Isabel Byon: 0:00

The New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports, or OASAS, provides this podcast as a public service.

Jerry Gretzinger: 0:21

Once again everybody. Jerry Gretzinger, your host for Addiction: The Next Step and you know that's the podcast being brought to you by the New York State Offices of Addiction Services and Supports. And today, you know, if you're watching the podcast you can tell we're not in our usual studio, we're actually out on location and we are talking about something that's really important, something we're doing a very big campaign about right now, and that's problem gambling. And we are doing quite a bit about it because, as you know, there are so many different avenues for gambling available in New York State and around the world today. We want to make sure that we are providing the services and the avenues to get those to people, certainly throughout the state of New York, and I've got a couple of guests here today who are going to talk to us about what's going on and a really interesting and new opportunity for people that they can find through our website.

Jerry Gretzinger: 1:08

We'll get to that in a minute, but our guests are Rebecca Cooper she's with from us here at New York State OASAS. She's the Bureau Director for Problem Gambling and also Jim Huh, sitting immediately to my left, the Senior Vice President of Sales and Customer Success at GamFin, and that's what we're going to talk about today, right, Jim? Yes, thanks for having us All, right, thank you. Thank you for sitting in with us today, and so let me start first. I talked about us being on location and, Rebecca, I'm going to start with you. We talk about the importance of having the conversation about problem gambling, and that's what's happening right here, where we are today. Let's tell the people who are listening or watching what's going on.

Rebecca Cooper: 1:51

Yeah, so we are here kicking off the 30th anniversary of the New York Council on Problem Gambling, and their annual conference has started this afternoon and we'll be here for the next two and a half days, and it's a great way to bring together professionals and those with lived experience and those that want to learn more, to be able to advance the supports and services that we have for those affected by gambling harms in New York.

Jerry Gretzinger: 2:08

Yeah, so 30 years. And I think sometimes people might think to themselves oh wow, 30 years, that's not very long. But then some people would say oh wow, they've been doing this for 30 years. So which of those camps are you in?

Rebecca Cooper: 2:19

I'm in. I've been doing it for 30 years, so it's been nice to see it evolve though.

Jerry Gretzinger: 2:25

Yeah, and you talk about evolving, and that kind of brings us to some of what we'll talk about in this episode. We have a major campaign that is out there across the state of New York and it's Take a Pause. We want people to be encouraged to take a pause, take a step back if they're getting caught up in mobile sports wagering or any other kind of wagering, so that they can think about how much they're spending, how much time they're putting into it, and we want them to go to our website and seek out services and supports that are available. And one of those things that's new this year, in 2025, is what Jim is here to talk about, and that's a partnership we have with GamFin. So, Jim, I'm going to go right to you now and say people are here at GamFin. What's GamFin? Tell us what is GamFin.

Jim Huh: 3:07

So we provide financial counseling for people experiencing harm from gambling behavior. It could be the people that are around you or the person doing the gambling. It is a free service that's available to anyone in New York State that is experiencing any kind of harm from gambling behavior, and it's thanks to Rebecca and her team that we are able to offer this free of charge to the end client.

Jerry Gretzinger: 3:28

Okay, so I want you to walk somebody through this, all right. So we say, hey, this is free, it's you know, you can have some consultation with people. Someone either sees our ad or is on our website and sees this thing about gamfin and says, oh, okay, I can, I can get somebody to offer me a little bit of support and advice. Walk them through the process, right, so they click on the link and it takes them to it and where do they go next?

Jim Huh: 3:48

They come to our website and basically it'll say book a session. They'll talk a little bit about what we do and then they will see bios of all our financial counselors and they're all professionals. They're all accredited. We don't sell anything, so they're not pushed to sell you an insurance policy or tell you that you have to refinance your debt or anything like that. It is strictly a neutral, objective, holistic approach to manage your finances. To get a snapshot of where you are right now and where you want to be.

Jim Huh: 4:13

Most of the people that we see, if you were on a financial wellness scale, are, from you know, on a zero to 10, they're a zero or a one. We're trying to get them to a two or a three. We're not doing investment advice. We're not doing any type of retirement planning. This is about people that are really struggling and in a crisis moment and we want to give them a source to go and have a conversation about how do I get out of this. Once they take a look at our financial counselors and we have everybody on the basic level or the entry level as an accredited financial counselor. Then we have CFPs and we have several people with PhDs that are providing financial counseling free of charge to the end client.

