‘If I Had It To Lose, I Lost It,’ Gambler Discusses Recovery

Gambling is a growing industry with increases in online gambling at the forefront. But with that comes problems. Problem gamblers are always chasing the high of winning. 

According to a problem gambler who is in recovery and works for the gambling hotline in West Virginia (1-800-GAMBLER), we’re calling her Beth to protect her identity, gambling addiction is the same as any other addiction.

News Director Eric Douglas spoke with her recently for this second part of our limited series on problem gambling.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. 

Douglas:  Let’s talk about why you got here in the first place. 

Beth: I’m going to say about 2017 it just started as a social thing. Me and my husband started going to the casino just for something to do. We had been married for a good while. At that point, our kids had moved out of the house. We were just finding ourselves again. We were able to just date, really, as I call it. And in the winter months, there’s not a whole lot to do around here. And we went, and instantly, I don’t think he was a huge fan of sticking his money in a machine and losing it. It wasn’t really about the money. It was, I guess, looking back now, it’s the excitement, the excitement that anticipation brings you whether you’re winning or losing. 

We continued to go together on and off, a weekend here or there. I wanted to go through the week, and then I started going when he was at work. I would say three months in, I knew I had a problem. I knew it was becoming a problem. Of course, I wouldn’t admit it was a problem. 

Douglas: Three months in you realized you were having a problem, but you didn’t deal with it for years.

Beth: No, I did not deal with it for years. Two years in, my son and two of my best friends come to me, “We’re worried about you. We think you have a problem. Are you OK?” Those types of questions. And I was like, “Hey, I don’t have a problem. I can control it. I’m good. I know what I’m doing,” not so much in a defensive manner, but just blew it off as I’m OK. One of those best friends I had been best friends with for 30 years. You don’t find that very often. She ended up not speaking to me for a good while after that. 

I continued to spiral out of control over a course of seven years. I lost my career, many friends, cars, houses. I eventually lost the relationship with my son, [and he] hasn’t spoken to me in over two years. He now has a baby. So I have a grand baby I haven’t met, which is very hard, but I deal with that. I know I created this situation. 

My thing was slots. I eventually started going to VLTs, the video lottery terminals, like Mimi’s, Max’s hot spots, you know, there’s one on every corner, like McDonald’s. Online was getting pretty big. I didn’t gamble online for a good while, even though I knew about it. I had friends trying to get me to do it, because I knew I already had a problem. That was just the icing on the cake for me. 

But for whatever reason, I chose to do so one day and put very little in and got a very significant return. And that just kind of hooked me. In the gambling world, they say that’s the worst thing that can happen, is a large win, because you continue to chase that win, that high, that’s exactly what you’re chasing. 

Looking back and learning what I’ve learned, and being in this world of recovery, which is so much better than the world of gambling for compulsive gamblers, anyway, it’s that rush that you’re chasing. It’s that feeling, that dopamine rush, because it doesn’t matter what you win going forward, you’ll never match that same feeling of that first win. And, you know, I think that’s what people need to be to be aware of.

Douglas: That’s what I’ve always heard about opioids, that first exposure, and the high is amazing, but you can never quite get there again, and you’re always looking for it, to do more and more. 

Beth: You’re chasing the same feeling. I went from spending money that I shouldn’t have spent, to bill money, to not being able to catch anything up to, spending my whole paycheck, and my husband’s paycheck. The day after payday, he would go through a drive through and not have any money to get his lunch, because I’d taken all the money out of the account.

Douglas: Were your bets getting bigger?

Beth: No, my bets never really got bigger. For me, the more I won, the higher I bet based upon the money I had to play. I could play from 20 cents to $10 bets. It depended on how much I had and how much I was winning. There are people who can sit and regardless of how much they have in their pocket or how much they’re winning, they’ll take that 25 or 50 cent bet, and they don’t ever change it, and it’s just, the tap of the button for hours. For me, it was a little different.

Douglas: So the escalation for you was just going more?

Beth: More and more frequent. It started out as once or twice a month to once or twice, you know, once a week, and then twice a week, and then, based upon the access to funds, it could have been every day.

Douglas: You had an intervention. After about two years, your friends and son came to you. When did you hit rock bottom?

Beth: In 2023 we lost our home. So then in 2024, I ended up doing some things that I should not have done that kind of got me into a little bit of trouble. At that point, my husband had moved out, my son had quit speaking to me. The relationship with my daughter was very strained. I didn’t have my family anymore. For a lot of women who are mothers, that’s their life, and I didn’t have that. I didn’t have any of my closest friends. My world had fallen apart. I lost my job. If I had it to lose, I lost it, and I felt so alone, and I felt like I could never make it up. I couldn’t make it up to the people that I hurt. I could never pay back the money that I needed to. All those horrible thoughts that go through your head. And I got to the point that I had decided that I just couldn’t live this life anymore, that people would be better off without me. 

