I sat at a Gamblers nonymous
meetings for eleven years and said this, and I thought I believed it, but all of a sudden I found myself back in the same mess I had been in so many years ago.

I found myself at a Gamblers
Anonymous meeting on January 2, 1990. I instantly knew that I was in the right place. I got a sponsor and he told me, “Just do two things, don’t lie and don’t gamble.” I did exactly as I was told and my life started to get better. I paid off all of my debts and went back to university. I
married a girl named Mandy and we bought a house together. I started a career in Real Estate and things were going great. We had two beautiful children and
we had everything that a family can ask for. I didn’t gamble for 11 years. I went to GA meetings regularly and made many really great friends in the program. I
started a new career in office
furniture and eventually opened up my own company. We were always just making ends meet financially, but overall everything
was fine. I wish I could say that’s the end of the story, but
unfortunately it is not.

I stopped going to my GA meetings regularly,

was hanging out with people who bought stocks, and eventually in November 2001, I started playing the stock market.

I tried to lie to myself and say
that I wasn’t gambling. I even
went to GA meetings and said,
“I play the stock market, but I
haven’t gambled in over 11 years.” Eventually I couldn’t face my friends in the meeting anymore and I stopped going to GA altogether. I started playing a lot of options on the market and I made some big gains, but mostly I was losing. I took on a business partner in the summer of 2003, and luckily he would manage the books and did not let me take the business down. He often talked to me about stopping to play the
market, and I would just appease
him and say, “I will soon.”
Business was getting a little
better and we had opened up a
store in Detroit, and I would
make regular trips there. I was

beat those guys and was determined that one day I would try.

In July 2004, on the way to a hotel in Detroit, I saw a billboard for a casino, and if they had Hold-em Poker, I would go to the casino. Sure enough they did, and for the next twenty minutes as I drove to the casino, I began to have a conversation with myself, “Do you realize what you are doing? - Yes - yes you realize that you can ruin your whole life?” - and so on the onversation in my head went. I got to the casino around 9pm that night, and I left around 4 am up
$100. Naturally I didn’t mention this trip to my wife.
I didn’t go back to the casino for a few months and eventually I
started betting on sports. I first
started by playing Pro-Line,
because it was easy to do, and I
could do it legally, and no one
could find out. I got frustrated
by the crazy odds, and the fact
that I had to bet on at least three
items, so I made a call to a friend
who gambled, and I found myself a new bookie. I gambled
aggressively for the next three
months and did a lot of financial
damage and in February 2005, I went to my brother-in-law for a bailout. He lent me the money
but made me promise to stop
gambling. I had the courage to
tell my wife about my gambling, and I was able to stop for a while. She was very upset about the continued on page 4