The story of George
Gambling, its legend, what is going on in the gamblers’ mind, what makes them act the way they do and the gamblers’ feelings in the room…they all challenge me to get to know their life stories that I would like to share with you, the readers.
The stories in the gambling room are sometimes magic, other times touching, interesting and puzzling alike.
I simply walked into a mall gambling room for the reason to find out one of these stories, determined to subtly reach the mind of the players. The ambience is calm, peaceful, but adrenalin is in the air…the waiting!
I sat down next to a lady over 40, who is confidently looking at the slot machine in front of her. It is fantastic how her facial expression changes from one second to the other. From joy to sadness, fear, surprise… it is a true exercise for my training in human behavior psychology, to witness so many emotions in a real time.
Someone asked me once how do I separate the emotions and states of the people, their feelings in a certain situation. Which ones are good and bad? I gave a simple answer, they are just emotions. The one making the difference is the person going through them. And my theory was getting stronger only by me looking around. The emotions of the players’ faces are mixed and every one deals with them differently.
My eyes stopped on a young man going through a bliss. That moment, his eyes were wide open, was laughing loudly and bent to the person next to him to whisper something. I got closer to him, so I can talk to him. He slowly lit a cigarette and says that he is ready to tell me his story. His name is George. And my curiosity of a psychologist is intertwining with other’s, I want to hear his story.
I know him, he is registered with the ‚Responsible gaming’ program that I supervise and his experience there has been a very good one.
He sits next to me and starts his story in a flat voice, proud of him and his achievements.
How about a coffee? He likes the idea. While smelling the coffee steaming out of our cups, I started living George’s story, along with you.
‚I can say that here, in the gaming room, I have lived the most beautiful and also the ugliest moments in my life. Everything comes down to you to know when to stop. Nothing compares to my feelings here, it is like a real flood of happiness.
Here, I forget all my darkest days in my past. I have learned when to stop, to control the game and not let myself be controlled by it- and this is how I can have fun. Sometimes I bring my wife along and it is a pleasure, we laugh together, laugh at the things around us, we lose, we win.
I have also learnt how much to spend. It is very simple. Whenever I am going to the movies, I only have RON200. This is how much I have in my pocket, this is how much I play. The same here – I am coming with a certain amount of money, which I spend and nothing more.’
This is exactly the secret and what George learnt during the therapy classes. The urge is important to be controlled. It feels like we want to do something, we are fully aware that we are not doing something good but we are doing it anyway. This is when we should postpone it as much as possible. The psychological impact is major. After a while, the urge is fainting more and more.
‚As a child, I was given a healthy but rigid education. My parents were churchgoers and raised four children. We all had precise rules to follow, my teenage years were filled with restraints, interdictions, needs. My relationship with the money was quite special, as I had none. I wished I could have bought a lot of things, to travel all over. My father was working hard, so we had a decent life. I had hardly anyone to talk to, was daydreaming and imagining I had money, that I could do whatever I wanted to. I got employed in public administration and started making money, my money. I would have liked to have a stereo player and a second-hand car bought with my money. I enrolled in a vocational school, where I met my first girlfriend whom I fell in love with and got married.
So, I was having a full life, with school, job and my girlfriend whom I was visiting every week-end. I was living to the fullest, my life was wonderful and I was happy…
I decided to get married, told my family about it, everyone was thrilled about my future life. I started saving for my dream wedding.
I made friends in school, at my job, started hanging out with them. I really liked doing sports and how my friends were looking like – they were going to fitness – so I started going there, too.
One afternoon, I was shooting the breeze with a friend outside the fitness center and my eyes fell on a gambling room entrance. Curiosity pushed me to walk in. The chance of winning more money was right there, it could have helped me fulfill my dreams. I made a beeline to one of the machines.’
This is the very first thought of the people coming into a gambling room – I am going to win more money and very quickly. This is the step taking you to the compulsive gambling. Waiting for better winnings is putting you on a loop – the more money a player loses, the higher the urge to play so that he gets his money back. This is the vicious circle. If you stay out of it, gambling remains a pleasure. This is how you should see it, an amusement, something enjoyable. Since that day, I have started going to the gambling, as it was my regular job. Shortly after that, I became a compulsive player and spent all the money I had saved for the wedding.
Many times I would come back home crying and my parents were scolding me, yelling at me, calling me names, which made me feel bad about myself and pushed me to go back to my slot machine, which was pleasing me for a short period of time…’
This is the moment when the family should have handled George better. It would have been important to find understanding and acceptance. These feelings would have been wiped out the need to go back to gambling.
‚I was not able to give any explanation, the game was stronger, I was playing on, lying my girlfriend, lying everyone.
I remember going with my parents and future wife to choose the wedding location, planning everything, choosing the furniture for our house… I did not have the guts to tell them that the money was no longer there. When I had to make the first payment, there was nothing else to do and I fabricated a story that not even a 10-year old child would have believed it. My girlfriend got mad, parents reproached me what I did.
