Not-so-easy money

While state officials debate the merits of a casino, Rhode Island is on the verge of an addiction crisis far worse than alcohol or drugs

by Heidi B. Perlman

The box of doughnuts sits in the middle of the table, untouched.

Nobody has come here to eat.

"Hi, I'm Scott," the first man says, standing. "And I'm a compulsive gambler."

"Hi, Scott (some names have been changed fgor the sake of privacy)," the group responds. The speaker pauses and looks around, unsure. Finally, he begins, and spins a tale of a broken marriage, disappointed children, and lost dreams.

The men and women sitting around the table nod their heads. They understand. The names are different, but the story is a familiar one. They've been there.

They are old and young, from different parts of Rhode Island, with different backgrounds. Some are businessmen, some are lawyers. Others are blue-collar workers. Some come with calloused hands, others with crisply pressed, white button-down shirts.

Six nights a week they gather in church basements, school cafeterias, and open conference rooms to talk about their families, their jobs, their childhoods, their accomplishments, and their failures. Mostly, they come to talk about why they can't gamble anymore.

Arthur, a middle-aged man with slicked-back, graying hair, stares out the window as he speaks, seemingly unaware of the people around him. "Nine and a half years ago, I quit drinking and drugging, and that was rough," he says. "But this is the hardest thing I've ever faced. It's been 53 days since I last gambled, and all I know is I don't plan on gambling today."

And that, the knowing nods from his friends on either side say, is all he can ask for.

Nearly 200 members strong, Rhode Island's Gamblers Anonymous (GA) group is a solid force of men and women who have placed too many bets, lost too many games, and tossed away too many crumpled scratch tickets. Their connection lies in their desire to stop gambling but their inability to do so.

Most come from the Ocean State, a state so small that a bet is never more than 45 minutes away. There's the race track in Lincoln, where players can bet on either the dogs or play video poker. There's Newport Jai Alai on the coast. There's the state lottery and Keno, which are both available at myriad convenience stores.

And since 1992, the ultimate temptation has been just over the border in Connecticut at Foxwoods casino, the nation's largest gaming facility. At one time, there were one or two Gamblers Anonymous meetings held in the state each week. But since the opening of Foxwoods, that number has crept up steadily to a minimum of nine, and more if necessary, says Sal Marzilli, head of the Rhode Island Council on Problem Gambling.

These days, they have to hunt for rooms large enough to hold the crowds.

"Gambling today is back where alcoholism was 40 or 50 years ago," says Marzilli. "The explosion has happened so quickly that people aren't taking a good look at the impact it's having. It's happened so quickly, it's going to get to a point where we'll only see the fallout, and wonder why we didn't see it coming."

The council operates a 24-hour crisis counseling hotline that rings directly into the Rhode Island Travelers Aid Society, whose employees handle the calls. The hotline, which received only 246 calls in 1992, received 1023 last year.

"This is an addiction that is just being spawned," says Marzilli. "Watch the people and listen to the stories. Ten years from now, gambling is going to make alcoholism and drug addiction look like a walk in the park."

For each of the GA members, the tale is different, but the path they've taken is the same. Many have lied, stolen, and cheated their families and friends. Many are estranged from wives, husbands, and children.

Meetings serve as the methadone to the truly addicted and desperate gamblers, those who see Gamblers Anonymous as the only salvation in a world where all they really want to do is play. And by coming back day after day, week after week, many are learning through the example of others that lives can be reassembled, piece by careful piece.

Some describe the addiction as a deep hole. Some days they near the top; on others, they feel as though they're trying to get out by digging down even further.

"It got to the point where I couldn't sleep at night, and I was throwing up blood," says 33-year-old David, who, before his wife found out, lost more than $100,000 through a combination of sports betting and weekly trips to Foxwoods. "I'm still in debt, and things are still tight," he says, "but, finally, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel."

David quit playing 18 months ago.

For Benny, a middle-aged salesman, gambling was a habit he picked up when he began pitching cards in the schoolyard as a child. Back then, the goal was to win the most cards. From that point until just over four years ago, his goal shifted to winning enough money to save the business he was about to bankrupt.

"I have a lot of respect for someone who comes into a meeting and says he doesn't want to quit," he says. "I can understand it, because I love to gamble. Simple as that. But I have no respect for the guy who comes in and says, `I can't quit.' I have no time for that. Right now, I go to the program to offer hope to those people, and to say I've been where they've been. I've walked in their shoes, and I survived."

But not everyone is convinced that they'll be quite as lucky.

David, a young, slim man who sits quietly through the whole meeting, speaks out just before the group leaves. This was his first meeting, he says quietly. But he knows he'll be back.

He has been gambling steadily for 25 years, and is now on the verge of losing the business he worked hard to build. Still, he says, he knows he hasn't hit rock bottom yet. "All I know is it doesn't feel good to play anymore," he says. "But I can't stop."

Although Governor Lincoln Almond has been criticized for his hard-line stance against the Narragansett Indians' proposal to build a casino in Providence, he has earned the respect and unwavering support of most admitted compulsive gamblers. What he's doing, they say, is protecting them.

Today, Rhode Island has some of the most stringent gaming laws in the country. A casino cannot open here without voter approval, a requirement Almond hopes will be enough to keep gaming out of Rhode Island for a long time.

