Problem Gambling Awareness Month, What is Problem Gambling

What happens when America's newest addiction epidemic doesn't involve a substance at all? This raw, eye-opening exploration of problem gambling reveals the psychological trap that's capturing millions of Americans through slick marketing, smartphone accessibility, and corporate partnerships with major sports leagues.

Gambling addiction creates a psychological prison far more complex than many realize. By the time financial distress becomes evident—maxed credit cards, payday loans, borrowing from family—the addiction has already established deep roots. The particularly cruel aspect of gambling addiction is how it convinces sufferers that more gambling is the solution to gambling-created problems, perpetuating a cycle that benefits only the house.

The corporate gambling empire's exponential growth should concern us all. Billionaire sports team owners and multinational corporations aren't satisfied with traditional betting—they've created an ecosystem of prop bets, live betting, and player-specific wagers designed to capture new demographics who might not understand traditional sports betting. Their sophisticated marketing portrays gambling as excitement and entertainment while concealing the anxiety, stress, and depression that compulsive gamblers actually experience.

Most revealing is the constant mental preoccupation gambling creates. Long before and after placing actual bets, problem gamblers remain trapped in gambling thoughts—analyzing odds, contemplating future bets, calculating losses, planning how to acquire more gambling money. This mental imprisonment leaves little cognitive space for nurturing relationships or pursuing meaningful goals. At its core, problem gambling isn't about money—it's about escaping feelings of purposelessness and low self-esteem through a "fake world" that promises excitement but delivers only deeper emptiness.

Ready to break free from gambling's grip or help someone who's struggling? Join our Recovery Freedom Circle community on Facebook where we share experiences, inspiration, and support each other in recovery. Remember: your emotional intelligence matters more than your intellectual understanding of addiction, and recovery truly is beautiful when you embrace it fully.

Chapters

• 0:00 Problem Gambling Awareness Month
• 0:54 Recovery Freedom Circle Community
• 2:26 Understanding Problem Gambling's Financial Impact
• 4:27 The Corporate Gambling Empire
• 5:55 The Lie Behind Gambling's Excitement
• 8:26 Constant State of Anxiety
• 10:10 Finding True Purpose Beyond Gambling
• 12:33 Episode Conclusion

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Oh, what is problem gambling? We have now entered into Problem Gambling Awareness Month every March. The problem is right now in America. It is an epidemic.

Speaker 1: 0:15

Welcome again to another episode of the 1% in Recovery podcast, where we encourage you to laugh every day, to work hard, work hard in your recovery, work hard in your recovery, work hard in your relationships, work hard in your job, in your business or in school. Just work and to love unconditionally. Just put more love out there and watch More love return to you. You almost tenfold. Remember, your EQ is your IQ. Recovery is beautiful and you cannot outthink an emotional issue. So join the Facebook group Recovery Freedom Circle. This is a community where everybody gets to participate Me, you, anybody else listening to this podcast. Where everybody gets to participate Me, you, anybody else listening to this podcast. Where we get to talk about recovery, whether we get to talk about the steps, whether we get to talk about goals, dreams, achievements. Anything inspirational could be a quote, motivational Also could be a question, something you're struggling with, something you want to get feedback. Put that in the Recovery Freedom Circle Facebook group. Just join it and watch us grow and become really a community about recovery, a community about living your best life.

Speaker 1: 1:43

Now let's jump in to this week's episode Problem gambling. Now a lot of people want to talk about Problem Gambling Awareness Month because it happens every March. You know, every March has probably some type of mental health issue, whether it could be alcohol, it could be anxiety, it could be a number of things. March is about gambling and because gambling has now become the new shiny toy, the new shiny addiction, the one that a lot of people do not quite truly understand. Compared to anything of a substance, whether it's alcohol or drugs or a pill, gambling is a little bit different and different than sex addiction or sex love addiction or people who go into some type of video game. Now you got to understand, no matter if it's gambling, video games, relationships, sex porn, sex workers, alcohol, drugs, weed, coke, heroin, pills, opiates, all that stuff that's a person just trying to escape. And right now we've got to really try to understand problem gambling.

Speaker 1: 3:00

A lot of times people want to think that they start to really start to look at their gambling once they start getting into some type of financial distress. Uh-oh, the credit cards are maxed out. Uh-oh, it's a payday loan. Uh-oh, I'm borrowing money from mom, dad, sibling friend trying to get an advance from work, all types of things from the bank, and then it becomes okay. What's kind of happening?

Speaker 1: 3:30

And unfortunately, when you really start getting into that financial issues, you are already deep in a hole. You are already struggling that much and then trying to think that gambling is a way to get out of your financial hole. It will only create your financial hole bigger. Stop digging. You cannot gamble your way out. That is why casinos get richer. That is why sportsbooks get richer. That's why there's always a new gambling app or a new way to try to induce you into some form of gambling. That's why there's always a new gambling app or a new way to try to induce you into some form of gambling.

Speaker 1: 4:07

That's why all corporations are now sticking their hands in owners. Think about it Owners that have billions of dollars are trying to encourage all the fans of the NBA, of the NFL, of Major League Sports, major League Baseball, of FIFA, any other horse-racing. If they're so rich and they have so much business, they're only getting into businesses that, for them, are a sure thing that they have enough reserves money to pay out. Even if you win this week or this month, they're going to win in the long run, 500 companies, whether it's the DraftKings, whether it's Flutter, which is FanDuel, whether it's all the different big ones, even in the overseas, in Europe, bet365. We could go on and on.