Douglas: You called the problem hotline. 

Beth: I chatted in because at that point I still couldn’t say the words “I have a gambling problem,” I just couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say “I need help.” Because it’s like knowing it is one thing. But when you actually say it out loud, now you have to deal with it. Now you’ve admitted it out loud, you have to do something about it. So I actually chatted in and talked to a very, very helpful, very nice, compassionate person that sent me some resources. They offered counseling. I saw the counselor the next day, and here I am, 10 months later, still going to my counseling. I go to group. We have a support group every Friday in South Charleston, and you don’t have to go through the problem gambler [hotline] to get there. So if you’re suffering from a gambling addiction, or you think you have one, it’s a support group so you can bring a loved one. I do that every Friday, and do meetings online. There’s meetings online every day of the week somewhere.

Douglas: So you can do a problem gambler group virtually?

Beth: I think there’s only around six GA [Gamblers Anonymous] meetings across the entire state, but there are tons of them online. You do them through Zoom. You could be on a Zoom GA meeting with 20 people from 10 different states. There’s actually one that meets every day of the week. Some of them are different. Some are just a couple days a week, some of every day of the week. But there’s different meetings out there. So you can find a meeting, or call 1-800 GAMBLER, and we’ll get you a list. 

Douglas: What would you say to somebody who’s looking at their phone app and going, “Hey, this is fun. I can do this and maybe make some money.”

Beth: I wouldn’t suggest you do it, because you think you’re gonna make money or become rich, or you’re going to look like Jamie Foxx or Peyton Manning, or whoever. It is strictly for entertainment purposes. If you have an extra $100, and you can go out somewhere and have a good time, then take $100. Could be $25 or $50, don’t take no more than what you can afford to lose. 

I recently was talking to someone, and I said, if you can afford to take $50 and throw it out your car window and hope that it comes back in, then that’s what you can take to gamble on.

Douglas: That’s the rough equivalent of gambling.

Beth: For anybody who thinks they may have a problem, there’s barriers out there. I didn’t know because I never looked for it, and for a compulsive gambler, I don’t think we do look for it, but the sites do have limits that you can set. You can set a limit for a deposit limit, a daily limit. There’s also a place on there where you can take a cooling off period, whether it’s seven days or 30 days. If [you] find yourself spending a little more than what you had planned, or even a little longer, you know, check out those barriers. Some of us have more money to spend than others. There’s a lot of famous stars out there who have gambling problems. Will they ever run out of money? Maybe not, but it’s about the time, too. It’s time that it takes away from your family and your friends and the things that you normally enjoyed before you gambled.

Douglas: What do you get out of working on the hotline now?

Beth: Working on 1-800-GAMBLER, it helps me in my recovery, because for me, I don’t ever want to lose sight of those darkest days. I don’t ever want to be there again. But I don’t ever want to forget what that feeling was like either, you know, so it helps me in my recovery, and then if what I went through can help somebody else, that’s just a plus, you know? We’re there, 24/7, and we tell people this isn’t just the end. You don’t have to call us one time. If you’re having a bad day and you need to talk, you can give us a call back. It’s very rewarding in both aspects. I’ve always been a helper, so I get to help people, but then it helps me in return,

Douglas: Tell me about the idea of excluding yourself from a casino.

Beth: You can actually exclude yourself from all casinos in the state of West Virginia. You can go in through that individual casino that you go to personally, and just go to the security desk or guest services and tell them you want to exclude. It goes five years to lifetime. You fill out a paper. You can also do it online. There is a form you can get from the West Virginia Lottery. Fill it out. It’ll have to be notarized. You send it back in, and then everything goes by your driver’s license number, because, in order to go to a casino, you have to show your ID. They scan it. Unfortunately, at this time in West Virginia, you cannot exclude yourself from the video lottery terminals (VLTs), which, as we know, there are a whole lot more of them.

Douglas: I think there’s, what, six casinos in the state? 

Beth: My director will probably get me if I get this wrong, it’s either around 1,200 or 1,500 VLTs.

That’s a lot of our problem when people call in. It’s either online or VLTs, because we don’t have that many casinos. West Virginia is full of rural areas. People aren’t driving three hours for a casino on a daily basis if they have an issue, but they can stop by their VLTs when they go to the grocery store or on their way home from work. So, unfortunately, at this time you cannot ban yourself or exclude yourself from the VLTs. 

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The West Virginia Problem Gambling Help Network (WVPGHN), 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537) is available 24 hours a day and connects individuals who may be struggling with problems due to gambling behaviors with the resources they need. 

In our first story in this three part series, News Director Eric Douglas spoke with a certified gambling counselor about the Problem Gambling Help Network, 1-800-GAMBLER (1-800-426-2537).