Chapter Nine

Scam City

By Wednesday afternoon the handout was ready. The seminar was scheduled for two o’clock in the afternoon, but at one o’clock Ruth called to tell me the Union steward needed the auditorium we were going to meet in. We’d have to move.

I got permission to hold the seminar in the Director's Conference Room, a smaller, more intimate setting anyway. I won points with the Union by giving up the auditorium, and a secondary bonus was the chance to apologize to the Assistant Chief of Nursing, for not having enough space in the smaller conference room to accommodate her education-seeking nurses at the seminar. I promised to do an in-service training with Nursing Service any time they wanted it. Now they both owed me. It was politics as usual.

Taking advantage of opportunities as they arise isn't swindling, is it?

At 1:55 P.M., I grabbed my handouts and set out for the Director's Conference Room, three buildings away. People arrived late since they had all gone to the auditorium first. Doughnuts and coffee arrived at the same time Al did. The weather having improved considerably, he was not wearing his noisy galoshes. Otherwise, he was the same.

“Hi, Doc,” he said, delivering a clap on my back along with a hearty handshake. “I thought you said that all hospital meetings start exactly on time. Is my watch fast?”

“Grab some coffee, Al, and if you would, make sure everybody gets a handout,” I said, dodging his barbed question. “Hey, Dr. Fringe, welcome! It's good to see you here.”

“Taber, I've been thinking a lot about this gambling addiction,” Fringe said. “General medicine is completely ignorant of the problem, yet it has such important implications for health. I'll be visiting out here as often as I can, and if you don't mind, maybe I could sit in on some of your group sessions?”

“I'm sure the patients would welcome you,” I replied, wondering if he’d let me stand in on his next surgery. Actually, that's a poor comparison, and I welcomed his interest.

I began the meeting by stating my goal of taking an inventory of the different ways gamblers use to get bailouts. I offered my handout as a starting point, and then briefly summarized the Golden Goose and Tar Baby strategies.

“The list of possible scams is endless,” I concluded, “and we must be prepared to deal with one of the most imaginative creatures on earth: The pathological gambler looking for a way out of a trap he himself has created. Nothing is off limits, and no holds are barred. Chances are, the person targeted as a helper will not be able to out-think or out-reason the scammer, partly because the gambler is more desperate, and more experienced at this ploy than the rest of us.

“All cons have one thing in common: They play on the emotional needs of the victims. They capitalize on fear, sympathy, guilt, pride, hope, and dreams. They play on the rescuer's emotional needs to save, control, protect, and be accepted by the gambler. Many bailouts are, frankly, attempts by the rescuer to buy love and acceptance. The gambler intuitively understands and manipulates all these feelings and motives. The rescuer, in turn, must learn to recognize his or her emotions and motives in order to avoid the traps set by the con. This is what I mean by the advice I always give to the family and friends of the pathological gambler: Work on yourself, try to understand why you are tempted to bail the gambler out again and again, and try to change yourself, not the gambler. That's also consistent with what Gam-Anon tries to teach the families, and is the bedrock of its recovery program.

“I've listed in no particular order the 18 scams that occurred to me as I thought about emotional blackmail. Please feel free to add your comments as I talk.”

Scam No. 1: They'll break my legs!

TOM: It's not very likely, really. Loan sharks and bookies only want their money. They see themselves as businessmen, and they don't want the legal hassles that could result from assault charges. Department stores and other creditors use threats of legal action; my family is used to that. But loan sharks use threats of violence as well as harassment. Sometimes the shark will turn the collection over to a goon or strong-arm man. Some goons even buy collection rights outright, or they take a percentage of anything they can collect. Once in a great while the shark may authorize personal violence, because a broken leg every few years promotes his tough guy image out on the street.

ELLY (Tom's sister): Tom was always telling us he was in danger if we didn't help him. I remember one time he told us a loan shark broke his thumb; turns out he’d slammed the car door on it himself and used that to coax money out of Mom and Dad. They’d believe anything!

TOM: I can't tell you how many times I’ve used the fear of violence to get my way. I've known collectors to harass a sick mother who had bailed junior out before. The gambler was happy to shove his fear off on his mom saying, “But, for God's sake, Ma, don't you understand they're going to hurt me? They'll break my legs!” The gambler is desperate to pay the shark or the bookie because if he doesn't, his gambling action gets shut off.

TABER: I knew a young fellow who called himself Sly. His parents were from the old country: very trusting, very hard working, and very gullible where their son's stories were concerned. Sly had me convinced, finally, that his parents really were in danger, even though I had worked hard to get them to turn a deaf ear to his begging. What if, this time, I was wrong? People could get hurt. I could be sued for giving bad advice.

Sly claimed he had been away from gambling for several months, but hinted to me that he might have to go back and try to win some money to get out of trouble with his old debts. I suspected this might just be another con. I also knew how false such reasoning was.

At first, it seemed to me that Sly only wanted to get his friendly psychologist to tell his parents to come up with money. But now I was genuinely worried. The parents told me about threatening calls they'd been getting. Their tires had been slashed, and their dog was found dead in the front yard one morning, with his throat cut. Then I got a call from Sly and he sounded really panicked; he said his parents' home had been firebombed the night before, and that it was only a stroke of luck that the fire department had come quickly. Even so, the fire caused damage to the front of the house.

Something just didn't sound right. It was hard for me to believe a bookie would do all this to collect a few thousand dollars. Out of fear, the parents refused to go to the police, and of course, Sly would not involve the police either. I placed a call to Sly's brother, who was older and more responsible than Sly. In his time, the brother had had his own drug problems. He also had often provided money to fix Sly's problems.

I told the brother to tell me the truth about what was going on with Sly and his bookie, and I didn't want any bullshit. I told him there was too much at stake for him to try to cover for Sly; the safety of his parents might depend on his honesty.

I could tell right away, by the brother's voice, that there was a story he needed to tell me. He finally blurted out the truth. Who tossed the firebomb and then called the fire department? Who killed the dog and tossed the body on the lawn? Who paid some of the boys at the bar to call the parents with cruel and threatening calls?”

AL: It was that goddamned Sly! No doubt about it!

TABER: You've got it, Al, you know gamblers. Sly himself was the extortionist, dog-killer, and fire bomber. But couldn't most of us have fallen for this convincing web of lies, if it was our son or husband, had it been our emotions being torn apart? The urge to gamble for the pathological gambler can be overwhelming; it knows no bounds and brooks no limitations like those that restrain ordinary folk. Expect the unexpected at all times. I was conned into thinking Sly hadn't been gambling for months.

When I met with Sly's parents and told them who was behind their troubles, they hardly seemed surprised. They sat there shaking their heads and making apologies for their son's behavior. It was clear that they needed to see Sly as a victim, and they immediately took the blame upon themselves. No, they said, they would not file police charges. In fact, knowing that he had been driven to such extreme actions only made his parents more sympathetic. In their eyes he would never be blameworthy of anything.

