who are addicted to gambling, and their families who suffer because of it, can recover and have a good life. Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think our life—my wife Sheila’s and mine—could be like it is today. Maybe we can change what the public understands about gambling addiction through our story.

  Most people look at gamblers as bad people or crooks, and not as addicted people in need of help. I want to change that perception, and I believe this book will help do that.

  Let’s start with a story—a heart-wrenching story, like so many stories I hear every day from people in trouble with gambling:

  Mom and Dad sit down to study the debts being rung up in their name. They’re trying to confront the fact that their son has reached the limits of his credit card. He’s been borrowing from his brother and sister. The school says he hasn’t been paying his tuition. And aren’t some pieces missing from the jewelry box?

  Their counselor tells them their son is a compulsive gambler. The parents sigh with relief. Thank God he’s only a gambler; at least it isn’t drugs or alcohol. They say, “We can be thankful for that.”

  What a tragic misjudgment these parents have made. Actually, their son’s problem may be much worse than alcohol or other drugs. Unknown to most of America, gambling addiction is a close parallel to what medicine calls “the silent killer.” Compulsive gambling, however, can’t be measured by a blood pressure cuff; it leaves no smell of alcohol and no needle marks—only shattered families and broken lives.

  I’ve been there.

  I’ve lived through my own anger, tears, and loss. As a young man I chased the big winner and came up with empty pockets and a life that teetered on the brink. My gambling addiction actually put four lives on the brink, not just mine. I was given a second chance at life, and I learned how to live without gambling. Finding recovery resurrected my family life and led me to a rewarding career helping gambling addicts and warning others.

  I can tell gamblers who feel the noose tightening as their pockets shrink that they are hardly alone with a problem few understand. And all the while, gambling is socially acceptable, heavily promoted, and exploited by government and society.

  Most of us grew up with gamblers portrayed as comic and even endearing. We laugh at Nathan Detroit and Sky Masterson in the musical Guys and Dolls and at the wit of “Adelaide’s Lament.” We laugh at the cult classic film Beat the Devil when the card players bet on which sugar cube an intruding fly will touch down upon; but they fail to identify which of their buxom companion’s breasts the fly will choose to land on first.

  Almost all of us have had our harmless brushes with gambling. We buy a scratch-off lottery ticket, go to the two-dollar window at the racetrack, or spend a few days in Las Vegas and write the loss off to entertainment. Some of us even take our kids to Vegas or Atlantic City. We buy a box on the office Super Bowl pool grid, play gin rummy for ten cents a point, or we enjoy an evening of social poker built around table talk and sandwiches. Approximately 95 percent of us can walk away from the table and leave it at that. And 95 percent of us can enjoy wine with dinner or a social drink with friends too. No problem.

  But what about the 5 percent or more who are caught in the quicksand of compulsive gambling and don’t know how to get out of it? The more they tell themselves they can get out any time they want, the deeper they sink. When they think they’ve caught a break, or they come into some money and see the light at the end of the tunnel, again they slip up, again they lose, and again they think it can’t get any worse.

  They are women as well as men. They are young people in college, some of them addicted long before college age. There are some who look in the mirror of their lives and are terrified at what they see. Consider this agonizing, frightened lament of a woman who feels her life and ultimately her family have no escape:

  I know that it is hard to stop, but I’m not sure how I can be helped.

  It comes down to willpower, and I keep going back. Even though it is destroying me, and I know it is, I don’t stop. It is sick. I got to the point of not trying to give it up. Then I don’t have to be disappointed in myself for failing to stick to quitting.

  It’s 11 a.m. and I still haven’t played today. But I think about it all morning. It’s crazy! There is no life for me outside this because it consumes me and it’s scary because I try to stop and always fail.

  I want to do this for me and my kids. Why can’t I just stop and be done with it? I’m angry with myself and I used to be angry with God, but I know He wants better for me, too. I have not lost anything yet like my home, my kids are great, and I have never gotten in trouble. I want to keep it that way. Do you think it is possible for someone like me to stop? I am thirty-eight and the last four years have been the worst I’ve experienced.

  She wrote that to me, hoping for my help because she couldn’t help herself.

  Unlike drug addiction, there is no methadone treatment for compulsive gambling. Gamblers, however earnest, are even unlikely to get real help from just reading a book.

  This book is not an academic or scholarly study; it’s about anger and tears and loss—and redemption. Some people can be saved or rescued. They and those who care about them must first recognize how deep the problem is and how it cuts. I escaped my own dungeon, which included the constant pain of trying to pay debts so my bookmakers would take my next bet. It was as frantic as a cat trying to dig a hole in a marble floor. And the problem has universality.

