Beating Addiction Tough Bet Compulsive Gamblers Seeking Help Face Long Odds, As Little Is Available
For five years, Jeanne Benson built her life around Spokane’s nonprofit bingo halls. Each year, $12,000 of her modest income vanished into the game of chance.
Then one day, hunched over a bingo card, she had a revelation.
“I’m not here because I want to be here, but because I have to be here,” she said.
She knew she needed help. The next day she called Spokane Mental Health, Alcoholics Anonymous, “everything I could think of for help. I didn’t find anything.”
In the seven years since Benson, now 51, went looking for help, the amount of gambling available in the Inland Northwest has increased dramatically. The amount of help available for problem gamblers has not.
In Spokane, there is only one chapter of Gamblers Anonymous and no professional treatment specifically for gambling addiction. The same is true in Coeur d’Alene.
Throughout Washington, there is only a handful of counselors certified to treat people with gambling problems. All of them work in the Seattle-Tacoma area.
Washington state government - which allocated $70 million for treatment and services for people with drug and alcohol problems - only spends $100,000 annually for the Washington State Council on Problem Gambling. The council runs a toll-free help line, but doesn’t offer any treatment.
Idaho, too, spends nothing on treatment and doesn’t even have a council on problem gambling.
“Gambling is about 25 to 30 years behind drug and alcohol addiction in terms of treatment and society’s recognition of it as a legitimate illness,” said Steve Peterson, a Tacoma counselor nationally certified to treat gambling addiction.
The only survey of problem gambling in Washington estimated 57,000 to 143,000 adults suffered “moderate to severe problems related to their involvement in gambling.”
The survey was done in 1993 before most of the state’s 15 tribal casinos opened and long before the latest increase in nontribal casinos.
Another survey will be done this fall, paid for with $120,000 from the Washington State Lottery Commission.
Meanwhile, there could be 11 blackjack casinos in the Spokane area by December and the Kalispel Tribe has approval to build a $17 million casino in Airway Heights. The Coeur d’Alene Tribe is expanding its casino in Worley and wants to open another casino in Post Falls.
Across the nation, state governments, private enterprise and Indian tribes earn billions of dollars annually from gambling.
Last year, less than $20 million was spent by all states for the treatment of problem gamblers, said Dr. Henry Lesieur, president of the Institute for Problem Gambling in Rhode Island.
Three surveys of Gamblers Anonymous members in Illinois, Wisconsin and Connecticut found 394 people had debts totaling $37.4 million. The surveys were done in 1995, 1996 and 1997.
“Let’s face it, the states are not doing their job. When only 394 pathological gamblers can borrow more money than the states have allocated, or can steal more money than states have allocated, something is wrong with existing policy,” Lesieur told the National Conference on Problem Gambling in Las Vegas in June.
In Washington, the Legislature hasn’t dedicated any money for the treatment of problem gamblers.
“I’ve never heard a good answer why,” said Charles Maurer, a psychologist and president of the Washington State Council on Problem Gambling. “My hunch is if they acknowledge that problems exist, then they have to take some responsibility for it.”
With two staff members, the nonprofit council runs its help line, distributes pamphlets on problem gambling and offers training to educate counselors.
Its annual budget is $175,000, including the $100,000 provided by the state through the Washington State Gambling Commission. The rest comes from inkind contributions from the lottery commission and voluntary donations by tribal casinos and industry sources.
Other states sponsor treatment
While Washington and Idaho spend no money on treatment for problem gamblers, their neighbors spend millions.
“The state figured since it was profiting from gambling, it should take some responsibility for the problems it generated, too,” said David Hooper, spokesman for the Oregon Lottery.
Annually, the state of Oregon takes in $600 million from lottery and video gambling machines - dubbed “the crack cocaine of gambling” for their addictiveness.
Oregon dedicates $2 million a year for treatment. The money is funneled through county mental health offices. Since 1995, 2,300 people have gone through the free treatment program.
“Following up six and 12 months after people receive treatment, we are finding over 60 percent remain abstinent. It appears gambling addiction is something that responds well to treatment,” said Mike McCraken, executive director of the Association of Oregon Community Mental Health Programs.