MICKEY: The threats from the bookie, the goons, or the gambler, can be pretty intimidating. Gamblers get angry when people try to collect debts. The gambler often escalates the violence himself by getting a gun or trying to fight back. The thought of an out-and-out street war often frightens wives and parents into buying peace, but it's always a temporary peace, since when the gambler finally does get a family bailout, he’s free to get back into action. Nothing is really changed.

TABER: Variations of “They'll break my legs!” include “They'll cut off my fingers!” and “This is going to cost me a foot!” Other body parts of a private nature may be mentioned to heighten the effect. True, from time to time a gambler is roughed up by creditors, but usually only after the gambler has lied to them, evaded them, insulted their egos, or become violent himself. For the most part, creditors count on terror and imagination to do the job, and they usually work very well.

I know only one gambler who was shot at by a bookie, and the gambler had the poor judgment to pull his own gun first.

LITTLE BILL: I'm from New York City. “I'll turn up floating in the East River, Mom!” was a con I heard once. A few years later, that's exactly what did happen, but by then the gambler had become an amateur bookie himself. Worse than being a creditor, he had become a competitor. If a gambler is purely a pathological gambler, not a crook, he can go to creditors with the backing of Gamblers Anonymous and arrange to repay debts according to a rational schedule. It's really amazing how many bookies say, “Forget the debt, Pal,” when they realize the gambler is sincerely trying to quit for good.

Scam No. 2: I'll kill you if you let me down this time!

TABER: Less violent forms of this con include threats to hurt the rescuer, get a divorce, leave town, or publicly embarrass the family. A favorite trick is to punch holes in plaster walls around the house, to show extreme emotional upset.

I get concerned about this kind of con because it can be more that empty threats, depending on the gambler’s personality. If he has been a frequent street or bar fighter, or has a history of battering his wife or children, or if he has a love affair with guns, this threat could signal real danger. Although it uses fear and intimidation, all talk of violence must be taken seriously. Never deal with these threats alone, since they can be extremely dangerous, and special help is available in many forms.

GAIL: I'm Gail, Steve's wife. He isn't here now because he had to work overtime at the steel mill. I caved in to him so many times when he was raging around the house doing exactly what you talked about, punching holes in walls. He used to frighten me out of my mind, and I couldn't think straight anymore. It's so much better now with him not gambling, but I used to do anything to please him and make him stop. I gave him my pay and I took loans and I sold wedding presents …

TABER: Gail, Steve's been doing very well by all reports, but tomorrow I want you to call Ruth here and get our list of shelters for battered women. Just keep it around. Not to say that anybody thinks Steve will go back to gambling, but it happens. If it does, I want you out of the house immediately, both for your protection and to let Steve know that there will be no more bailouts from you. OK?

Scam No. 3: We'll lose the family business!

BIG BOB: Lots of businesses have been lost due to gambling, but the threat of losing the family business can be an attempt to intimidate and manipulate, more than a statement of financial reality. Some gamblers make a lot of money in their own businesses. Their families gets used to a high standard of living, and the threat of losing the source of it all plays on their fear of financial insecurity, and on pride. The gambler understands the family's psychological and financial dependence.

I've heard statements like, “Poor Phil has worked so hard, it would kill him to lose the store now over a little gambling problem.” And, “It's a matter of family honor. The flower shop has been in our family now for three generations. I have to step in and help.”

My point is that the rescuer believes the business is critical to the gambler's self-esteem and welfare. Sometimes a proud father—maybe he founded the business—who hasn't even retired yet will insist on bailing out the son who Dad prays will eventually straighten out and follow in Dad's footprints. The fact is, the best thing for the gambler may be to lose his business; he’s probably been milking it dry for gambling money anyway. He may need to go back to some honest, humble work as a way of building character. I know, that's Dr. Taber's line, but it makes sense to me. The gambler will not want to do that, of course, but at some point it's to be considered.

TABER: I think we're mostly in agreement here. Better to lose a business than let the gambling continue. But it's always a hard choice.

Scam No. 4: This could mean a lot of embarrassment for the family.

TABER: Here’s an area where those of us interested in gambling problems can learn a lot from society's experience with alcoholism. For generations, having an alcoholic in the family was a disgrace, possibly because some religions called it a moral failure. By the way, we should not ignore the similarities between pathological gambling and alcoholism, although some gamblers would like us to think that gambling is superior to and different from alcoholism. The personality is strikingly similar in many ways.

DR. FRINGE: Back before the prohibition of alcoholic drinks, in late Victorian times, many families harbored a family alcoholic whose problem, mistaken for a character defect, was protected and hidden, usually by some elaborate family conspiracy. Many families still play the cover-up game with their alcoholic, although today it's more likely that they’ll try to arrange treatment in one of the thousands of alcohol treatment centers now in operation. I've sent many patients into treatment.

Alcoholics Anonymous began in the mid-1930s. It spread rapidly, and AA offers real hope for what was once a frustrating, hopeless, and devastating family problem.

The excuses used to hide the alcoholic's behavior were endless, and were just like the excuses offered today to protect the gambler's secret. Aunt Minnie, they used to say, was upstairs with the vapors when, in fact, she was blind drunk. And she may very well have gotten drunk on one or another patent medicine that contained up to 25 percent alcohol. These were medicines offered as cures for female complaints. Sometimes they mixed opium and alcohol in the same concoction. The excuses for alcoholics were endless. Good old Dad was just too exhausted by a hard day at the office to come down for dinner. And sister Suzie had congestion, a case of nervous exhaustion, or cramps.

The more the alcoholism epidemic raged out of control in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the more people tried to cover it up to avoid embarrassing the family. In doing that, they made things worse by protecting and shielding, and in the final analysis enabling the alcoholic to stay drunk. Many alcoholics paid with their lives to spare the family from embarrassment. In the same way, I'm sure, the more we try to hide the gambler's embarrassing behavior the worse it gets.

TABER: The fear of embarrassment is probably the main form of psychological blackmail used by gamblers. Every family member experiences it. The children know that they don't have nice things like the children down the block, whose parents have pretty much the same kinds of jobs and responsibilities, and they live with terrible secrets. They could never tell anyone how Dad or Mom borrows their paper route money, for example. But word gets around that Dad hangs out at the track or that Mom is a bingo freak, and the teasing gets worse.

(Gilda and Tom were sitting close together, hands joined. They had been married for almost a year now. Looking at Tom with teasing fondness, Gilda spoke up.)

GILDA: The wife of a gambler makes excuse after excuse for his being gone. We missed weddings and parties and trips so many times when Tom was gambling. And the unpaid bills always embarrassed me. There were always phone calls from creditors, bill collectors, friends who made loans, banks with bad checks, his boss wanting to know where Tom was, on and on.