  In some sections of this book, Sheila will explain how my gambling drove her to the edge of life, which we hope will provide understanding to the families of compulsive gamblers. After all, she has lived through all of this right alongside me.

  Roughly 13 percent of Gamblers Anonymous (GA) members in the US have attempted suicide, while 48 percent have considered it. In a study of college students in Québec, 7.2 percent of students who did not have a gambling problem had attempted suicide—compared to 26.8 percent of those who were problem gamblers. Suicide attempts are more common with pathological gambling than with any other addiction. And the lures to play are greater now than ever before and get worse every day.

  There has always been gambling. Filed dice, the tool of cheats, have been found in ancient pyramids. There have always been card games and dominoes. People have bet that one horse could run faster than another or which fighting rooster could kill another. Surely there was always someone to make book. In our modern society, people bet on sports events in ever more sophisticated and intricate ways. Casino gambling is widespread. States dismiss moral objections to gambling and cleverly tell people they are helping education by buying lottery tickets; forty-three of th
e fifty states have some form of legalized gambling.

  Suicide attempts are more common with pathological gambling than with any other addiction. And the lures to play are greater now than ever before and get worse every day.

  “You have to be in it to win it,” they say. The promised payoffs are astronomical.

  If you win.

  Executives of professional sports leagues know their athletes are as vulnerable as anyone to the lure of gambling. They know the history of big-time athletes who sold their will to score to gamblers who controlled which team would win and by how many points. That didn’t end with the Black Sox Scandal of 1919 or the basketball scandals of the 1950s. Some of the biggest stars since then have sold out. Sports executives know their games are in jeopardy, but when I have sought to talk to their players, their choice has been to remain silent and hope no one would notice.

  Of greater importance are the ordinary young people who fall into the gambling trap and don’t recognize it, or tragically don’t know that they can get help.

  In the late 1990s, a college student at Nassau Community College in New York became overwhelmed by gambling debts. He borrowed and stole all the money he could, but saw no way out. He bought a toy gun, then drove erratically on the Long Island Expressway sideswiping cars. The police gave chase and, when cornered, the student got out of his car, walked toward the police, and drew the realistic looking toy pistol. Police shot and killed him.

  When police searched his car they found a suicide note written by the young man that said it was a plan, that he needed to die, and apologized to the police officer who shot him for getting him involved in this “suicide-by-cop.”

  The harsh reality is that the success rate of treating compulsive gamblers is pathetically less than that of treating drug or alcohol addicts. “That’s because we know so little about gambling addiction,” says Dr. Allan Lans, who treats drug and alcohol addiction at Smithers in New York and has worked as a counselor for the New York Mets. Our best hope is that we can show the public how bleak the problem is, show people who know a potential addict how deep the addiction is, and encourage them to understand how they might recognize it in time to deal with it.

  In the depths of my own addiction and Sheila’s suffering, one evening she lay down in front of the door in a plea to keep me from going out to the racetrack.

  Without a word, I stepped over her and went anyway.

  Eventually, we took our problems, our anger, and our pain to get professional help. We forced ourselves to examine our lives, which by that time were full of recriminations and accusations. And we had some small breakthroughs. We drove together to counseling sessions. Sometimes we even spoke to each other.

  Sheila has said, “It began over small things.” We learned to communicate about things that seemed trivial, but it was something we were able to do for the first time. If we could have a conversation about the weather, that was a lot for us. If we could have a conversation about where we wanted to go to dinner, that, too, was a big accomplishment. If we could talk through something we were concerned about, or if we could talk to each other about one of the children, that was also a miraculous piece of communication.

  Ultimately, I became director of the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey, and now my wife and I run Arnie & Sheila Wexler Associates, traveling the country presenting workshops and seminars on compulsive gambling addiction. It’s hard work and frequently frustrating, as valuable as it is; it’s a terribly difficult addiction to break.

  And nobody knows better than we do how difficult it is. With help, we managed to escape the problem together, and together we have devoted ourselves to helping others with this addiction we know first-hand.

  PROLOGUE

  THE MORNING AFTER SUPER Bowl XXI, the hotline phone rings on my desk at the New Jersey Council on Compulsive Gambling. It’s Monday, usually the day the bookmaker must be paid. A familiar voice wails to me.

  “Arnie! Arnie, I’m a Giants fan and they won everything, and I lost $22,000,” the frantic voice says.

  “Geez!” I say. I’m an experienced man. I’ve heard a lot of wild stories. I ask, “If you’re a Giants fan, how is that possible?”

