First Bet, Last Bet, New Life and How to be with Gamblers Trying to Quit

A five-dollar wager in middle school. A winning ticket decades later that still didn’t fix the ache. We follow a gambler’s arc from the 1978 Cotton Bowl to a final MLB bet and the moment everything shifted—not with a jackpot, but with humility, faith, and work. Along the way, we unpack the psychology that locks people into chasing the first high, why memory and emotion fuse so tightly around that “big win,” and how the brain’s love of uncertainty can hijack a life.

We get honest about what actually helps at the start. Not lectures. Not quick fixes. Presence. Someone who will sit with you in the mess long enough for shame to soften, so action can begin. From there, we dig into practical tools: natural dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin from movement, rest, connection, and service; a simple daily scorecard, Recovery Growth Scorecard, that turns hope into measurable progress; and character-based steps that rebuild trust with yourself and others. If you’ve tried to explain your behavior to family and been met with anger, judgement or disbelief, you’ll recognize the relief of being understood without excuses.

Then we torch the “win it back” story with numbers. Lottery odds sit at 1 in 292 million while lightning odds tower above them. Waiting for a financial miracle is a stall, not a plan. The exit ramp is craft over chance—using your ideas to create income, using your heart to build love, and using routine to create peace. We also share a spiritual moment in Fatima that opened the door to asking for help back home, and how faith and effort can work together no matter your belief system.

If you’re perched on the edge of change, this conversation offers clarity and a starting line: track one small habit, call one safe person, and let compounding beat craving. Subscribe for more recovery stories and tools, share this with someone who needs a nudge, and leave a review to help others find their way here.

Chapters

• 0:01 Opening Prompts And Teaser
• 0:10 Laugh, Work, And Love In Recovery
• 0:38 Scorecard And Natural Dopamine
• 1:23 First Bet: 1978 Cotton Bowl
• 3:04 The Last Bet And A Win That Didn’t Heal
• 4:27 Spiritual Turning Point In Portugal
• 5:04 Beginning A 25-Year Recovery
• 5:38 What Newcomers Need First
• 7:18 The Myth Of Winning It Back
• 9:10 Lightning vs Powerball Odds
• 11:28 Choose Ideas, Love, And Freedom
• 12:15 Closing Message