JOE: I put my parents through hell, just like Tom here did. At first they made excuses about why their kid, with a college education, couldn't keep a job, support a wife, or get a promotion. Finally they just stopped talking about the problem and retreated into a private world of their own. They had so much fear and anger, and I just ignored their feelings. They were always totally embarrassed by me, and they pretended not to be. We were all in denial.

TABER: How quickly we rush in and use almost any kind of cover-up to protect the family reputation! This con exposes the vulnerability that pride creates. It has so many variations, all designed to get the enabler to come up with money or other solutions to the gambler's problems.

Here are some variations. “It would kill Mom if she saw me hauled into court,” or, “The kids would be too ashamed to go to school if we lost the house.” Or, “They'll drum me out of the Navy. I'll lose my rank and pension, and then you can kiss that damn Officers Wives Club of yours goodbye. Is that the kind of embarrassment you want to bring down on us?”

Notice how smoothly the gambler shifts the responsibility for causing the embarrassment to the innocent partner.

HILDA (a nurse from the Gambling Treatment Program): The sad thing is that usually the embarrassment is so silly. Mom knows. The kids know. The creditors know something’s wrong. The family may deny reality for a while, but long before the gambler is ready to quit, everybody in the family has been through the embarrassment wringer again and again. But to avoid one more embarrassment, they go on enabling and avoiding the ultimate truth. The truth is, nothing will get better until either the gambler stops gambling or the family lets go of the problem completely and puts the gambler out of their lives.

Scam No. 5: I'll have to leave town!

WILLIE: I didn't just threaten to leave town. I left a lot of towns behind in my drinking and gambling days. I'd get attached to people, and sooner or later I'd use the I’m gonna leave scam on them. It was always good for some kind of help. All the poor people who helped me over the years never seemed to realize how much better life would be without me anyway. When I finally did pull out of a town, I told myself I was doing them a favor. No doubt they realized it, too, when I was gone.

TABER: Willie makes an important point. Usually the spouse or parent doesn't realize their own personal strengths, and they don't see the options in life open to them, or to the gambler. Enablers become so used to leaning on a weak stick that they lose confidence in themselves, or become so involved and preoccupied with hopes for a better outcome that they forget the simple option of letting go altogether.

Certainly, the gambler is not always a complete failure. He has his really good moments. So the enabler, like the gambler who gets an occasional win, gets intermittent confirmation of his hopes. Strangely, habits become firmer when the rewards are intermittent. Constant and consistent results seem to produce weaker attachments than unpredictable results! It's strange that few people seem to appreciate a consistent producer nearly as much as they have sympathy for an erratic and unpredictable prodigal who gets it right just once in a while.

MICKEY: Willie might be the exception. He really did keep moving on. Usually the gambler uses the threat of abandonment just to take advantage of the fear and attachment of the enabler. It's scary, but the threat is seldom really carried through because, if the gambler left, he’d have far more to lose than the enabler. I knew cases in which the gambler did leave the family, the home, and even the country. But when the gambler finally does leave town, it's usually unannounced, and not because of the refusal of the rescuer to help. Most of the time he leaves because of a fantasy that, if he didn't have a family or girlfriend to worry about, he could devote all his time and energy to being a professional gambler.

TABER: To follow up with what Mickey said, here we see another of the gambler's delusional or magic ideas at work; he sees himself, wrongly, as being a good provider and a loyal spouse. He tells himself, falsely, that it's the wife's fault he can't concentrate on gambling, and so it’s magically her fault, not his, when things go wrong all the time. Actually, he’s just running away from responsibility and from the reality of his own failure.

AMY (a graduate student intern): I didn't work too long with gamblers, but it seems to me that when the gambler does finally leave, the abandoned spouse often does quite well after that. The gambler, of course, is the one who pays the price for trying to live out a childish fantasy. He often ends up committing crimes, neglecting himself, or moving over on the addictive circle to alcoholism and worse. The family is the best social support system available for all of us. When it works right, it keeps us honest, productive, and sensitive. The family around us, although often a vexation, teaches us caring and responsibility. At least it does in good, working families. When the gambler takes off, he or she loses this basic support system. Then the gambling disorder accelerates to its conclusion in desperation, alienation, and depression.

Since I'm not a member of GA or Gam-Anon, I can tell some stories about people if I disguise names and places. I'll call this woman Dory.

Dory was 53 and raised three children around her gambling husband. She was frightened, guilty, and helpless, and wanted us to provide some magical cure for her gambler. Mike was talking about leaving her again, and of living in Las Vegas, where he could pursue his dream of becoming a professional card counter. It's a fantasy we hear repeatedly, but each gambler seems to think he thought up the idea all by himself. Mike was unwilling to come in for treatment, and he would not attend Gamblers Anonymous.

Dory was terrorized at the thought of being left alone, although Mike had contributed nothing to the marriage for the last 10 or 15 years. She was a humble woman, and I remember her thin face, white hair, and round, steel-rimmed glasses. She never spent anything on herself, and said she had to be very careful with money so she could to meet family problems like unpaid bills and gambling debts.

Dory cried and begged me for suggestions during our first interview, and I told Dr. Taber how helpless she made me feel. She actually brought a notebook and pen, to write down all the wonderful solutions I was supposed to give her.

Dory's fear turned to anger and frustration when I kept bringing the conversation back to her, by asking her more about her own early life, about her education and her children.

“What I am and what I think doesn't matter,” she said. “Can't you see that I'm the one who has to hold this damn marriage and family together?”

As we parted after our first session, Dory told me she had gone to considerable expense to make the trip to the hospital, and felt she had gotten little in return. She was as sharp with money as her husband was foolish about it.

Angry and empty-handed as she was, Dory agreed to return the next week. When she did, she was much more thoughtful. Mike was still pressuring her for a bailout, and Dory told me the specifics of his plan. Over the past few years, Dory had developed a small combination greeting card and gift shop at a local shopping mall, and recently she had been talking with a bank about a loan that would let her move to a larger shop in the same mall and expand her stock. Since the home was under a second mortgage already, all Dory had to put up as collateral was her inventory, her reputation, and her good will. She had figured everything down to the penny, and had convinced the mall owners to forgive the first two months' rent on the new space just so they could fill it. Although the bank would lend only a small amount, Dory's ingenuity and hard work put everything in place for the expansion.

Mike, though, had other plans for the money the bank was willing to lend to his wife. He worked in automobile sales whenever he did work, and he was in deep trouble, having diverted customers' advance deposits to gambling. He'd been able to cover for a long time because the owner trusted him and had other business interests to attend to.

Mike had told Dory time after time that if she didn't help him he might just as well take off and leave her alone to explain what had happened to the money at the car agency. He told her that then she would have to borrow money to pay his debts, and she could forget her shop. “You can tell the kids it was your fault their Dad had to run.” Mike regarded Dory's shop as “that lousy little crap shop where you go to escape reality.” Yet it was her business that was feeding them and paying the mortgage.