In the late 1970s, US Senator John Chafee (R-Rhode Island) settled up with the Narragansett Indians by giving them 1800 acres of ancestral land to do with as they pleased -- so long as it was legal under Rhode Island laws. Some 10 years later, the Indian and Gaming Regulatory Act preempted this stipulation by allowing all federally recognized tribes (which include the Narragansetts) to open gaming facilities on tribal land.

In response, Chafee put through an amendment to a bill passed by Congress unrelated to Indian gaming that required the Narragansetts to seek statewide voter approval for a casino. And one of Almond's first acts as governor was to lobby against the tribe's efforts to strike down this amendment in court.

Still, while voters have shot down referendum after referendum to build a casino in this state, some legislators say Rhode Island is missing out on a gold-plated opportunity. And Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-Rhode Island), a known Narragansetts sympathizer, also has challenged Almond on the issue of fairness, asking how the governor could accept some $100 million a year in state lottery revenues yet fight so vigorously against the Narragansetts. Although Kennedy says he opposes building a full-fledged casino in downtown Providence, he does support allowing the tribe to open a high-stakes bingo hall on their land.

But the way Almond sees it, the lottery, horse racing, and Keno came into the state before he was elected, and are thus grandfathered, untouchable. Rhode Island does not have a casino yet, however, and over that the governor says he has control.

Even so, he has been accused of holding a double standard. Despite his campaign pledges to oppose the further expansion of video slot machines and other games of chance in the Ocean State, Almond has not upheld his promise. Indeed, the state's lottery system today is the third-largest revenue source in the state, trailing behind only sales and income taxes.

Still, about building a casino, Almond remains firm that the drawbacks far outweigh the potential good. "If gambling breaks up one family, it's too many," he says. "To me, it's no different than alcoholism. People think it's foolproof, but the only one who ever wins is the owner."

Robert Whitman-Raymond, a Providence-based therapist who treats compulsive gamblers, agrees. "You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand the people dead-set on having a casino in this state are only looking at the short-term picture," he says. "They see that it will generate immediate cash, and be easy money -- easier, in fact, than sound financial planning. But where will this money come from? What part of the state will lose out?"

Whitman-Raymond runs Two Rivers Psychotherapy, a private practice where he counsels people with addictions, including compulsive gamblers. He has watched the numbers of people with gambling disorders skyrocket in this state, so the idea of building a Foxwoods clone in downtown Providence frightens him.

"My clients describe gambling as more difficult to quit then booze, drugs, and nicotine combined," he says. "I think if we opened a casino in our back yard next month, we'd just see more numbers of people forced to fight the same battle."

"About 95 percent of the population can go to a casino every few months with no problem," adds Marzilli. "But about five percent are guaranteed to lose control."

It's true. Ask any gambler, and very few will profess any love for the games they feel they need to play.

Indeed, Foxwoods stopped being fun for Benny of Gamblers Anonymous long before he stopped sneaking out of work every day to make the drive to the casino. Usually, after losing $1000 or more in a single afternoon, the thought of the casino repulsed him the moment he stepped back into his car for the ride home.

The first 15 to 20 minutes of the ride would be just pure hell, the Cranston native recalls. "But then I'd cross the Rhode Island line, and my thoughts would shift. And suddenly I'd remember the other times, before I started to lose. I'd think, `Well, I was winning for a while, but I got greedy. I should have done X instead of Y. I should have bet this instead of that.' By the time I pulled into my driveway, I had it all planned for the next day.

Benny's addiction lasted until a few days after his accountant asked him, in front of his wife, why his personal bank accounts were virtually empty. That night, he told his wife an elaborately constructed lie about how his business wasn't doing well, and about how he had borrowed from their personal accounts to keep his books out of the red.

She bought it, he recalls. Every word. "And I felt like the snake and the liar that I was."

Two days later, Benny wandered into his first GA meeting. That night, he went home and told his wife the truth for the first time since they were married.

To him and to other die-hard GA members, this is the real story of a gambler. What they've lived through is far more real than the synthetic world of the glamorous players pictured in casino television ads.

In that world, only the beautiful and glamorous are invited, arriving by limousine. Once inside, they're handed champagne in a goblet, and they move immediately to a table, where they promptly win.

In the real world, women with tinted hair and orthopedic shoes sit between two slot machines, using both arms to feed quarters into the slots, and pulling the handles down in unison to save time.

Men in designer suits sit shoulder-to-shoulder with men in stained undershirts at blackjack tables, possibly betting either last week's bonus or next week's salary. They walk from table to table, trying their luck again and again.

And most important, they keep coming back.

At Gamblers Anonymous, members also return to meetings as often as they can, but for a different reason -- survival.

By the end of most nights, the boxes of doughnuts are still full, but the table is lined with rings from the cups of coffee the nervous smokers have downed to quell their nicotine needs in the no-smoking room.

After the last member speaks, the silence surrounds them as they absorb all that has been said. Finally, the group leader nods his head and the men and women surrounding the table join hands silently and stand.

Together, they recite the mantra of men and women in 12-step groups around the world: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference," they say together.

Still clutching each other's hands in a makeshift ring, they shake their arms, as if in victory.

Smiling with courage, they each give

the group one final note of advice: "Keep coming back."