It took quite a few years but one of my neighbors managed to gamble away his house, inheritance, sister's share of the inheritance and his marriage.

They were very quiet, kept to themselves and did yard work about 2X a year... on good years.

Thank heavens gambling never had any attraction for me or my wife.
We've tried it, lost $20 and thought yep- just like I thought it would be.

I imagine addicts would tend to gravitate toward living near casinos. We have a lot around here. I have a friend who married a lady and found out she owed for gambling and was an addict. He owned his house outright and had to take out a mortgage to pay off her debt. I told him about a good restaurant at one of the local casinos. He said "nope" because his wife couldn't set foot inside a casino.

Is more like 51% of the time.

One of the guys I know was always bragging about how much he had won gambling. He went all the time. Then one day he was selling his house and looking for couches to sleep on at friends houses.

All he ever remembered was the winning, and the losing was forgotten.

I live 6 miles from a major horse racing track & full casino. It has been open for over 30 years. I have been there twice. Both times I took a $20 bill to throw away. I was successful in that endeavor twice. The horse races can be fun. It is amazing just watching the people jump up and down urging their horse on. Then I put 2 bucks on a horse and I was urging mine on. It did not help, it finished so far back I could have outrun it.

We went to Travers City, MI in 2013. The first two nights we had to stay at the casino hotel. Walking in the door to register the place STUNK like an ashtray. Gross. The rooms were fine, but getting in and out was an ordeal. Do they issue a cigarette to every gambler? Yuck. That alone will keep me out of casinos.

Embezzlement, cocaine and video lottery terminals sent a woman I know to jail for a couple of years.

At least she had family to look after her young son and to the best of my knowledge, she got help for her addictions and has stayed straight since.

It is a powerful force in some peoples lives. I find casinos fascinating but I can walk around for hours without spending a quarter.

I guess there is an addiction for almost everything for some people.

Alcohol is the one everyone hears about the most and no doubt has ruined a lot of lives. But everything seems to be an addiction for many people.

tobacco addiction
drug addiction
sexual addiction
coffee addiction
video gaming addiction
shopping addiction
shoplifting addiction
smelling gasoline
pulling hair
exercising addiction
urine drinking addiction

The list is truly endless. They like to call it a disease to make it sound like it in not the fault of the individual. Maybe it is just a mental illness.

Virtually everything is an addiction to someone it seems.

I think the saddest thing I see during my very infrequent casino visits are those "upper middle age" men and women (mostly women) who have the debit card plugged into the slot machine with the little coiled cord attached to their wrist, just pushing the start button over and over and over with absolutely zero emotion on their face or in their eyes like an automaton from a science fiction video.


(Watch "Owing Mahoney" with Philip Seymore Hoffman for a great story about gambling addiction, if you're looking for a bummer.)

That is not a debit card. It is the casino players card. It keeps track of bets and gives you points you can redeem for a free buffet or room.

Goes to show you how much I know! :)

I have two casinos within 2 miles of me and haven't stepped inside them for years.

Another benefit of getting the casino card is that they send out monthly mailers to you. It will have coupons for free or discounted meals/rooms or 20 bucks or so in free play.

Anything to get you into the joint.

My two sisters used to game the casinos. They got the card just to get the mailer. The mailer would give them 20 bucks in free play and then play the nickle machines for hours. Then use a coupon for a $5 buffet.

They would spend all evening and eat on $5.

Maybe.

They create a slew of jobs in town. Once our two casinos in town grew into decent sized and nice places a bunch of hotels sprung up just across the interstate. Probably over to a 1000 rooms.

On valentine's day traffic was backed up just trying to get into the two joints.

Oklahoma and the tribes are currently at odds over payments to the states. It has just gone to mediation. The tribes have been running tv ads with their side of the stoey.

They claim:
Over 96,000 jobs
4.6 billion in wages and benefit
13 billion to the economy

Oklahoma has the worlds largest casino. The WinStar in Thackerville (just north of the Texas border). It has over 400,000 sp ft of gaming floor (biggest in Vegas is Wynn/Encore at 187,000 sq ft) 8,500 slots, and 55 poker tables.Two 18 hole golf courses and 1500 hotel rooms.

The Choctaw in Durant are in the middle of a 500 million expansion of their casino.

It is big business in Okla. Really big business.

No one is forcing those adults to ruin their lives....

Comparable...if your liquor or car or motorcycle were manipulated behind the scenes with the intention of keeping you coming back for more booze or repairs or unpredictable responses to throttle or brakes or steering...?

I agree pavulon, that is the problem with choices. Some can be good and some bad, what is important is being able to make those choices.

I enjoy going to Vegas for reasons other than gambling, but we do a bit of that on the side while there. I can stomach a few nights and that is it, then I am good for another year. Like some of the other posters have mentioned, I look at it as entertainment only and enjoy the time with my friends.

There is nothing in any business that is an accident. Every business tries to get every penny they can. How do you feel about auto dealerships and their pricing and selling technique? If the casino didn't pay out they wouldn't have customers. They want those winning bells to be ringing. They want those winning coins to clang into the tray.

I rarely played slots. Blackjack most of the time and I knew exactly what I was getting into.

Good on you for not going. That doesn't mean others shouldn't be able to go if they enjoy the game.

All freedoms carry some risk.

Video lottery machines in all the bars...many states have a gambling addiction.

True. And in the case of gambling a license is also involved.

Read: not much of a "Freedom" when only the State sanctioned entities are allowed.

Not so much anymore. Many casinos have switched to re-loadable cards for the slots (as well as other purchases) so they can track your spending habits and more closely monitor their payout percentages. It's eerily quiet in the slot machine areas now...no more coins loudly dropping into metal trays when someone wins.

Here in CA (and in most other states where gambling was legalized) voters were hoodwinked into accepting the lottery by promises that the money would be used to supplement the chronically underfunded public school system. Well, guess what? It's now been over 35 years since CA passed Prop 37 (State Lottery Act), and the schools are STILL crying for money. Once the lottery came in, budgets were gradually cut back and the schools are no better off now than they were before.

In 2017/2018 the Cali lottery paid in $215.80 per student. Don't blame the lottery if you leadership cut funding from other sources by a similar amount.

https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lo/ceflottery.asp