It's not about the money....

 

The experts tell us that the majority of compulsive gamblers are in the lower income bracket.

 I wonder if that’s really true.

 I mean….I can see the logic.

 You have a hard working person…struggling to make ends meet…and one day, for whatever reason, they put a few bucks in a machine and hit.

Feels great.

Wonderful.

Now they can splurge…or maybe just pay a few bills.

 Time passes….and they are struggling to make ends meet….and they remember…how EASY it was….

And how LUCKY they are. 

SOMEBODY has got to win it….may as well be me!

 I can easily see how that could happen.

 But most of the people that I know…..didn’t start out gambling in order to get money.

 I know that the (gambler’s anonymous) yellow combo book says that…compulsive gamblers dream of the extravagant things they can do with their winnings….and we have the desire for ‘easy’ money.

 But don’t ‘NORMAL’ people sometimes day dream about what they’d do with the lottery?

I don’t know that that’s a trait that’s not common among MOST people….not just ‘us’.

 Often times….once I was out of control….my gambling was about money..in that I was chasing losses.

 But…I just wanted my OWN money back…I didn’t really want or need a big win…

 I can remember sometimes getting ticked off….if I’d have quite a bit of money…I’d go to the casino planning to spend the day…and thirty minutes later it was all gone.

 I’d be frustrated…I mean…”it won’t even let me PLAY for a while”.

 And sometimes

 I’d go….planning to spend the day…and I would hit a jackpot within the first few minutes.

 YES!!!!

 Now I can PLAY.

 See….if I was looking to get MONEY…then …on the occasions that I walked in and played $5 and won $500…I would go HOME.

 I didn’t really want to win….I wanted to PLAY.

 If I could play all day and leave with what I walked in with…or even if I was down $50…that was a GOOD day.

 It wasn’t about winning money for me.

 I just wanted to PLAY.

 Press the button press the button press the button.

 It wasn’t about money at all.

 Eventually….money was a problem for me.

 A BIG problem.

 I had an expensive ‘habit’.

 But even then…I didn’t GAMBLE for money.

 Sometimes I’d leave with money….sometimes I’d have several hundred or even several thousand dollars in my purse.

 Cash.

 But if I had to stop at the store to pick up a few things, I would charge it on a credit card.

 I mean…that CASH was my GAMBLING money!!!

 So I would WITHDRAW money to gamble with

Or CHARGE money to gamble with…

 But I never did replace any of that money…

 My ‘winnings’ were for me to PLAY with.

 Any money that I could get my hands on was for me to PLAY with.

 Because….

 It wasn’t about the money at all.