To my surprise, my father’s seemingly successful business was hanging on by a thread. He admitted his shortcomings had gotten the best of him and that he was not able to run his business anymore. For many years, my father was the best in his industry. Now, the consequences of his drinking and gambling had caught up to him. His business was on the verge of bankruptcy. Not surprisingly, his employees were lazy, arrogant, and uncaring. Being a caretaker and yearning for his approval, the decision to join his business was easy, but to keep the business afloat I had to make drastic changes.
I wasn’t given the authority to fire any of his workers, so I sent them home early without pay. I took on all of their work myself. I worked long hours. Eventually, the employees asked to be let go. I hired new employees who were enthusiastic and ambitious team players. To find new clients and get back former clients, I offered free services. I would tell potential customers that the first time I picked up material from them I would turn it into trim and return the finished product at no cost. The key to my success was returning the trim to them in a matter of hours, knowing my competitors could not accomplish this. This allowed me to successfully get my foot in the door and show our customers how fast and efficient we had become.
Miraculously, my father started getting help for his drinking. A transformation took place as he began telling me how proud he was of my accomplishments. He gave me full credit for saving his business. I thought his praise would remedy my problem. I was wrong. Nothing could heal what was broken inside; my real problem—my victim thinking—continued to be fueled by the warden’s voice.
Victim Thinking
It was easy to be the victim, especially when things did not go the way I wanted. I wanted the world to revolve around me. When something did not go my way, I sought comfort in being the victim. The long hours and the financial success of the business could not fill the emptiness inside. I still felt alone and unworthy despite having a loving wife, a big house, expensive cars, and all the money I would ever need. I needed something to ease my internal pain. I chose not to drink because it reminded me of the terrible times I had with my father.
Gambling and Attempting to Fix the Emptiness Inside
Gambling appeared to be the solution to all my problems and became my drug of choice. Gambling helped me forget how I felt. Big losses entitled me to special treatment from the bookies. Even when I won, I knew deep inside that it was only a matter of time before I would lose the money. I even told the bookie to hold my winnings knowing he was going to get it back anyway. The reality was, I was not betting to win, but rather to lose. My compulsion created a need to keep increasing the amount of my bets until eventually I would lose everything. As I gambled more, I was losing substantial amounts of money. While I was making a fortune in my business, I was losing two fortunes to gambling. I remember the day I had to give the bookie $20,000. He met me in his brand new Lincoln Continental and gave me a special number to place my bets where the line would never be busy. I remember saying to myself, I just bought him that car and took the money from my own family.
Throughout my addiction, I tried to convince myself that I was a better man than my father. After all, he was an absentee father who was driven by his own selfish obsessions. In reality, I was no better. My mind was always drifting away to the teams I gambled on. Consumed with self-hatred and guilt, I finally told my wife how much money I lost gambling. I owned a few businesses and was able to pay my debts out of one of them without her knowing. Eventually, I depleted our savings account and my wife discovered our bank book. She took the kids, went to stay with her parents, and told me to get help. My son was three years old, and my daughter was a year old. Although my wife had every right to do what she did, I felt abandoned, just like I did as a child. I didn’t deserve to be abandoned as a child, but now that I was an adult I had no one to blame but myself.
Initially, I didn’t really want to get help for my gambling problem. It was not until later that I finally made an appointment with a therapist. I was trying to control my addiction, but, as with all addictions, I did not have the power to battle it on my own. About two months later the pain of my destructive actions started to outweigh the joy of gambling. I never wanted to see my family walking out the door again. I made the decision to get help, and I needed a plan of action. This new way of thinking came to influence how I would live the rest of my life. The problem was, the warden did not want his voice ignored.
My therapist made it clear that if I did not stop gambling, I would not find happiness. The warden’s voice was stronger than the therapist’s voice, so I tried gambling one more time. This time I thought that I could control it. I promised myself that I would only bet on football games, because that is what I had the most success with. By the time the season ended, I had slipped into my past behavior and began betting on basketball games, too, even though I had no success betting on basketball. It occurred to me that I wasn’t controlling my addiction, but rather my addiction was controlling me.
The Resulting Destructive Behavior
At this point, I realized I wasn’t gambling to win; instead, I was gambling to fill a void inside. The most significant part was finally realizing I would never be able to control my gambling addiction again. I could never gamble casually. Gambling had beaten me into submission. I surrendered and accepted defeat. I was soon back with my therapist who suggested I go to Twelve Step recovery programs and join a therapy group where he was a co-facilitator. This was the first time I realized I had to do the actions I was told to do, not necessarily what I wanted to do. Going to my first Twelve Step meeting was terrifying. I sat in the back of the room with an imaginary wall built around me, covered by layers of fear and shame. I permitted no one to get close.
I didn’t know then that these people saw right through this wall. They knew what my problem was long before I did. They knew me because they knew themselves. I was suffering from an illness called “uniqueness.” I truly believed that no one could ever understand how I felt inside. When I heard others expressing joy and laughter it was ridiculous to me. I asked myself, How could they be happy when their lives were so screwed up? When they hugged each other at the end of a meeting I felt uncomfortable. For months I could not shake a hand, let alone give someone a hug.
Not surprisingly, I made no connections with any of the people at the meetings. Nonetheless, I kept going. After a few months of going to meetings my wife asked why I never received phone calls from other people in group; she knew that this support was an important healing aspect of Twelve Step fellowships. “They were all ass kissers!” I responded. Beneath the exterior mask of false pride I was a shattered person who eventually realized that these people weren’t ass kissers at all. We were joined together because of our common feeling of profound pain. Eventually, I realized they loved and accepted me long before I loved or accepted myself. Once I understood this, I began to embrace the program. I finally allowed help into my life.
I discovered the hard way that complete abstinence from my destructive behaviors was essential for my healing. Without it, my self-hate would become overwhelming. I learned that I can’t be in the ring all day boxing with my addiction and expect to work on improving my relationships at the same time.
I continued to go to Twelve Step meetings, individual therapy, and group therapy. In meetings, the compulsive gamblers spoke about the huge amounts of money they lost. One elderly man said he lost more than everyone put together. He lost fifty years of his life to his constant working and gambling. He wasn’t around for his children as they grew up. He noticed he was absent in all of his children’s pictures. His comment stuck with me. While I realized the ways I was hurting others and myself through my actions, I never considered the experiences I missed with my family, experiences I could never get back.
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