Dory had become so unrealistic in her thinking over the years that she actually believed Mike, and felt guilty because her store was only a self-indulgent hobby. Incredibly, she was grateful to Mike for tolerating this hobby. She felt she should be at home more often.

This was the first case I got to handle all by myself, so it really impressed me, I guess. No compulsive gambler can make much progress in self-development until the gambling stops, and I realized that Dory was in the same situation. She wasn’t going to make the most of her talents as a human being until Mike either grew up or moved on. Since maturity for Mike, even with therapy and the help of GA, would take years, I thought that the best thing for Dory would be the thing she feared most: Let Mike leave.

Over about six sessions, Dory began to work on some of her personal issues: the dependency, the false humility, and the fear of being abandoned. But she reached what therapists call maximum benefit, so we broke off the sessions. Things were in a stalemate: Dory would not give Mike the bailout he wanted, and Mike would not give up the delusion that gambling would eventually solve his problems.

A few months later, Dory was back in Dr. Taber's office, confused and hopeless. I'd moved on to another assignment in the hospital, but I was able to come back and see her for a few sessions. Her business was flourishing and demanding more of her time, but Mike had lost his job again. Worse, when he went into the hospital for treatment for ulcers, the doctors had discovered a serious heart problem, and open-heart surgery was pending.

I gave Dory supportive therapy as she tried to juggle all the problems in her life. To make a sad story shorter, Mike finally did leave her, but not in the way he had threatened. He actually refused his surgery because of what he called a personality clash with the doctors. I guess he just couldn't believe he was a mortal person with serious problems. Late one night, on the way home from a card game, his car smashed into a wall and he died. The story we heard was that he had a massive heart attack and had lost consciousness at the wheel.

TABER: Sometimes, in our business, it isn't the patient who gets better. Recently we got a call from Dory. She just wanted to update us and thank the staff for their work. Her shop is doing very well and she’s thinking of opening a second one. She's hired more clerks and she really sounded good.

AL: What a stupid way for Mike to go.

AMY: I wish I could claim credit for Dory's change, but sometimes circumstance succeeds where therapy fails. It may sound brutal, but Mike's death was the best thing that could have happened to her. Clearly, she should have left him long before he left her.

Scam No. 6: But I'll go to jail if you fail me now.

TABER: Lately I've had quite a few patients with legal problems, so this isn't always an empty threat. However, when the gambler uses the fear-of-jail con on the spouse, the gambler usually knows that the chance of jail is actually pretty remote. Most first offenders, in cases of nonviolent crime, get probation, except when the amount of money involved is large, or when publicity puts the judge under pressure.

In my experience, press coverage of sensational gambling losses almost always guarantees a prison term. I recall two recent and similar cases in which I gave expert testimony. Both cases involved thefts of $130,000 or so. One man took the money from real estate deposits, while the other used cash collected in his daily service route. Not a word appeared in the papers about the real estate broker; he went to court in a small eastern town. The route collector, however, worked in a large urban area. Unfortunately, as we entered court for his final sentencing, the TV cameras were grinding away. There had been sensational running newspaper accounts of the case for weeks.

The real estate salesman was given supervised probation with the chance to make restitution, while the route collector went off for a three to five year term in state prison. The route from which he took the money belonged to the city newspaper, and they made sure his case got daily coverage.

It doesn't always go this way, but publicity can be a disadvantage. Strangely enough, many gamblers seem to love the publicity, and we have to protect them from themselves. They like to think of themselves as special and different, even in their crimes!

If any sort of weapon is involved—and that's rare among pathological gamblers—the chances of a prison term go up. In some states a first offense involving use of a gun results in a mandatory jail term.

RUTH: I'm just a secretary here at the hospital, but I handle lots of calls. One problem with gamblers in trouble with the law is their unwillingness to cooperate with an attorney. We had a junior league baseball coach who gambled away his team's treasury and then, without consulting an attorney, walked into the local police station and confessed the whole thing to the chief. I couldn't believe he didn't want a lawyer.

TABER: Ruth's right. Spontaneous confessions are common among gamblers, and they usually regret it later. It's the honesty con. By appearing forthright, charming, and totally at the mercy of the officers, our young coach believed everyone would understand and allow him time to win back the money at the racetrack. When the con failed, his rage at being arrested and charged was enormous. He felt entitled to special treatment because he confessed all by himself and therefore was not the same as those other crooks. In the eyes of the law, of course, a crime is a crime, whether it's confessed or detected. But tell that to a gambler if you can.

BIG BOB: That's a problem we have in GA. We really aren't consistent in the advice we give to gamblers with legal problems. What's your comment, Dr. Taber?

TABER: A gambler in trouble with the law should be referred immediately to an attorney or a public defender. Family should never interfere in the legal process, or try to buy legal solutions through expensive attorneys. The gambler needs to take the initiative; he or she is no different from any other lawbreaker, and this mental disorder does not excuse the crime. Although, if there's a guilty plea, the court might take the disorder into consideration at sentencing.

Jail, for most people, is unthinkable, and we have to help them think about it. Fear of prison works on both the enabler and the gambler. The fact is that in the extreme, when gamblers actually do serve time, it's not fatal, and it sometimes results in changed attitudes. Recently, in New Jersey, authorities found so many pathological gamblers in prison that they decided to open special Gamblers Anonymous meetings in the jails. Such efforts may turn out to do at least as well as expensive psychotherapy or hospital programs.

Second or third offenders may or may not go to jail, depending on a number of complications. If worse comes to worse, we need to remember that jail is not the end of life. I know many gamblers who have come back from jail to carve out responsible lives. It all depends on attitude, on whether the gambler is remorseful, or angry and defiant. The GA program calls for making amends, and prison is one way of doing that.

DR. FRINGE: I remember the father of a gambler who ignored my pleas to let the son deal with his problems. I was treating the father for ulcers. Father said, flatly, “I'll never let my son go to jail.” The father paid the debts, as he had many times in the past, and hired the best lawyers to defend the son. He got his son off by using money and political influence. Today that father is dead. He died alone because his son was in action out in Las Vegas. The whole estate went to the casinos.

The father may have salvaged his own pride and reputation, he may have had a few moments in which he could feel that he was a good father doing the right things, and he may have assuaged his chronic guilt about having failed to rear the boy properly. But today the son is in prison serving a long term for armed robbery.

TABER: As you might guess, the gambler sometimes doesn't have to push his jail con very hard because the enabler is often ready to believe the story, for personal and emotional reasons. It always takes two for any con to work, the con man and a willing enabler.

Sadly, the more the gambler succeeds with the Don't let me go to jail! con, the more likely it is that he will sooner or later go to jail.

MICKEY: If you really want to hurt a pathological gambler, give him what he wants rather than what he needs. That's why those of us who have been around GA for a while always try to help gamblers meet their obligations under the law. If we don't learn to be responsible for our actions, eventually we begin to act as if the laws don't apply to us. This is the attitude—that deep feeling that you're exempt from common, ordinary law—which, more than anything, shortens the path to jail.

