When Gambling Becomes Obsessive

For a man who hasn't bet a nickel since 1989, Bruce Roberts spends a lot of time in casinos. He's rarely there alone, however. He usually has an escort walk him through--the better to ensure that he doesn't succumb to the sweet swish of the cards or the signature rattle of the dice. A onetime compulsive gambler, Roberts, 62, weathered his years of wagering better than many. He never lost his wife or his home--although he has refinanced the house nine times. "Cards and Vegas were the two biggest things in my life," he says. "I'm a helluva poker player, but I have one serious flaw: I can't get my ass off the chair."

When Roberts visits a casino these days, it's as executive director of the California Council on Problem Gambling, an organization that helps gaming halls run responsible gambling programs. The rest of the time, he's back in the office, overseeing a crisis hotline. Last year his service took 3,400 calls from gamblers who had lost an average of $32,000 each. That's $109 million of evaporated wealth reported to just one hotline in just one year.

And California is not alone. More than 50 million people describe themselves as at least occasional poker players. Millions turn on the TV each week to watch one of eight scheduled poker shows--to say nothing of the 1 million who will tune in to ESPN's broadcast of this year's World Series of Poker.

Two hundred forty-seven Native American casinos dot tribal lands in 22 states; 84 riverboat or dockside casinos ply the waters or sit at berth in six states. And with local governments struggling to close budget gaps, slots and lotteries are booming. All told, 48 states have some form of legalized gambling--and none of that includes the wild frontier of the Internet. By 1996 the annual take for the U.S. gambling industry was over $47 billion, more than that from movies, music, cruise ships, spectator sports and live entertainment combined. In 2003 the figure jumped to over $72 billion.

All that money is coming from someone's pockets, and it's not the winners'. According to Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, as many as 10 million U.S. adults meet the "problem gambling" criteria. Kids are hit even harder. Exact figures aren't easy to come by, but various studies place the rate of problem gambling among underage players somewhere between two and three times the rate for adults.

Nobody thinks the gambling genie can be put back in the bottle. What health officials want to know is whether the damage can be curbed. What separates addictive gamblers from occasional ones? Is it personality, brain chemistry, environment? Can a behavior be a true addiction without a chemical driving it? "People have seen gambling in moral terms for a thousand years," says Whyte. "It's only recently that we've begun seeing it as a disease."