Losing Your Shirt: Recovery for Compulsive Gamblers and Their Families, 2nd Edition

Gambling is the most expensive addiction known to humans. If an alcoholic spends four hours in a bar drinking, how much might that cost? If a cocaine addict spends four hours in a crack house smoking crack, it might cost seven or eight hundred dollars. If a compulsive gambler spends four hours on a baccarat table, how much might that cost? Losing Your Shirt reflects on the increasing number of female compulsive gamblers, underage gamblers, senior citizen gamblers, and those who gamble solely on the Internet. Underage gamblers get their views of gambling by listening to their parents and other adults. These conversations focus on the excitement of gambling and lead the young to believe gambling is an easy way to make money. Female compulsive gamblers are most likely to choose slot machines as their game of choice. When they begin to play, the machine welcomes them by name and then rewards them with free vouchers. Most female compulsive gamblers claim they simply want to escape from pressures in their lives. The attraction to Internet on-line gambling is the possibility of hitting it big after investing a small amount of money and feeling being in action. Action is what gambling is about. The high of winning is equal to the high if snorting cocaine. Senior citizen gamblers are the most vulnerable group of gamblers because they are often unable to recoup their losses. The most common reason seniors give for turning to gambling is to fill the long and lonely hours they endure every day. Gamblers Anonymous is a simple program of recovery. It asks only two things of each new member: not gamble and go to meetings. Gamblers need to know which road to recovery offers the best odds for success. The programs that have the most successful long-term help for compulsive gamblers and their families are the fellowships of Gamblers Anonymous and Gam-Anon. It is by accepting and working these programs of recovery that are afflicted and the affected can and will recover.