Scam No. 7: It's your fault I'm in this mess anyway!

ALICE (Big Bob's wife): Bob here was master of this scam. We hear about this in Gam-Anon all the time. The gambler loves to say that others are the reason he gambled, and that these people will have to live with the guilt if they don't come up with a bailout. Spouse, children, parents, and employers— they all get accused of spying, meddling, or dictating, even of being unfaithful. The message is, “You drove me to gambling so it's your responsibility to help me out now that I'm in trouble.”

That’s nonsense! Isn't it convenient how the gambler will take credit for his victories and blame his defeats on someone else? Totally unwilling to permit anyone else to control his behavior, he can suddenly and grandly proclaim the power of someone else to drive him to gambling! That strategy suits his purpose to deny responsibility for his own actions.

The wife gets told that he had to gamble because she doesn't love him enough. She either wants too much sex or won't give him enough; either way it's her fault. So he has this great void he must fill with Lady Luck. Or he tells her that she doesn't understand him, or she's insensitive, or she's preoccupied with her job or children. Wives aren't perfect, but no one can force another human being to gamble, short of putting a gun to their head. I'm so grateful to Gam-Anon for teaching me this.

TABER: Avoiding personal responsibility for disastrous gambling consequences by assigning it to someone else is the strategy underneath the it’s your fault con. I've had this con put on me many, many times during the process of psychotherapy. As soon as I begin to talk about personal growth and change, as soon as I push the gambler to examine his own life and personal values—in fact, any time I lean too heavily—the gambler responds with the threat that if I keep pushing he may have to return to gambling in order to deal with those injured feelings.

Often at this point, I reach into my pocket and offer to stake him to the first bet, if he promises never to come back. Somehow this helps most gamblers see through their con, and let go of it. I’ve never yet had to give a gambler a penny to gamble with!

Scam No. 8: If you loved me…

KATY: “If you really loved me, had respect for me, understood me, were loyal to me, had a sense of responsibility, and so on and so forth … then you’d help me out.” I can almost hear Janie's voice saying that now. The message is that something is wrong with other people for not coming up with the money for the bailout. The gambler knows her mark so well, and how accurately she can read the enabler's emotional needs. She can take the things that others feel best about in themselves, devotion or loyalty, for example, and use them to get what she wants. She can pick up on the things others have secrete doubts about—skill in expressing love, the way a father deals with life, anything—and use these insecurities, twisting them to her own advantage to get what she believes she must have.

TABER: Katy says it all. Love is not measured by a tolerance for foolishness.

Scam No. 9: If you were a good Christian…

AL: Or Jew, or Catholic, or whatever … then you would naturally understand and help me pay my gambling debts, get me out of jail and overlook my mistakes.

TABER: Al, you must have tried this yourself once or twice. This trick implies that if you don't cave in you're not of good moral character, you're not strong in your faith, or you're ignorant of scripture and moral law. Like so many desperate souls with their backs to the wall, the gambler can make up new ethical rules and Biblical interpretations like a veteran theologian. Once again, this con tries to tell us that the problem is the enabler's responsibility, regardless of the gambler's own responsibilities.

I've urged the victims of the religious con to consult a minister, priest, or rabbi, but I've usually been ignored. When this happens, I have to think that the victim, the enabler, perhaps at an unconscious level, actually wants the old script to play out again. But we shouldn't blame the victims. If they have emotional reasons for falling for a con, then we should offer them counseling.

In order to change, one has to do things differently. If someone does consult an expert in ethics or moral law, he or she should pick a person they respect, and follow the recommendations they get. It’s probably best not to spell out the gambling problem, or get into one's own doubts and feelings, until the authority has settled the theological issue. Most religious authorities are not experts on addiction or gambling. The gambler has posed a question of philosophy, moral law, or scriptural interpretation. Answer that inquiry for its own sake, and then get on with the gambling issues.

Our question to religious authorities would be something like, “Should there be any limits placed on our obligation to help others in trouble?” Do not mention gambling or it may sway your expert's opinion. Keep it in the pure and abstract realm.

DR. FRINGE: Right. Is it necessary, according to moral law, to pay and pay, to help and help, without limit and without question? Must the charity of a good Christian or Jew or whatever extend beyond forgiveness, and include giving everything one can earn or borrow in order to solve the sinner's problems? Does the marriage contract require a wife to pay her husband's gambling debts, bail him out of jail when he steals, and lie for him? Of course not!

TABER: If you’re accused by a gambler of moral or ethical failure, first get the correct moral response—the one you really believe in—planted firmly in mind, and then resolve to follow the course of action that is right for you. Later, if you feel comfortable, you can share your personal feelings with a clergyman, but we have to remember that such a person may be unsophisticated about gamblers and their devious ways. He or she, in the spirit of uncritical charity, may want to solve the problem with a bailout, just like most people in their first encounter with a manipulating gambler.

HILDA: Even if we do our homework, it's not likely that the gambler will be impressed now that we're giving a rational answer to his irrational impulse to gamble. In consulting an expert we can at least relieve the pressure on ourselves, so we can think more clearly about options other than giving a bailout.

Scam No. 10: Silence.

GAIL: You know, I think silence can be one of the hardest cons to deal with. It's almost guaranteed to get me to say, “What's the matter, dear?” Then I'm in the position of begging Steve to unload the problem. When Steve gives me the silent treatment my imagination runs wild, and I start taking responsibility for getting him to talk about his problems. Then, like a script, he does me the favor of letting me into his confidence. And once I've gone that far, I've taken the bait and it’s very hard to resist getting involved in a bailout.

TABER: I advise people to find a friend, perhaps someone in Gam-Anon, or even a therapist, to talk with about their fears. Let the gambler play his sucker game alone. Don't assume a leadership role in solving the gambler's problems by trying to coax an end to the silence.

Scam No. 11: I'll kill myself!

TABER: This is one of the really scary scams because, of course, we never know for sure when it’s more than a threat.

BIG BOB: Gamblers can be very dramatic. I've heard lots of talk about suicide in GA rooms. They get that little quiver in the voice and start sobbing; it's a very effective act. I don't mean to say that threats of suicide should be ignored, just that we're not experts in dealing with suicidal people. We should turn the problem over to someone who is, I think.

TABER: Bob, nobody is really an expert in predicting whether or not a person will try suicide. Probably the best response would be to dial 911, or your local emergency number. If someone is really talking seriously about suicide, I suggest you do this without much argument or discussion. Just report that there’s a suicidal person who needs to be transported to the nearest psychiatric emergency room. This should abort the con quickly, or, if the gambler really is suicidal, fetch the help you need.

WILLIE: That's the last thing most people would think of doing. But heck, it’s the right thing to do. Most people would probably try to beg and argue and persuade to get the guy will stop his threats about suicide, but that would only be falling into that trap and taking responsibility for the life of someone else.