Jim Huh: 4:53

So once they've identified a person, a financial counselor, that they can relate to, they simply click on book a time and they'll pull up a schedule and they just click it and then it takes place over Zoom. They get all the confirmations. If they are in therapy, we can work with them and their therapist. We are HIPAA compliant across all our platforms, so we're very cognizant of the safety of personal information and it's a really simple process. And then they have multiple sessions to work on what's going on in their financial world.

Jerry Gretzinger: 5:19

And so I think you mentioned this when you first started describing the service available. This can be for someone who is actively involved in gambling. It could be for somebody who maybe lives with someone or is aware of someone who may have this sort of situation to talk with them about. How can I help? How can I make a difference?

Jim Huh: 5:39

Well, if it's the person that is engaging in the behavior, it may be that they want to reduce it. We look at it as gambling should be entertainment. We're not pro or against it. It's about entertainment and if you wouldn't spend $1,000 on dinner, you probably shouldn't spend $1,000 on gambling, and that's the reality of it. So it can be that we can put together a budget and put it in perspective and teach you about the relationship with the money that you have, instead of just saying I'm placing a wager. For those affected. We get a lot of family members that call in and say you know, for example and more common situation that you might think is somebody calls and says I just found out my house is for sale.

Jerry Gretzinger: 6:17

Oh wow.

Jim Huh: 6:18

Or that I was denied credit for my car because I didn't know we had all these gambling debts.

Jerry Gretzinger: 6:22

So these are stories you actually hear.

Jim Huh: 6:24

These are things that we hear every day, and what we tell them is we can teach you how to put in safety guardrails, money guardrails to protect yourself from the person who may be engaged in gambling. We can also show you how to take over control of those finances so you can reduce that harm. Moving forward, and then also talked about how do you have a conversation with somebody in this situation. Now, I have lived experience. I am somebody in recovery from a gambling problem, so I know firsthand what somebody is capable of doing while actively engaged in gambling behavior.

Jerry Gretzinger: 6:58

So you yourself were involved in this and went through some process yourself, I'm sure.

Jim Huh: 7:04

Yes.

Jerry Gretzinger: 7:07

Was that once GAMFIN was already a thing, or did that help kind of grow this into what it is today?

Jim Huh: 7:14

I haven't gambled in a while. This was long before I encountered Alex, who was my CEO and sitting in the room with us. But no, this is something I, as we say in GA I have 21, not yet 22 years of recovery.

Jerry Gretzinger: 7:30

Good for you. That's terrific and hopefully you know that's a message that people will hear as well, that this can be done. Because I think sometimes you know if someone's right in the thick of it, right, and they're like I don't know what I would do, I don't know what the way out is, and certainly we want to let them know, the first thing you can do is have a conversation, right, and you said something interesting, Jim. You said you know we're not going to say right away you need to stop, you need to stop. It's let's talk about what situation you're in. It might be how to, like you said, put like spending guard rails in place. And, Rebecca, let me ask you to just chime in here now too. That is something that we're always trying to encourage as well. You know we're not coming out saying don't do it, don't do it, but we want people to do it appropriately.

Rebecca Cooper: 8:11

Right, yeah, for sure. And again, you know the services we provide are on a continuum, and you know harm reduction to treatment services and recovery services, and so you know we want to have safeguards in place for people that are, you know, maybe moving towards potentially having a problem or having some financial difficulties, to those that are currently having a problem, that are affected by financial harm. So harm so that you know they have access to this service. And one of the other things that was important to us and in providing this service is that anybody that's affected by gambling harms can participate in the service for free. They don't have to be involved in treatment, they don't have to be in recovery, right. So we wanted this to be a preventative, a harm reduction strategy and also something that would help people get into their own recovery.

Jerry Gretzinger: 9:01

And I think important for people to realize too. I mean no one, no one's going to be on the other side of this line saying shame on you, you shouldn't do this.

Jerry Gretzinger: 9:10

Yeah, and mean that's, that's certainly not.

Rebecca Cooper: 9:10

And that's a philosophy you know, I think that we have in providing addiction services in general. Like this is about the person that is affected by gambling or substances and we're here to help, and our community-based services are here to walk the walk with them and give them whatever support they need. And we know one of the uniquenesses of someone that has a gambling challenge is the financial destruction that it can cause and how quickly that can happen. And Jim shared some stories and when I worked in a clinic, we saw the same thing right, the financial devastation and the surprise right, because it's easy to hide gambling debt.

Jerry Gretzinger: 9:46

It's harder to see.

