It was exciting, she thought.
Anne (her real name has been withheld for privacy reasons) won a game of chance or two at a town social club and found she really enjoyed playing.
It wasn’t a big jump to the next level — and that’s when her gambling began to get out of hand.
‘‘My problem was with the Pennsylvania lottery, the scratch-offs and all the online games,” Anne, a 44-year-old Bedford county resident, says. “I just got addicted to the excitement and thrill of winning. If you won $100, you’d want to keep going.”
All the games added up. At one point, Anne was spending up to $200 a day on tickets that usually only cost a dollar or two apiece.
‘‘I honestly had myself convinced that I was going to be the big winner. It just progressed and progressed over the years,” she says. “It just controlled me.’’
As her habit took over her life, she kept it quiet.
“I was very secretive,” Anne says. “My husband didn’t even know. I’m just so thankful that he stood by me, him and my daughter. It was (the) worst seeing them go through what they had to because of what I did.”
What she did was steal.
“What I was doing was taking money — basically stealing to fund my habit, to fund my addiction,” Anne admits today.
She says she realized she had a gambling addiction suddenly.
“There just came a point one day where I sat down ... and said, ‘You have a problem.’”
Recognizing the problem
Anne turned to Larry Hanelly, a certified problem gambling counselor with Altoona Regional Health System.
According to Hanelly, the first thing he does with a patient is get a handle on the severity their problem.
“We do a thorough intake and assessment of their needs. We use a tool called the SOGS — the South Oaks Gambling Screens. It determines whether someone is a problem gambler or a pathological gambler.”
That distinction is key, he says.
“It’s a matter of severity of the problem,” Hanelly explains. “People that are problem gamblers may be moving toward becoming a pathological gambler. But a pathological gambler will give more evidence of the signs of addiction. When losing a bet, they’ll often ... bet more.
“It’s just not whether they’re winning or losing, but no longer does a $20 bet mean something, it’s got to be $50 or $100 or something upward.”
Not all gamblers are addicted. Charlie Weston, a WFBG-AM 1290 morning announcer and sports broadcaster, has gambled safely for 10 years.
‘‘I know there’ve been times when I wanted to keep playing and I realized that I probably shouldn’t,” he says. “I know there are people in my family who don’t like me playing at all, (but) I know that I have it under control.”
But Weston, who also writes a poker column for the Mirror, knows that losing control can be dangerous.
“There’s a fine line between addiction and enthusiasm,” he says.
The addictions themselves come in all different forms.
‘‘There are people addicted to everything you can imagine,’’ says Norm B., a Gambler’s Anonymous of Pittsburgh member and spokesman. ‘‘More and more, there are people coming in because of gambling online. It’s much easier to hide because you don’t have to leave home.’’
Hanelly has had patients with a variety of addictions, as well.
‘‘I even had one client whose problem was bingo gambling,’’ he says. ‘‘She had lost $10,000 over a period of time.’’
Often, a gambler knows they have a problem, but not how to get help.
‘‘When I was gambling, I’d stop every night,’’ says Norm B. ‘‘Every day, I’d say ‘today is going to be different.’ It’s the addiction definition of insanity — doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.’’
Finding a solution
Getting help can be difficult, but there are many avenues available.
The advent of legal casinos in Pennsylvania has made addiction counseling a priority of the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.
Pennsylvania has seven slot-machines-only casinos with 15,000 slots, according to Richard McGarvey, spokesman for the Gaming Control Board.
McGarvey says the GCB does two things to guard against problem gambling at the casinos. First, all casinos are required to train their employees to recognize the signs of problem gambling
HOW DO THEY DO THAT?, in order to restrict a gambler’s access to the machines.
The second safeguard is the self-exclusion list.
‘‘(The list) is a way for an individual who has a gambling problem to voluntarily exclude themselves from the casino,’’ McGarvey says. ‘‘Once you get onto this program, you can’t go into a casino. If you’re caught in a casino, you can be arrested for trespassing.’’
Gamblers who sign up for the self-exclusion list are interviewed by GCB employees, then are allowed to sign up for a one-year, five-year or lifetime exclusion from the casinos.
According to McGarvey, the self-exclusion list has 219 people, with 44 percent of people signed up for one year, 23 percent for five years and about a third signed up for a lifetime exclusion.
But McGarvey is quick to point out, ‘‘this is not a substitute for treatment, I want to make that clear.’’
The GCB requires all casinos to have phone numbers posted inside the facility and on all advertisements that direct people to help with problem gambling.
The numbers can lead people to counselors like Hanelly, who has been an addiction counselor for 16 years and a gambling addiction counselor for three. But casinos aren’t yet a problem in our area.
The closest casinos are in Wheeling, W.Va., or the Hollywood Casino in Grantville, Dauphin County, both more than two and a half hours from Altoona. (A casino is scheduled to open in Greensburg in 2009, cutting the distance to a legal gamblinsg establishment by an hour.)
‘‘There hasn’t been a groundswell (of problem gambling) here,’’ Hanelly says. ‘‘One of the things they stress in training is (to look for) an upsurge in problem gambling when a new venue opens within 50 miles — and obviously that hasn’t happened yet.’’
For those that can’t get to a counselor, or don’t feel comfortable in such a situation, there are groups like Gambler’s Anonymous.
Norm B. first visited a GA meeting in 1983. His problem was sports betting, and it got out of control when he was able to place bets on credit.
‘‘At the end of 1982, I was in a psych hospital (because of) a suicide attempt,’’ Norm says. ‘‘In January of 1983, my brother-in-law took me to my first Gambler’s Anonymous meeting.’’
The meetings helped him get things under control. He still attends the meetings today to help others do the same.
‘‘We do as a group what people who really want to can’t do for themselves — which is stop the behavior,’’ he says. ‘‘When I help someone else, I’m still helping me.’’
Helping yourself is important, Hanelly says, and that often comes after a traumatic incident.
‘‘A lot of people who’ve been stunned (into starting treatment), they come in already not (gambling),’’ he says.
It was that way for Anne.
‘‘It was pretty instantaneous,’’ she says. ‘‘What I did was a lot of damage, financially. It put a terrible strain on my family, my household. It just took it to come out in the open. I’m very fortunate that I didn’t end up in jail.’’
Staying clean
Recovery isn’t just a one-day thing, Hanelly says.
‘‘There’s a high rate of relapse,’’ he explains. ‘‘From the beginning, I make it clear that all types of gambling, even things like charity raffles, will stimulate the reactions and thought processes. Any type of gambling, is gambling, and will lead you back to where you’ve been.’’
Anne has made a recovery, having not gambled in almost two years. But she knows the slightest relapse could have big consequences.
‘‘I feel like I’ve overcome my problem, but I feel like, ‘once an addict, always an addict,’’’ she says, adding, ‘‘I go to the convenience store and I walk right by (the lottery machine). It doesn’t tempt me because there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about what I did.’’
The proliferation of casinos can be avoided, but everyday gambling can be hard to avoid, Norm says.
‘‘We’re seeing more people (addicted to scratch-offs), and those are everywhere,’’ he says. ‘‘And one of our (rules) is ‘don’t go into gambling establishments.’ Well does that mean that you can’t go into the grocery store? Or the gas station?’’
It’s all about knowing your limits, he says.
‘‘I have friends who can still play poker and go to the track and do it recreationally,’’ Norm explains. ‘‘It’s not recreational for me, it’s suicidal for me.’’
Mirror Staff Writer Keith Frederick is at 946-7466.