TABER: I remember Sid, a tall, skinny fellow who for years had an on again-off again marriage with a wife who covered his tracks and paid his bills. Finally, she was fed up and tossed him out of the house for the last time. In the past, after a few days of sleeping in his car or at a friend's apartment, Sid had always charmed and conned his way back into the house. But this time Peg, his long-suffering wife, went to court for a divorce.

Sid was a pest exterminator, and he knew his poisons. Several times in the past, he had threatened to do away with himself by locking himself up in the next house he fumigated. Peg knew he had all kinds of deadly poisons, and she had often worried that someday he’d actually carry out his threats.

Sid was eventually served with a court order banning him from the home. Now, he knew, was the time for really dramatic action. He drained a gallon jug of liquid poison and filled it with amber-colored water. He left just enough trace of the poison in the water to cause some convincing symptoms if he had to be taken off to the hospital. He was pretty sure he might have to drink some of his brew to convince Peg he was serious, but he was also confident he could again get her sympathy and win his way back into the house this way.

He was, in a manner of speaking, dead wrong.

One evening, when their young daughter and her grandmother were sitting with his wife in front of the television, he stormed into the living room, gallon jug in hand, and yelled, “Without my family I'm not worth shit! You make me feel so rotten I ought to be dead. Please let me come home so I don't have to die!”

The begging went on while his wife screamed at him to leave, his daughter sobbed, and his mother-in-law yelled, “I told you he was no damn good!”

Desperate in the face of their unyielding anger, Sid hoisted the jug of semi-potent rat poison to his lips and took a deep swig. “Yuk!” he gasped, and then took another belt, amid a growing storm of anger and confusion. Peg, a veteran of many stormy scenes, had really had it this time. She didn't care if he lived or died, a state of mind Sid had never seen in her before. She stomped over to the door and flung it open. Pointing out into the rainy, dark street, she barked an order at her whining husband; “For Christ's sake, don't die on my carpet. Go die in the gutter where you belong!”

That really slowed Sid down. Unable to think of anything to say, he wobbled out into the night. However, he recovered his presence of mind when he noticed that his wife had not slammed the door. Failing at this critical moment to hold a hard line, the family had gathered at the door to see if Sid would actually croak. Perhaps they only wanted to see if they needed to call the ambulance. What would the neighbors think if they let him die out in the rain?

Possessed with a strong sense of the dramatic, Sid made a few staggering circles on the sidewalk, clutching his belly, then he dropped to the pavement like a fallen Indian fighter with an arrow in his gut. He had been on the sidewalk only a moment when he felt himself actually beginning to vomit. The wisdom of the human body had begun to cleanse him of the mild poison.

At this precise moment, who should appear out of the night but the collection man, sent by Sid's unpaid bookie. Seeing him, Sid jumped up and began arguing that the man had no right to bother innocent people at their homes at night. “Come see me at work like I told you, you creep!” yelled Sid.

Sid's remarkable restoration to vigorous health also restored his wife's determination; she now slammed and locked the front door. The collection goon was angry at Sid's insults and proceeded to administer a hard beating, which left Sid again lying on the sidewalk. This time Sid wasn't able to get up so quickly.

AMY: In truth, of course, the suicide rate among pathological gamblers is high, and however pathetic their manipulations may seem, suicidal actions make constructive moves very difficult for the family. It's so hard to resist taking on responsibility than when a loved one claims to be suicidal. The threat of self-destruction strikes at the heart of our senses of compassion, love, and loyalty. What a burden! To take responsibility for the life of another human being.

HILDA: But you know, the suicide con can escalate from one threat to the next, and become more serious and deadly each time. Ridiculous as his actions may seem, Sid could very well have miscalculated and killed himself. The threats have to escalate over time, since people get tired of hearing them and begin to ignore the milder hints. It takes louder and more violent threats just to get attention. In the end, suicidal gestures are made. You know, they scratch a wrist or gulp down a handful of aspirin.

When gestures no longer work the desperation increases, and so does the dangerousness of each attempt. What started out as an immature effort to get attention or as simple manipulation can lead to gambling with one's life. In the end, an impulsive suicide can occur. We've had suicide investigations here in the hospital many times, always for psychiatric cases, and everyone around the patient racks their brains trying to think what else we might have done.

And believe it or not, some people seem to get hooked on the thrill and drama of the suicide scene, just like Sid. They repeat the experience just for the excitement. Sometimes a person seems to be persuading himself that he really does want to die.

TABER: Threats of suicide shouldn't let us ignore the fact that a gambler's depression is usually very real, and that gambling serves as a temporary antidepressant. This depression can be dangerous. Almost everyone knows, or knows about, someone who actually committed suicide. My experience teaches me to be very careful in dealing with suicidal behavior. The average person should not try to deal with it alone. Get professional help to stop the con; if the gambler is really contemplating death, he needs professionals. Either way, the sooner you go for expert help the better for everyone. Every large city has a suicide hot line, a service that can guide anyone to the help needed with suicide threats.

AL: Yo, Doc, I hear your suicide hot line is 1-800-JUMP NOW!

TABER: Thanks, funny man.

Scam No. 12: I'm just a weak person, and you're so strong.

FANNY (the only woman gambler in the room): Plenty of male gamblers use this con on their wives and mothers, but we ladies are masters at it. It's great on husbands, brothers and fathers. You gotta flatter their pride and stroke the male ego. You have to act really dependent to play on their need to control things. With big-money debts, the gambler knows she can't face her creditors alone, so she begs the guy to come up with the money to save his damsel in distress. Flattery may sound nice, but it's emotional blackmail too.

TABER: Fanny's put that one in a nutshell. The next one is somewhat in the same area.

Scam No. 13: I'll have to sell my body on the streets!

FANNY: Of course! What's a husband or father gonna do with a threat like that? He's blinded by pride, duty, anger, fear, and frustration. He just wants to punish the gambler, but he knows that does no good. And it certainly wouldn't fix the gambler's situation.

How many nights I walked the Boardwalk in Atlantic City, afraid to go home and desperate to gamble some more. Sure, I thought about turning a trick for the money. I never did, but I certainly threatened it at home to get the heat off when people came down on me. I know women who turned to prostitution to pay gambling debts, or just to get back in action. I’ve got stories I could tell in a regular GA meeting, maybe, but not here.

AMY: Most authorities claim that an underlying problem in prostitution is low self-esteem, and that's common among gamblers and alcoholics. Losing at gambling lowers self-esteem even more, and since a bailout inevitably leads to more gambling, we need to seek long-term solutions to the self-worth problem, especially for the woman gambler.

TABER: About all we can do to avoid this kind of blackmail is offer help with problem-solving, not pay the bills. In other words, offer no material help, only information, support, advice, and encouragement. This may not go down well with some folks, but an adult woman is normally in control of her own body. I don't think any man has the right to ignore that. Make it clear that you respect the woman's right to do what she must, but also make it clear what your limits are, and what you’ll do for yourself if she follows through with the threat.

