Seniors & Addiction: Growing Old Gambling (2018)

Introduction

With more disposable income and free time, experts warn that Baby Boomers face an increased risk of developing serious gambling problems. In the Midwest, easy access to both state and tribal casinos—as well as lottery games, keno, and sports betting—makes gambling more readily available. Many seniors engage in gambling as a social activity, but when it spirals out of control, recovering financially can be extremely difficult or even impossible.

NET’s original documentary explores the rise of problem gambling among Baby Boomers. It shares powerful personal accounts from individuals who have experienced emotional and financial turmoil, alongside insights and advice from top experts in crisis intervention and addiction treatment for seniors.

Quotes

“You can make the argument that the generation that is most susceptible for develop gambling as a problematic behavior are Baby Boomers. Older adults have more time, more resources, than younger adults, and they are more willing to go places, socially … Older adults, many times, use casinos, bingo parlors, keno places, as social places. It’s a place to go, it’s my night out. Wouldn’t you go someplace where everyone was like you? And so they’re all congregating there.”

“Recovery is a day-at-a-time process, but it’s a forever process … It’s a very insidious addiction. It hijacks everything that is logical and sane about your thinking, and causes you to act in the most illogical, insane way.”

“I had a moment of crisis. I was thinking of committing suicide because I had ran out of money to pay rent. I had no money to pay my credit cards, my cell phone bill. I had written bad checks. So I felt hopeless, totally hopeless. I’m pulling my hair out because I just wanted to kill myself. I just had this awful feeling that I had to do it, and I had two ways to do it even, two ways that I was thinking of doing it. And then I decided to call the 1-800-BETSOFF and they took me to the hospital where I stayed for five days.”

“When you look specifically at women, when you look at older women, I can tell you that their faces look very similar. They typically are women who, they’ve raised their family, they’ve had the successful career, they’ve had the good marriage, but as you know, once we get older, life can get tougher. And when you start to experience losses, sort of the perfect storm that can happen, and particularly in a community like Vegas where people may come here to retire.”

“The average age of gamblers in Las Vegas is creepin’ up and up. It’s interesting, though, that a significant percentage, actually over 30% of my patients here at the Problem Gambling Center, are over 51 years of age.”

“It’s a little more devilish, because of that chase phenomenon … I’ve never had a late-stage alcoholic say, If I get drunk just right, my liver will heal. But my patients sincerely say, If I could just get $1,000, I’d win back my 401K.”

“You can never be too old to get this addiction, but you can also never be too old to get the recovery, and that’s really the message that we need them to hear.”

“In the 1990’s, state-sponsored lottery and native American-owned casinos were introduced to Wisconsin. Today, statistics suggest 333,000 state residents have a gambling problem. Seniors and adolescents have the highest risk of developing a gambling addiction.”

“When I started looking at the risk factors for gambling addiction, they seemed to me to be concentrated in Baby Boomers. Isolation, the sense of guilt, stigma, forbidden fruit, the more repetitive forms of gambling where you can drop an awful lot of money very, very quickly, seem to be where the Baby Boomers’ preferences lie.”

“Some people would refer to this as kind of a hidden addiction among this age group, because the current cohort of older adults tend to be rather stoic, and so they tend to want to take care of their own problems.”