I begged my parents to help me pay for everything I had ordered for the wedding. Luckily, they did and I had the wedding I wanted. Now, I was having a wife and many future plans. But I did not, again, have the courage to tell my parents that I was visiting the gambling rooms rather often.
One year after my wedding, we had a daughter, Iulia, the most cherished treasure in my life. The first years of marriage and gambling had been left somewhere far away. I kept myself away from the gambling machines but the idea that I might be a social player was germinating in my mind. I started playing a little, during certain times, but I felt that some unseen forces were drawing me into the gambling room…..
One day, my uncle and his wife visited me. We all went out and got to a gambling room. They saw me there how I had lost everything, to the last coin. A heated discussion began, they could not believe their eyes….
Of course I lied to my wife and I assured her that it had been the first time when I was doing it and that would never happen again. Unfortunately, I began gambling secretly and I was losing more and more money…there was a first loan, then the second to pay the first, a third – eventually, I lost their count. My life was of a compulsive player’s, I was only living to gamble. Everything was passing by me, could not see my daughter grow up, and the friends I had were just like me.
The only constant in my life was my employment place. In time, I was getting late to work, I was not going straight home but I had to spend some hours in the gambling room, and always finding excuses every time. That I had run into an old friend, or the traffic…
At home, I was not there at all. I was going in the living room first thing, watching TV and even falling asleep there. My wife was sleeping alone in our bedroom. My daughter was growing up without me – I did not spend time with her, help her with homework, eat with them like in a family. I was constantly thinking about gambling. I was losing more and more money, staying away from home longer and longer. My wife was looking for me in the gambling rooms to drag me home where we were fighting. The issue was not to hide what I was doing, but she was asking me to stop, to think of our child and marriage. She was seriously thinking to leave me.
She was desperate and so was I. I could not shut my eyes at night because of my debts and thought of the machines as my only friends.
The day I felt I was going down in the precipice, I thought to make a loan to cover all my debts and have some extra to play for some time. But the night that followed, I had an attack and was repeating a number over and over again. My wife called the ambulance. While in the hospital vehicle, my wife found the loan papers in my pocket. She then realized that I was going from bad to worse, that I was borrowing money from the banks and from other people. That was the last straw for her and she filed for divorce.
I moved back to my parents’ house… I lost everything because of me – wife, daughter, house, dignity. I felt ashamed of myself, was crying every day, begging my 70-year old father to help me find a solution. He tried to make a loan from the bank but he would not get a favorable answer, due to his age. One of the banks looked though at this application and agreed to give him the money, only that he had to return it in a short period of time. Thus, I was able to pay all my debts, thanks to my parents.
My wife came back to me, went for professional help. After a while, everything seemed going well. I had gained confidence in me, managing the family’s money, stopped going to the psychologist as I thought them useless.
Shortly, I started playing again. My father’s sacrifice and the understanding of my wife meant nothing for me. One day, after a fight with my wife, I took money from the house and went straight to my machine, thinking to revenge back on my wife as she was to blame for my problem. That was the first time when I thought I did have a problem.
While I was feeding the machine, I saw my daughter walk in with her boyfriend. She started crying and looked at me disgusted. That was the ugliest day in my life. That was the moment I decided to do something. That I had to save myself, one way or the other. I left the gambling room holding hands with my daughter and thinking that she should be proud of me.
The next day, while I was searching on the internet, I ran into a program called ‚Responsible gambling’, devised for people like me. I called and… that phone call saved me. The voice at the other end was warm and soft, talked for 40 minutes and scheduled for a first meeting. The psychologists supervising the program put me in a group with people sharing the same problem.
I was so enthusiastic about it, I was craving for the group meetings and the 12-step therapy helped me like I had never thought before.
I found out that the resources to help me go farther were in me, but I had not known that. Thus, it was my wife, daughter, parents, their love, my self-esteem, my will to change – there were my resources. During therapy, I felt like in a family. After 4 months, I could taste a new life, I saw I was responsible for what I was doing, proud about that.
I learnt how to handle my problem during the therapy sessions and I understood that anyone could have that. It is important to follow certain rules so that I can control a compulsive behavior. I learnt that it is essential to be honest to myself, open-minded and fair.
There are still many flaws I need to correct, but I feel I am going on the right path. The gambling room is a place where I have fun, it is not the pitch dark place where I had once reached to.
I am grateful to ‚Responsible gambling’ program and to the people starting it, Romanian Bookmakers and Romslot, for my quiet life I am living now. I went to the group therapy with the psychologists from Romanian Bookmakers, and they had the patience and ability to listen to me, to help me, to understand what is important for me. And I can say, honest to my heart, that the psychologist who picked up the phone the first time I called started helping me back then, during those 40 minutes. That conversation was decisive for me.
I would advise anyone who think having a problem to trust this program very confidently.’
He gives me a broad smile. It is a honest, beautiful smile, the smile of a man who went through hell and knows how to appreciate the true values in life.
I am leaving George to have fun, turn the voice recorder off and rush to write his story.
I am already thinking what the next story will tell you… until next time, live free!