In the case of a minor child, one should, of course, try to control the behavior through legal means. But it's counter-productive to force your will on another adult.

Scam No. 14: Help me just this last time and then I'll quit.

TABER: Anyone who has shared life with a problem gambler has heard this one, probably more than once. One of the best known of all books on alcoholism, written by Vernon Johnson, is entitled I'll Quit Tomorrow.

Promises to quit by anyone with an addiction are simply irrelevant. It's a “Trust me, believe in me” con. In fact, it's best for the enabler to avoid being dependent or having to trust the gambler in any way. It's that dependence—emotional and financial—that makes people potential victims of emotional blackmail.

“Help me now, do this or that for me now, and then I'll quit,” is an attempt to bargain. The quitting is conditional on the enabler doing something right now that the gambler wants done. But of course, to be sincere, the promise to quit must be unconditional. Anything less is plain blackmail. The conditions the gambler puts on quitting include waiting until he gets even financially, asking the enabler to quit one of his or her own bad habits, taking one last shot at gambling, allowing the gambler a special privilege such as substituting an affair with a mistress for gambling, or getting one more bailout.

When the gambler offers to make a deal requiring someone to do something to get him to quit, the gambler is really trying to bargain with his mental disorder. It's an expression of what we call entitlement; “I'll give you what you want from me if, in return, you give me something important.” The gambler doesn't have the insight that he is the one who will benefit by stopping. He feels instead that he should be paid, or get some special privilege, for not doing what he never should have been doing in the first place. This is nonsense, of course. We dare not promote the idea that you can bargain with a mental disorder.

GILDA: I faced that kind of blackmail from Tom many times, and I learned just to repeat to myself over and over, like the old broken record, “I can't pay you to stop gambling, you'll have to stop for your own reasons because abstinence will be its own reward.” It's what I had to learn in Gam-Anon, and it helped a lot.

Scam No. 15: I'll pay you back with interest.

ELLY: There may be some remote chance that the gambler will pay it back, but they don't care about paying back Mom or the family nearly as much as they care about the action of gambling. The payback, if it comes, is usually just a way of keeping their credit good, not from an honest sense of obligation.

The family who loans money is always at the bottom of the list to get paid back, since the gambler knows that they're the least likely people to cause trouble with threats or legal action. Most gamblers don't think that stealing from family is really a crime. If a relative takes some kind of action for repayment, the gambler is amazed that legal problems could arise out of family debt. Interest on the family loans? Forget it!

TABER: A loan to the family gambler may arise from the rescuer's irrational need to keep the gambler dependent, or to demonstrate personal power. In that case, there really is no expectation that the interest, or even the principal, will be paid. I can understand that misguided family members will loan money once or twice, but when this fails to solve the problem, as it almost always does, more bailout loans only demonstrate a family whose members do not understand their own self-defeating behavior. Many enablers get some little bit of self-worth, some pitiful sense of self-importance, in being needed by the gambler. These motives should be examined with the help of a competent therapist, or in Gam-Anon.

The interest ploy is sometimes directed at fellow workers and supervisors. Even at work, there can be a conspiracy of silence that protects the gambler, unless he's dealing with a common loan shark. I recall the office manager for a stock brokerage known as an easy mark for loans; he was always good for some money or a cover-up story. This guy thought he had good reason to lend money or “cook the books” to cover misconduct among his sales people because some of his best securities salesmen were really gamblers who churned their own stock-trading accounts and gambled as heavily in the markets like a casino gambler.

Top-producing salesmen who gamble in their own trading accounts have to be good salesmen to produce the commissions needed for their own trading. By lending money and by covering up gambling among his employees, our manager thought he was protecting his best salesmen. Unfortunately, he failed to realize that pathological gambling is both chronic and progressive. Inevitably, certain accounts became so overextended that even the boss could no longer maintain the cover-ups.

They all went down together when the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission investigated. The manager drew the longest prison term. The judge pointed out that the violation of trust placed in management was a crime greater even than the stealing by the salespersons.

Scam No. 16: It's a good investment!

BIG BOB: Most gamblers do have big wins occasionally. Once in a while, they find themselves with lots of money, and then they can really go nuts. These big wins are pretty infrequent, but they set people up. Big wins fuel grandiose expectations. Some enablers are just friends and acquaintances, but they can be driven by greed as much as the gambler. There are people foolish enough to believe every get-rich-quick scheme offered by fast talking con men.

DR. FRINGE: Sometimes the family member, having enjoyed the fruits of the good times, wants to go on believing these days will return again. Such a person, I think, is a vicarious gambler who doesn't place bets himself but rides the back of the gambler, experiencing the roller-coaster second hand. Whatever the case, this enabler invests in the fantasy, trying to keep hope alive.

TABER: One more story about investing. Augie was a big man in his mid-30s, with this great head of bushy black hair, and the largest brown eyes I ever saw. He'd been in Vietnam and served as a Ranger in a special-forces unit that always got the difficult missions. He was wounded and even experienced hand-to-hand combat. Back in civilian life, he favored expensive, casual clothing when he wasn't working. His self-confidence made him easy to trust in his little southern hometown. Everybody knew everybody else there, and when Augie returned from combat, he was welcomed back. You could usually find him at local football games and around city hall, where he worked as a deputy sheriff.

Augie played around with silver purchases, and eventually began to speculate in contracts for the future delivery of silver bars. The metal held a fascination for him, but so did the fast trading action. Sometimes he would boast about large profits, but when he was losing, he just clammed up. Yet he never failed to give that big, endearing smile.

Augie's family began to show signs of strain. His wife, Grace, went to work, postponing their plans for a second child. New furniture, new cars, and toys for their boy receded into lost hopes and dreams. The house was shabby, the old car was always breaking down, and the son took a paper route to earn his lunch money.

Augie eventually began to act illegally as a commodities broker in silver futures. He knew the technical language, and he could show some pretty impressive trading records, reflecting big gains on the futures markets. Of course, he never disclosed the ones in which the losses far out-stripped even his best gains. Although he really was quite an expert, he never bothered to get the necessary license to work as a securities advisor. He wasn't interested in making money on commissions anyway; he liked the action. He started to accept money for investment in silver contracts from friends who wanted to believe his stories of big profits. He used this new money to pay off back loans, and then invest in futures on credit, which is called margin trading.

Augie traded long and short, and as often as he could. Actually, almost all professional traders liquidate their positions before the contracts mature, so the whole thing is really just a paper-trading game. It's pure gambling for most amateurs.

Everybody of any importance in Augie's hometown apparently invested in Augie’s scheme, some more than once. As Dr. Fringe said, some people are blissfully willing to pour good money after bad. After all, Augie did promise a return on investment that was a lot more than the interest paid on savings accounts. For quite a while, Augie kept things going with occasional wins, and by paying off old investors with money from new investors.

