February 4th, 2015, my wife of nine years, the love of my life, would find out that I wasn’t at all the person she thought I was. My wife Erica would find out that night that I had a raging gambling addiction. An addiction that I was able to hide for nine years. I had become an out-of-control sports gambling addict, and I wasn’t alone.
Back in 2015, there were around 3 million people in the U.S. that had severe gambling addictions. It’s difficult to recognize a gambling addict because you don’t see the physical effects on them that you would see with a drug addict or an alcoholic. I lived a lie for nine years, all while living in the dark, shadowy world that is gambling addiction.
By 2015, the scope of my addiction had reached a level that was hard for me to fathom. I had blown through over a million dollars, not all of it mine, and was facing criminal charges. My addiction knew no bounds. And the choices I made during those years are with me forever.
There was one particular choice I made back in 2013 that I will never shake: I took over $28,000 from my wife Erica’s retirement account to feed my addiction. The terrible irony of this addiction for me, as for so many others that face it, is that I was convinced that gambling was the solution to my problems and not the cause. Pretty twisted way of thinking, right?
So how did I get to this point? Well, it all began back in January of 2001. I won $900 betting on a few college football games. And that was such a rush. It was also the beginning of the end, the end of the life I had known and who I thought I was as a person.
Over the course of the next 15 years, my gambling addiction would simmer beneath the surface, hidden in the shadows, a progressive disease steadily getting worse. There were some good times during those years, though. I married my wife Erica in 2006. Our son Colin was born in 2009. We took great vacations, went to Hawaii as a family, all the fun things that young families dream of. And I assured Erica that we were a team, that our hopes and dreams would come true someday. And she believed in me. I worked really hard to make everything look normal.
You see, as gambling addicts, we live in the shadows, and we’re able to hide in our darkness, all while convincing the most important people in our lives that everything is okay. I would eventually reach my rock bottom in November of 2014. I was out of money, out of resources, and out of friends to borrow from. And I took $9.50 from my son Colin’s piggy bank one day. My son Colin was five years old at the time, and that was all the money he had. And I took that from him, driven by my addiction.
Later that afternoon, I would sit in my car and cry for what seemed like hours. What kind of father had I become? It was that day that suicide had become my only option to end the pain. I didn’t go through with it that day, but at the time, it seemed like my only choice. We can experience many different emotions when those closest to us betray us.
When it all came to light in 2015, my family was angry, hurt... Erica was in shock. Yet they were able to put those emotions aside for a moment and arrange an intervention for me to try and get me some help. I was also presented with an ultimatum that day. If I chose to go off to treatment, my family would stick with me. If I chose not to go, they were gone forever. I knew I needed help, and I chose treatment.
I would spend the next 30 days in treatment learning about the brain of a gambling addict. Many people will look at an addict and say: ‘Why don’t you just stop?’ Just like drug addiction, just like alcoholism, gambling causes the brain to release dopamine, a neurotransmitter that makes people feel excited. For the gambler, that process happens not only when we win but also when we lose.
I would learn that the suicide rate for gambling addicts is 12 times higher than that of any other addiction. I would also learn that there’s something special about sitting in a room for sick people, all with the same common goal: just to get better. 80% of gambling addicts will eventually go back to it. When I walked out of that treatment center, I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to be one of them.
Three weeks after leaving treatment, I would stand before a judge, and I would face the consequences for the choices I had made during those years. I was hoping to be spared a jail sentence that day, but the judge had a different plan for me. She looked me in the eyes and said: ‘The best thing for you is to go to jail today.’ That was the moment my life would turn around.
I would spend the next four months in jail thinking about my wife and son. Those were dark days, lonely days. But something unexpected happened in that place. I met a guy by the name of Scott. I shared my struggle with Scott, and I got to know his struggle as well. I learned that he and his wife were both heroin addicts, had been living on the streets for over two years, and had two little kids they hadn’t seen in over two years. All he wanted was to get clean and get his kids back.
I'll never forget those conversations. I'll never forget the pain in his eyes when he would talk about his kids. Scott would leave jail about a month before me, and on his way out, he gave me a hug and said: ’Thank you for listening.′ ‘Thank you for showing me that it’s okay to believe in myself.’ I think, in a funny sort of way, I tried to convince Scott that he could turn his life around because I also needed to convince myself that I could do the same.
I walked out of that place on June 13th of 2015 with a sense of freedom that I hadn’t experienced in a long time. Not freedom from jail, freedom from the monster of addiction. And I made the decision that day that nothing was going to stop me. No person, no circumstance would get in my way or distract me from what I needed to do to live my life of recovery.
During my gambling days, I did a lot of talking, and I needed to hide the truth. Over the past seven years, I’ve tried to let my actions do my talking. And people have asked me: ‘Isn’t this hard to talk about?’ It is hard, but I believe it’s necessary.
I believe that with sustained recovery comes responsibility. I have a responsibility to help those that are struggling in their addiction. I have come to believe that I have a responsibility to share my story because you never know who might be listening. And maybe they just need to know that there is hope. I know this because of Scott, the guy from jail.
I ran into Scott a couple of months after I left jail. He was sitting down in a Safeway parking lot, filthy, dirty, strung out on heroin. We talked for probably 30 minutes that day, and I saw the same look in his eyes that I had seen in jail. I looked at him and asked him one simple question that day: ‘How bad do you want it?’ I told Scott I’d help him any way I could. I bought him a sandwich, a couple bottles of water. I left him with my phone number.
Two years later, in 2017, I would get a call from Scott. He was calling because he wanted me to know he and his wife were both eight months clean, living in their apartment, and had their two kids back home with them.
(Cheers and applause)
I told Scott that one of the greatest feelings is knowing that you made a difference in somebody’s life and that he would get to experience that someday.
I believe that through our darkest days, we can find the light. I found my soul through my struggle. And now my wife gets a true husband walking through the door each night. My son Colin is now 13 years old. He gets a true dad every night. Not the deranged, unpredictable gambling dad that he had for the first five years of his life.
Colin has a brother now. His name is Nicholas. Nicholas wouldn't be on this earth if not for my recovery. He's here because I had people that didn't give up on me. People that I have lied to and betrayed stuck with me. It takes special people to go out of their way to help the addict. And I’m grateful to have those people in my life. My choices hurt a lot of people.
And one thing I now need to do continuously is to work on making amends. In fact, we sat down with Colin earlier this year and explained everything to him. We wanted to wait until he was old enough to understand. And it was a hard conversation. How do you tell your son that you went to jail? Colin cried that day. I gave him a hug. And now we’re moving forward as a family, never afraid to ask each other the tough questions, never afraid to be honest with each other and ask for forgiveness when we need to.
And so, in the spirit of honesty and transparency, I have an important debt to pay off here tonight. This is $9.50. And I’m going home to pay my son back for the money I took from him when I was sick with my addiction. My only worry is that for a 13-year-old, Colin is pretty savvy when it comes to money,
(Laughter)
so he’ll probably charge me seven years worth of interest.
(Laughter)
Thank you. Goodnight.
(Cheers and applause)