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

How did it all start? What was that first bet? What was that last bet? Where do we go? Welcome again to another episode of the 1% in recovery podcast, where we encourage you to laugh every day. Work hard, work hard in recovery, work hard in your relationships, work hard in your job, business, school, just work. And to love unconditionally. Put much more love out there in the world and watch much more love return. Remember, recovery is beautiful. Your EQ is your IQ, and you cannot outthink an emotional issue. Now, what we are encouraging people to do is to go to the website lifeiswonderful. Download the recovery freedom, recovery growth scorecard. That is a scorecard where you're able to start doing daily activities because we all want to start our recovery on our own. I get it. Get that natural dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, oxytocin so you can start healing, detoxing now. Again, it's in the show notes. Life is wonderful. Now let's get into this week's episode, where we're talking about a little bit of history, Hugo history, as well as your own situation where you sit now on your gambling recovery journey, whether you're about to begin or where wherever you are in it. I placed my first bet back in 1978. I was 12 years old, bet on the cotton bowl. Notre Dame was playing UT. UT was a number one team with Earl Campbell, and I knew that the Notre Dame defense with Ross Browner was gonna win. I was in the eighth grade, I bet my CCE instructor, that is a continuing Catholic instructor when you're going to public school, and your parents want you to get a little more Catholicism. So he was a person that was in the seminary, studying to become a priest. He wasn't a priest yet. But almost. He thought that UT was going to win. But back then, you know, a lot of the some of the other kids, you know, eighth grade, 13 years old, 12 years old, they're betting quarters, most 50 cents. I bet five dollars. Ended up winning. Guy never paid me. Yeah, that vow of poverty. He took he took that one for the rest of the semester from January 1st to the end of May. Made my last bet April 13th, 2000. Now we're moving on to football. So I went from baseball. I went from college football to Major League Baseball as my last bet. Now, in between all that, I did the NFL, the NBA, horse racing, roulette, all kinds of forms of gambling. But my last bet was betting on the Detroit Tigers. Hideo Nomo was pitching. I obviously start and state my pitchers when I bet on them. They beat the Seattle Mariners two to nothing. Noah did not get the wing. We pitched six scoreless innings. That is how a 20-plus year gambling career starts and ends. And yes, you do remember your first bet. More than likely, because you won, you remember whatever it was, you won. No different than your first kiss. Now, my first kiss, I was eight years old, and there was a 12-year-old girl named Mary. We don't need to get into all that right now. But you do remember your first kiss. You do remember your first bet. It is very, very real. I actually happen to remember my last bet. I knew what was going on. And then I after that, uh I went off to Portugal. And if you want to know more about that story, we'll do that on another podcast. But it is on my YouTube channel where I talk about getting a spiritual experience in Fatima, Portugal, where I finally started to ask, not only ask for help, ask God, come back to the States and actually work with people to give me help. But those are important. You gotta have faith and you have to do the work. So that is how everything kind of started and ended. But then began an over 25-year recovery journey, understanding gambling, understanding alcohol, understanding depression, anxiety, being bullied, early sexual experiences, family bankruptcy, all these topics that I just had to deal with emotionally. Now you're asking, what does that have to do with me? Exactly. What does this all have to do with you? I like to always let people know that I understand the feelings, the thoughts, the what is next type of moments. Because when you here's the thing when you're trying to stop an addiction, especially gambling, you don't really really know where to turn because you feel like no one's going to trust you, understand you. And I know a lot of people, especially people out either in 12-step rooms, out here in social media, whatever your social app is, they always have a lot of suggestions on what you need to do. I always like to say the first thing a person needs, they don't need any advice, they don't need any solutions. Not at the very beginning. They need to know that someone is there that's willing to sit with them. Because ultimately, we just need a friend. We need someone to listen to. We need someone to truly understand and also say that it's okay. It will get better. This too shall pass. And that's what I want to tell anybody that's about to start this gambling recovery journey, or you've just started, or within your first couple years, even until you truly even work the old steps, if you try to work my new revamped steps, understanding your own character what type of character change you need, that in the beginning, the first thing you just want someone to just be able to understand. Because we've tried to tell our family or our close friends, and it's usually confronted or hit with a lot of why couldn't you just stop? What is wrong with you? I can't believe you lost that much money. And it's always some type of judgment, it's some type of accusation. And I get it, you know, they're gonna, especially their family or your spouse, there's they're gonna be hurt, they're gonna be angry, they're gonna be rageful, they're gonna be shocked, confused, all of that. See, when you go to at least you go to uh 12-step meetings, everyone else has been there. They understand the depths of the I don't know, the the I would say that almost the depths of misery, because we have compulsive gamblers have the ability to continually not only lose, but lose more. And the sad part is even when we're down big, and even when we're starting our recovery journey, we go back because we think that's the only way out back out. I've gotta gamble again to win back at least some of the money that I've lost. And unfortunately, because the odds are so far against you, you're never, never gonna win. I'll give you an example. So back here on Christmas Eve, a woman in Arkansas won$1.8 billion on the Powerball. That's a lot, a lot of money. And I would like a lot of the gamblers say, even if you don't play, you can't win. But guess what? Everybody loses. One person. That's more than uh 99% of the people losing. Let's look at some statistics. You are more apt to be hit by lightning. Let's look at some statistics. So the person who won the Powerball, it was a one in 292 million dollars million odds. One in 292 million. For you to be hit by lightning in a given year, just one year, is one point two million. So right there, significant. And the chances of you getting hit in your lifetime, and we're talking about an 80-year lifetime, that is one in 15,300 people. So you are gonna be hit by lightning multiple times before you ever win the Powerball. So you're never gonna win back your money. You're never gonna win the lotto. You're not gonna get out of it by having some type of financial big win. And I don't know if you're like me, but I really do not want to get hit by lightning to try to prove a point to say if I get hit by lightning four times, can I win the lotto? And still the odds. Yeah, you're not even catching up to the odds, even being hit by lightning uh four times. A lot of times the the old statistic was you got to be hit by lightning at least seven times. But even then, uh I don't want any of that. I don't want to get hit by lightning, and the odds of winning the Powerball are so minuscule that it's not even worth trying to do it. You're better off you can make here's the things, you can make millions of dollars with your own ideas. We each are so smart, we each all have the capability to make money. We all have the capability to fall in love. That's why I tell people, man, there's always other men and women out there to love. There's always ideas or businesses to work in to make money. That will never cease in this world. There's always so many capabilities. You're talking about billions of people, you're talking about trillions of dollars. It's all a question of just figuring out what you and I need to do to get the love and the money, and essentially to have the peace and the freedom. With that, we are going to conclude this episode of the 1% in recovery podcast.