Rebecca Cooper: 9:48

It's not as visible. You know people can take out credit cards in their spouse's name and open a post office box, and you know there's multiple things that can happen, and so that financial devastation really is key to helping anyone.

Jerry Gretzinger: 10:02

Yeah, you know and as you talk about that, I recall one of the podcast episodes we'd done previously and maybe we can include a link to that in the notes for this episode about a gentleman who had a real significant issue with gambling himself and he told his whole story about you know how much trouble he got into it.

Jerry Gretzinger: 10:20

But, like you're saying, Jim, he was able to find a way through it and today has been X number of years I don't recall the number right now but without gambling and he's doing well and his wife, who when she found out was displeased, now is his biggest cheerleader because he's done so well afterwards. So, you know, in a troubling level at this point to be able to tell a similar story someday and this is one of the ways that we can help them get there right. We have the supports, the links available on our website and, Jim, I'm going to get back to you one more time. We do this. You know, all this information, the consultation, the sessions at no cost to the New Yorker who comes on and says, yeah, I want to see if this can help me.

Jim Huh: 11:03

Yes, that's correct, because we know that most of them are feeling anxious about their finances. They may be financially devastated and they could not afford to pay for services, whether it's to go to therapy with a clinician or to get financial counseling. So we need to make this service available and what we recognize and Rebecca and her team. Again, they had the foresight to say okay.

Jim Huh: 11:24

When people call in for help, they're typically calling about financial issues. They're not calling to say I have a gambling problem and I want to see a therapist. They say I'm in credit card debt, I owe money all over the place, I need help with my finances. So what we're trying to do now is respond to what they're asking for instead of telling them okay, you called me about your finances, I'm going to tell you to go to treatment. So there's a disconnect there and I think we lost some people. So now we're trying to move up and be able to connect people and say okay, we can help you with that question that you may have about your finances. Right now, we can help you put together a plan, moving forward. Meantime. We're also, in most cases, we are encouraging people to get treatment, to get support services, so they can really move forward in their recovery journey or reduce the harm.

Rebecca Cooper: 12:16

Yeah, and I think that also speaks well. You know at OASAS where we really have that continuum of care and you know that we want to be person-centered and meet people where they're at, and that is one of the beauties of offering GamFin, regardless of whether or not they're involved in any of our other services, and we've trained all the GamFin staff on the other services available in New York State. So if at some point in time during the financial process and counseling someone's like I think I might need some additional support, I think I might want to talk about some recovery options or going into treatment, and they are well equipped to refer them to the Hope Line or to a problem gambling resource center in their community to really help them connect to additional types of care, whether it's treatment, recovery, whatever supports that they need.

Jerry Gretzinger: 12:59

Right, because we see that in a lot of different areas too. Right where someone comes in for X and then, as they meet with someone, they're like, oh well, I've got Y and Z also that I could maybe help.

Rebecca Cooper: 13:07

Yeah, and I think, if you think about it in anyone's lives, when you're worried about money, it's really hard to really focus on anything else, right? If you're worried about how you're going to pay your rent or put food on the table, you know those are basic needs and again, we do know financial crisis is very common for those that are affected by gambling harms.

Jerry Gretzinger: 13:28

All right. So, as people are out there either watching or listening, I'm going to try to sum it up here. If you find you're in a situation, you know where your finances are up in the air, you're not sure what's going on and maybe you're mobile sports wagering, otherwise gambling you said you need to. They don't always have a plan. They need a plan. So what we're doing right now with GamFin, this is like your first step towards finding that plan, figuring out that plan. So we hope that you'll go to the website oasas. ny. gov. You can go to the problem gambling pages. It's all there. You can take a survey. It'll tell you where your problem gambling may be, if it is problematic, if it's not, and then, of course, you'll have the direct link to GamFin and the plan can get started if you do indeed need one. Guys, thank you so much, Jim Rebecca, for sitting down with us to talk about this today. I uh, hopefully we've informed some people about what we're doing and how we're going to help them.

Rebecca Cooper: 14:18

Thanks for having us.

Jerry Gretzinger: 14:19

Thanks All right, all right. So I already gave you the ad dress, oasas. ny. gov. I just gave it to you a second time. See how I snuck that in there. Also, we have a HOPEline. You can reach out to 877-8-HOPE-NY. 877-8-HOPE-NY, whether you want to go online or on the phone. Either way, we're there to help every step of the way. Jerry Gretzinger, for Addiction: The Next Step. Until next time, be well.