Cjones8555's Journal

I wonder if a lot of you are like me... Can you pen point how and when the compulsion started for you?   For me it was very very early.  I grew up in rural N.C. and like a lot of others in my small and non-progressive town, we were relatively poor and lived a very modest life.  Don't get me wrong... I never went to bed hungry at night and can never recall not having basic necessities, that's why I say relatively poor.  My grandmother (God rest her soul) raised me and had she known that damage it would cause later I know she would have protected me from the evil that is "gambling".

My early exposure to gambling in comparison to where I am now and have been for the past 17 years would be considered by most as harmless, but I now know that it was far from harmless.  This early exposure laid the foundation for where I am today, a compulsive gambler who has ruined her family financially and is now on the verge of bankruptcy.  If there is a bright side to this disaster, I still have my family, I have a great career and hopefully enough book sense if not common sense to know that this has GOT TO STOP before I lose all that good that is still left in me and my life. 

 I remember at about the age of 13-14 learning to player poker.  Back then my peers (kids of neighbors) and I used to sit out on an old junk car in front of our house and play 7 card stud for hours.  The bets of course (remember we were poor) were very small usually .05 cents/.10cents, but the subsequent consequences were enormous.  My grandmother --being the Christian that she was, did not necessarily approve of this activity but she largely saw it as harmless activity that was the teenage replacement of hide-and-go seek, tag, duck, duck-goose and all the other games that the neighborhood kids played when we were younger.  My grandmother would be thrilled for me if I could turn my $2.00 into $10.  That does not seem like very much, but what a RUSH back then. 

Fast forward two, I'm not about 15 and I get a chance to be an a big stakes poker game with adults, (we're talking $1/2).  Fortunately because of financial means and the fact that I was only given the opportunity to play in a game like this when relatives from out of town visited, or in the summer when I visited my mother..so the financial impact was minimal, but the lasting scars are again tremendous.   Fast forward 2 years, I graduate valedictorian  of my HS class and get a full scholarship to go to college, for the most part I lived life gambling free (at least for the most part) for four years. My social life was very full at college, so I gambled almost none during my four years of college and I was so happy.  The exception to this is that  on holidays and during the summer I would go home to visit my mom and play in BINGO using money I earned with summer jobs.    At this point I don't think it was a compulsion, because I was ok with not going and did not have urges, but I did however go with my mom and her friends every chance I got.

Fast forward four years, I graduate from college 6th out of however many students there were in my class.   I set off from my small town life to a bigger city and more exposure to gambling (BINGO and infrequent poker games). I think this is when the compulsion started.   When I graduated college I moved to the town where my mother lived.  In  relatively short time after graduation I landed a very decent paying job that would utimately led to a very decent career, that thank GOD I still have today.  I think from October 1992 to October 1993, I played BINGO about 3-4 nights per week.   In 1993 I moved to NJ--- 1 1/2 hours from Atlantic City. Had never been to AC in my life until a friend invited me to go.   Beginners luck...I won $60/$70 on a slot machine from that day forward life has never been the same, the compulsion begins.  To be continued......