  “I couldn’t wait four hours for the final score,” the voice laments, “so I bet on the coin toss.”

  It would be a funny story if it wasn’t so sad.

  1

  WHEELING AND DEALING

  IT DIDN’T HAPPEN ALL at once. Actually, it didn’t “happen” to me at all; I did it to myself. I make no excuses. Maybe it was in my genes; I always knew I was going to be some kind of compulsive something or other, but there wasn’t enough known about compulsive gambling at the time to make that kind of explanation or excuse for me.

  Lots of people drink and can control their drinking. They have a social drink or two, or they have wine with dinner or a beer on a hot day after mowing the lawn. They don’t become addicted. But a small percentage of them do. People eat every day and most aren’t driven to obesity. Most people enjoy a day at the races or bet the Monday night game in the National Football League and don’t become compulsive gamblers.

  I didn’t smoke and I didn’t drink. Gambling caught me, and permeated my everyday life. Clearing my desk by the end of each workday was as much a part of my daily routine as going to the track right afterward. I did it every day. I needed to do it every day. Maybe that says something about me.

  But does that mean the housewife with a compulsion to wipe the kitchen counter a dozen times a day is prone to become a compulsive gambler like me? I wish I knew.

  Gambling caught me, and permeated my everyday life. Clearing my desk by the end of each workday was as much a part of my daily routine as going to the track right afterward. I did it every day. I needed to do it every day.

  I grew up playing pinball machines and, at fourteen, started trading stocks. Playing pinball, I hoped to win a free game. As a kid playing at the boardwalk amusements, nothing gave me more of a high than a pinball machine. I couldn’t leave until my money gave out. To this day the sound of a pinball machine juices me up. Trading stocks, another form of gambling, helped me “win” some money. I thought I was so much smarter than other people; it was a challenge to play the market and get away with it. Nobody caught on. It worked for a while, but I got greedy. I was always looking for some play, some action, even back then.

  At fourteen is also when I got an after-school job sweeping floors at Harco Dress Co. in New York’s Garment District. It gave me pocket money for pinball and fueled my growing fascination with gambling. I started gambling on sports and horses while I was working for fifty cents an hour. My boss told me I better stop or I’d develop a real problem. I laughed at him. I knew Arnold Wexler was smart enough to win at gambling. My dream was to be a hotshot salesman and make a lot of money by the time I was thirty. But in a short time I decided that was too slow for me.

  One day at work I overheard somebody talking about stock tips, and soon I was wheeling and dealing stocks over the counter. Since economics was my favorite subject in high school, I was a natural. This was way before the stock market became computerized and much more sophisticated. I’d find “pink sheets” in garbage cans and the next morning call a brokerage and say I was Henry Smith or some other person, “from Merrill Lynch.” I’d say I wanted to buy 5,000 shares at $2.00 each. Then I’d call back later that day and identify myself as someone else and say I wanted to know what was happening with that stock. If it had gone up, “Henry Smith” would sell. The next day, Henry would buy some other stock and push the price up with other phony buy orders to numerous brokers. I’d manipulate the price up to $5.00, $6.00, or $7.00. Then I’d call the original broker and say I was sending my delivery boy to collect the cash. They never caught on to me.

  Nothing ever scared me—or so I thought.

  When I was twenty-two I did get arrested, but I was innocent. My boss had sent me to pay a parking ticket for him. I went to court and stayed all morning waiting for t
he judge to call my boss’s name, but the judge called a recess instead. While the court was in recess, I went down to a newsstand, bought a scratch sheet, and went into a phone booth—there were phone booths back in those days—and called my bookmaker.

  Suddenly, two guys with strong hands reached in the phone booth and pulled me out by my head. They were New York City detectives. They accused me of being a bookmaker, hustled me into a paddy wagon, and hauled me to the police station in Jamaica, a neighborhood in Queens, and then to a court on Centre Street in Manhattan. They took my fingerprints and mug shot and stuck me in a holding room with a hundred people and a single open toilet in the corner.

  That frightened me so much that I was afraid to use the toilet.

  I made my one allowed phone call to call my Uncle Ralph, who knew people in Mayor Impellitteri’s office. Ralph got me out on $500 bail.

  Sheila and I met when I was twenty-one and she was sixteen. As I look back, I had the problem building in me back then, but society didn’t consider gambling an addiction at that point, thinking it was a “habit of degenerates.” I certainly didn’t know what was happening to me. Sheila and I went to the movies on our first date. The next 300 dates were at one racetrack or another, sporting events, or somewhere else where I could gamble.