Speaker 1: 5:07

And now all this stuff with PrizePix, underdog, all these other types, whether we're talking about just betting on games, whether we're talking about totals, whether we're talking about just betting on games, whether we're talking about totals, whether we're talking about prop betting, live betting, whether we're talking about all this intricate ways to gamble, it's just becoming obscene. It truly is obscene to just be betting on every stupidity Unlike to me, kind of like the old school way just bet on the game, maybe bet on a total, but bet on games in totals, not on all this other crap. But now it's becoming because they're just trying to find and grow the demographics and trying to find Some people may not really truly understand teams or the way leagues work. So they want to bet on players, they want to bet in live while they're watching a game and they think that actually they're creating more excitement. That is the lie. You have to truly understand the lie that is being perpetuated by these casino sports books.

Speaker 1: 6:03

When you gamble, you will create more tension, you will create more anguish. In the low occurrence that you do win, then you actually have this fake belief that you actually did something. You didn't do anything, you got lucky, you won. And now you think that you can double whatever your money. If you bet 50, you won 100. If you won 100, you won now 200. If you're at five, you're at 1,000. And then you start thinking in bigger terms. Especially if you go 2-0, 3-0, you start thinking if only I had more money on those games. I knew those were going to be winners. You just keep betting, you will lose. So in reality, a lot of times is truly understanding that problem gambling is before you even start, don't start because the odds are against you.

Speaker 1: 7:03

And the other thing is I didn't even realize until I got into recovery. I gambled for 20 years. I didn't truly understand the extent of my gambling. I thought I was just gambling during the games or the horse race. That is a false. I was a sports better NBA, nfl, major League, baseball, horses those were my bread and butters.

Speaker 1: 7:22

Every now and then went to casinos, but I didn't realize that I was constantly gambling. I was always thinking about the games, thinking about the lines, thinking about the games two weeks from now, thinking about money that I was up or down, or what I needed to kind of protect, and what other money was coming in the business or who else I could get a loan from. I was just constantly in this state of anxiety, this state of stress, this state of depression. I mean, it was just incredible. There was zero, zero peace, fighting, always fighting within myself, always angry. I mean, think about it when you gamble. None of this.

Speaker 1: 7:58

You cannot just gamble one or two. Unless you gamble like one or two games a year, not a week a year, then it becomes an obsession. It's no different than alcohol. You have to be drinking every week. There is something wrong. It is pure poison. Alcohol is poison to your body and gambling is pure poison to your bank account. It will just seek. It's almost like you have a hole in the bucket. It will just constantly be pouring. You can never plug that hole in. There's always going to be a leak. You're always losing water leak. You're always losing water. You're always losing dollars.

Speaker 1: 8:34

And so, especially people my age I'm surprised that the amount of people that are 50 and older. I'm 58 years old. I'm surprised the amount of men over 50 that still play fantasy sports. I mean that's some type of just waste of time, because if you truly want to have better relationships, if you truly want to have more love, more sex, more money, more connection with God, you can't do it if you're spending so much time gambling or worrying about other teams.

Speaker 1: 9:10

Of course I want my alma mater University of Texas to win. Of course I want the Houston Astros, the Rockets or the Texans to win, to win. Of course I want the Houston Astros, the Rockets or the Texans to win, or the U of H Cougars in basketball. Of course there's a certain energy in the city when they win, especially if they win a championship. But I don't want to spend any time worrying about some.

Speaker 1: 9:31

If it's college, some 19, 20, 21-year-old, whether they're going to bring me joy, or some 20 or 30-year-old that actually more is reflection on me. I mean, what type of emotional state am I in that I am giving away all. I'm depending on their winning or losing? They're getting paid. I'm not, and so I should be worried about how I can grow my business, how I can grow my relationships, how I can have better health, and so I think, in this Problem Gambling Awareness Month, I think the number one thing we need to always consider is the amount of time and the amount of escape that we do.

Speaker 1: 10:10

And then, thirdly, look at the money that is leaving your bank account, because problem gambling is not about money, it's about that. You feel lost, that you feel you don't have direction, you don't have purpose. And then, deep down, there is a lower sense of self-esteem, because I didn't realize, when I probably walked into my very first meeting of problem gambling, my self-esteem was probably at a two. I think that almost every compulsive gambler is at a one, two or three, no higher. They are already beat down. By the time they get to a 12-step meeting or they go into therapy or they go to a treatment center, they are already at a severe level. They are already on that back end of the desperation cycle of addiction.

Speaker 1: 10:53

And even if you're just kind of in the beginning, you're kind of playing around trying to figure out things stop. And there's no such thing, it's complete BS. All those corporate liabilities where corporations and sports books tried to just say well, you just got to take a break. Bullshit, you need to stop. It's not about setting more limits. Instead of betting $500, you're only going to bet $100. No, you obviously already lost enough.

Speaker 1: 11:21

Gambling. Any extra is just going to make your debts bigger. It's not about handing money over to some other person, whether it's a spouse, a family member, a friend. It's not about that. It's really about looking at why do you have this incessant need to gamble, that you have to escape life, because gambling is a fake world. It is a dream world, no different than the allure of drugs, the allure of alcohol. It is fake and truly.

Speaker 1: 11:55

If you want to live your best life which all of us do, and I want each and every one of you to live your best life think about how to move forward. I have a lot of podcasts, I have a lot of videos. I try to promote recovery. I try to promote looking at emotional issues, spiritual issues, so we can move forward. So during this problem gambling month, I want to be able to have total health, real health, inside, outside, in your bank account. Just smile and laugh Like I say man, you're not laughing every day, you're not living With that. We're going to end and conclude this episode of the 1% in recovery.