Organizations: Gamblers Anonymous

The day that Fred, a Las Vegas jazz pianist, drew his first weekly paycheck, he immediately lost it in a poker game. "It seems as if I've been trying to get that week's pay back ever since," says Fred now, a quarter of a century later. As he floated from jazz joint to jazz joint around the U.S., Fred became a regular at the race tracks, crap tables and poker games. But he never won the week's pay back, succeeded only in blowing $75,000 more. He became hooked on alcohol and drugs, stole money from his wife, rifled his...