And so Augie found himself reinventing one of the oldest known investment frauds, the pyramid scam. “This will be one of the best investments you'll ever make. Just ask Judge Brown or Uncle Thaddeus how well it worked for them.” Augie was careful to keep a few well-known investors happy at the expense of others so he could maintain impressive testimonials to offer his new victims.

When the system collapsed, the town had a sensational scandal to talk about, but everybody felt sorry for Augie. He was a good deputy, and had helped many of his victims during floods and storms. He owed thousands of dollars to dozens of citizens. He entered a tearful guilty plea in court, using the honesty con. The judge gave Augie a token jail term that was shortened by the parole board, and these good people sent him home from prison after only six months.

All this easy treatment amounted to a mild slap on the wrist, and did Augie little good. He didn't get professional help, no one realized he was a pathological gambler, and he never attended a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. The nearest meeting, in fact, was several hundred miles away. But while he was in prison, his wife called me looking for information. She was the only one who clearly recognized that Augie was a pathological gambler. But nothing came of her realization since no one in town would understand her view.

She continued to call me from time to time. Augie got right back in the swing of things. Although he couldn't work in the Sheriff's Department, he found a sales job in a local furniture store where the manager, who was one of Augie's earlier victims, was more than willing to give a good man a new start.

Augie cooked up a new investment scheme involving lumber; he told people he was scouting good stands of timber that he’d buy from local landowners and farmers. He’d then sell it as it stood, at higher prices, to lumber mills. Again, people were eager to invest in the scheme, even though the man who offered it was now a convicted felon. To repeat: It always takes two to complete any con.

Augie took the money to Atlantic City where he thought he could win at the tables. Once in a while, he actually sold some trees, but hardly enough to make any real money. This time, when his house of cards collapsed, he made a serious suicide effort, but a friend from the sheriff's office discovered him in time. Augie was out on a lonely road, unconscious in the front seat of his idling car, a hose from the tailpipe stuck in the window.

The wife with whom I had had so many conversations finally engineered his admission to the gambling treatment program. We did all we could to help Augie look at his life while we waited for the disposition of his case in court. Of course, the judge had to give him a longer sentence this time. Augie stayed in touch with us and his new friends in Gamblers Anonymous throughout his prison stay, and at last report he was doing well, working in a town up north. Fortunately he has begun to look at some of the effects of his combat experiences. Apparently, although a brave and conscientious soldier, he had not been immune to the stress and trauma of war. Nor had he dealt with the horror and degradation of some of the wartime acts in which he engaged.

Such traumatic experiences, and one's own brutality, can be shoved out of consciousness perhaps, but unless they’re honestly faced, re-evaluated, and even re-lived with the help of a skilled therapist, their effects can color and distort life for years afterward. Many of the survivors of the Nazi concentration camps did well for a time after liberation, but later a significant percentage of them tended toward impulsive behavior such as gambling, drinking, and drug abuse.

Traumatic life experiences do not automatically mandate that the individual will develop an addiction to gambling, or anything else. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) does not absolve anyone of criminal behavior and general accountability, but it does need to be addressed and treated as part of an overall recovery program.

Scam No. 17: The big lie.

AL: I think we gamblers invented lying. When we run out of cons we become chronic liars, and we can be quite convincing. Every late stage gambler is a master of the big lie, and almost every true rescuer is a sucker for one.

ELLY: It’s amazing how often a spouse, parent, child, or employer will buy into one big lie after another.

TABER: Here are just a few of the imaginative big lies gamblers have told me. Remember, these lies are told by charming, sincere, intelligent adults, usually with teary eyes, elaborate detail, and real emotion.

“My kid sister has to have an abortion. Mom would die if she knew, and Sis will try it on her own if I can't get the money.” This man didn't even have a sister!

“I know this dealer's wife, and she told me how much he steals from the casino. He'll throw things my way to keep quiet, but I have to have some startup money.” Casino dealers know just how difficult it is to steal from the casino. The United States Mint in Washington, D.C., has less stringent employee surveillance than most casinos.

“Dad is going to get put out of the nursing home if I don't come up with $2,500 right now. I don't want to see him living on the street, or in the mission home.” Dad is really Uncle Harry, whose estate is paying all his expenses; Dad left home 20 years ago and hasn't been seen since, so the ruse is difficult to dispute.

“My son gets so angry with my going to bingo he'll beat me again if he finds out I lost my whole Social Security check. Just let me have a little food money.” The son regularly has to feed his mother and pay her bills already because of her habit. The worst he ever did was yell at her.

The list is endless, and I'm always amazed to learn how little of what the gambler tells others is really true, when he or she is desperate for a bailout. She'll often lie when you least expect it, and for reasons you would never dream of. When she wins she rarely tells you the true amount because she’s already lost part of it, or she’s keeping a large chunk aside for her secret stash. For many gamblers, compulsive lying becomes a freestanding addiction in its own right. After a while, even they don't know why the lying comes naturally, even when it serves no purpose.

There's an old joke that shows how gamblers think. A prominent citizen was walking down a city street when he was approached by a sleazy, badly dressed man who had the reputation of being a compulsive gambler. “Please, friend, spare me a dollar to buy some coffee,” begged the hungry gambler. “Bosh!” cried the citizen. “If I gave you a dollar you’d only gamble it away.” “No, no!” cried the old gambler, clutching at his pocket to indicate his stash. “Gambling money I got. It's coffee I can't afford.”

With priorities like these, lying comes easily.

Scam No. 18: Switching.

TABER: The last item for today is a tactic not confined to gamblers. The enabler or intended rescuer begins to argue with the gambler, pointing out past lies and disappointments. Suddenly the gambler switches the conversation to some defect or failure of the enabler. Every time you criticize or attack the gambler, he points out something that proves you're not perfect either. A gambler I'll call Ed used to pick his mother clean time after time, using most of our variations of emotional blackmail at one time or another. He always held some emotional ace in the hole that he could pull out when all else failed.

“Mom,” Ed would say when he was pushed to desperation, “you can damn well blame yourself for how I turned out. It was you who left Dad when I was only three. You deprived me of my father, and you turned him against me.”

Dad was an abusive alcoholic, but Mom harbored an intense streak of guilt about her failed marriage. Ed knew this, and used it with deadly effect as the final lever in pushing Mom into yet another bailout. She had probably saved Ed from years of abuse at his father's hands, but her strong religious training placed the blame, in her mind, squarely upon her own shoulders. Ed's switching worked every time. It was a cruel and heartless resort to vicious psychological dirty pool.

The various forms of psychological and emotional blackmail are endless. We can't immunize anyone to all possible forms of manipulation, but I hope the examples we've shared will get people to take a serious look at the ways gamblers maneuver enablers. Please remember that a visit to any Gam-Anon meeting will put you in contact with people who have experienced this kind of thing firsthand. They'll be glad to fill in the details and help a family member get over the rough spots. And they can help build a healthy and caring skepticism about the stories gamblers tell. Above all, you’ll no longer feel you’re alone.