Northern Utah's compulsive gamblers live surrounded by carefully tooled temptation.
To the northeast, thoroughbreds and quarter houses pound around the track at Evanston, Wyo. Head north, and Idaho convenience stores offer a cornucopia of lottery tickets. Due west, Wendover's glittering casinos beckon - and many of the cars in their parking lots have Utah license plates.The proximity of legalized gambling to the main Utah population center is no accident, and neither is the ambience that gambling proprietors create. A day at the races carries its own flavor of crowds and cheering, much like an afternoon at the football stadium. Bright, colorful lottery tickets urge one to wager a dollar or two and just maybe win a trip to the Caribbean.
But it's the casinos that design their settings most shrewdly to tie into the compulsive gambler's psychology. Casino owners know that for serious gamblers, potential winnings don't matter so much. The hook is the lifestyle.
"There are no clocks around, so people lose track of time while they're there," said Kay Gillespie, professor of sociology and criminal justice at Weber State University, Ogden.
"They're designed so people can't see out, so they can't tell if it's night or day. It's a place where time stands still for the most part."
By no accident, the world of clinking coins, flashing lights and ringing bells is literally a fantasy land for gamblers.
"They lose track of their worries and their time. Nothing exists except what's right there in front of them. . . . I guess they totally immerse themselves in another world and forget the reality of the one they have to live in," said Gillespie.
Duane says the gambling bug bit him when he was a field trip with other students from South High School. (A recovering compulsive gambler, he is a volunteer counselor with Gamblers Anonymous. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, the group prefers that its members not identify themselves fully.) "My first real taste of gambling was when I was 17, at the Reno Jazz Festival," said Duane. "We went from South High School to Reno.
"Being 17, I still looked old enough to gamble. I was able to play the slot machines and several other activities. So this was high school activities."
Duane said the small jackpots on slot machines didn't excite him so much as the simple fact that he was engaging in an "adult" activity.
"You know, you're 17 and the fact that you're kind of getting away with something . . . it made you feel you're part of the action, part of the in crowd," he explained.
In 1983, Duane formed his own company. He and his partner traveled constantly, and wherever they went, Duane found a gambling table.
"Money meant nothing to me," he said. The business made so much money that, in his words, "it was sickening."
Then to be part of the action, or out of boredom, "we would go sit at the table and socialize, and then gamble my life away."
He never realized how addicted he was until his partner died. Duane was in Billings, Mont., on business, but was gambling. "I tried to figure out how long I could gamble to make his funeral on time," he said.
"That's when it really hit me."
Duane's tale is no surprise to Gillespie, who knows of marriages destroyed by wagering.
"I think with compulsive gamblers, the gambling takes place over everything, whether it's wives or children, family or jobs," he said.
The stereotype of the husband who blows his paycheck at the racetrack isn't really true: The lure draws both sexes.
"There are women in Nevada who spend their grocery money on slot machines, particularly the poker machines," Gillespie said. The slots are conveniently placed in grocery stores, he said.
Duane knows plenty of those stories. In his 15 years of attending Gamblers Anonymous, he has heard about:
- A late middle-age woman who was investing her fortune on sweepstakes. "She never left her house here in Salt Lake, and she was losing thousands of dollars" betting on lotteries by mail.
- Sports bettors, like the "guy who says I'm not a compulsive gambler, I'm a compulsive spender."
- The stockbroker who lost his clients' investments, and not in the stock market. "He was putting it on the craps table."
- The prisoner who loses $80 in a game. Although that doesn't seem like much, the convict had earned it in the prison commissary at 40 cents an hour. The loss represented 200 hours of work.
Remembering his own gambling days, Duane knows the addiction destroys family ties and friendship. A saying many gamblers know is that you only need six friends: one for each handle on a coffin.
Once, in Wendover, Duane had lost all his money and telephoned friends, asking for gasoline money so he could return to Salt Lake City. The friends knew better than to make a cash transfer to him, so they called the cashier at a service station, paying for the gasoline with a credit card.
"Well, they didn't realize the cashier gave me the receipt, and that the credit card number's on the receipt.
"And I had a heyday." He used the credit card number to finance more betting.
If compulsive gamblers are ever to break the habit, says Duane, they must come to their own realization that they need to change. All the advice of friends, all the love of family, won't make the difference if the gambler doesn't come to his senses himself.
"Unfortunately, nine times out of 10, they have to hit rock bottom first," Duane said. "It could be $10 to one person, it could be $10 million."
Anyone who knows he has a problem should "talk to a close, trusted friend, someone he can count on, and tell them about his problem - and then start coming to Gamblers Anonymous."
If the gambler doesn't have such a friend, some members of the group who have been there themselves, volunteers like Duane, will try to become that friend.
Asked if he thinks compulsive gamblers have any hope, Weber State's Gillespie said he is not sure. Help may be available in groups like Gamblers Anonymous, he said.
Gamblers Anonymous has a 12-step program much like that espoused by Al-Anon, stressing that gamblers must control their problem one day at a time.
"It's almost like any other addiction," Gillespie said. "Once you become addicted to it, it's not a matter of overcoming it, it's a matter of controlling it."