“The science of treating gambling addiction is such that not to offer treatment is immoral,” said Dr. Thomas Moore, president of Herbert & Louis, the company that evaluates Oregon’s program and other behavioral health programs across the nation.
The governments of British Columbia and Alberta allocate $2 million and $3 million Canadian annually to the treatment of people with gambling problems. The provinces have nearly all forms of gambling.
This year, Louisiana started spending big money on treatment after legislators saw a survey showing 14 percent of adults age 18 to 21 had a gambling problem.
“When you are able to show scientific documentation to legislators - even Louisiana legislators - they are willing to look at the problem,” said Reece Middleton, director of the Louisiana Association on Compulsive Gambling.
Louisiana budgets $2 million annually for professional counseling for problem gamblers.
In Washington, the help available is primarily through Gamblers Anonymous meetings, which provide support but not professional counseling. However, only 8 percent of those attending GA are likely to remain abstinent, one study says.
Aside from seeking individual counseling, there are only two outpatient treatment programs in the state. Gamblers At Their End Society, or GATES, has been open since April and is run by Peterson and two other counselors in the Puget Sound area.
In Renton, the Valley Medical Behavioral Health Services and Counseling Center opened a program under the direction of Donna Whitmire in March.
“I don’t see anyone outside of GATES and us identifying this as a potential major problem in Washington state,” Whitmire said. “Honestly, I don’t think the state is very prepared to deal with this.”
With 1 percent of the lottery’s annual contribution to the state’s general fund - or roughly $1 million - Peterson is confident that Washington could have “a program up and running and offering treatment free of charge,” he said.
Current state law sets some precedent for government involvement. “Because the state promotes and regulates gambling … the state has the responsibility to continue to provide resources for the support of services for problem and compulsive gamblers,” reads the state’s gambling statute.
The law directs the state’s three commissions overseeing gambling to develop signs listing a toll-free gambling helpline number. Those signs are to be posted in all gambling establishments.
The Legislature took a brief look at funding treatment for problem gamblers last year. Sen. Ray Schow, a Republican from Federal Way, sponsored a bill to use $75,000 annually from the Washington Lottery for treatment. It died.
“I’m certain we’ll have legislation introduced again to address this,” Schow said. “But the question is what do we do and where do we get the funds?”
Schow has been at the forefront of gambling issues in the Legislature. He sponsored last year’s bill that’s sparking a wave of blackjack casinos opening across the state.
This summer, Schow and Sen. Margarita Prentice, a Democrat from Seattle, are gathering information on gambling at a series of public hearings.
During the next hearing - on Aug. 12 in Gig Harbor - the pair will hear about problem gambling from Gary Hanson, director of the Washington State Council on Problem Gambling.
The council is designing a state-level certification program for counselors who want to treat problem gamblers. The certification will be a midway between having no training and having national certification, Hanson said.
The requirements for national certification are considered so stringent as to be nearly prohibitive for many counselors in Washington state, Hanson said.
Once the council’s state-level certification program is running, counselors from the Spokane Veterans Affairs Medical Center may be some of the first in line to attend.
Nationally, the VA has been a leader in treating gambling addiction for decades.
“We don’t have a formalized program for gambling, but we’d like to. It is certainly a growing problem,” said Paul Nicolai, coordinator of substance abuse treatment at the VA medical center. “I plan to take the training as well as several members of my staff.”
From hell to heaven
For Benson, the bingo addict who couldn’t find help, there has been a reprieve - one she willed herself.
Through seven years of gambling, Benson never lost a marriage and never went bankrupt. But the days in the bingo hall rotted her from the inside out.
“I didn’t want to laugh any more. I was just dead inside. I would leave the bingo halls at night pounding my fists on the steering wheel screaming about how I could do this,” she said.
The day she quit, she won $100.
“I thought I’d just try to go a week without playing,” she said.
That was five years ago. She hasn’t gambled since.
“I have never known such happiness since I quit gambling,” she said. “I’ve learned how to live, how to be a person. I’ve replaced the excitement of gambling with what I call joy.
“It is good to get up in the morning,” she said. “There is no comparison between this life and that. That was hell, this is heaven.”