When they got to the part about gamblers doing what they do to punish themselves, Antonio felt like he was punched in the gut. That was so him – gambling recklessly because he was angry with himself.
After they finished the book the individual members, around a dozen, each took time for their therapies. Since there was a newcomer the topic was ‘What brought you here?’
The first person to share was Elbow Patches. He had a great life, with a wife, children, a business, and a home, but he’d always felt like something was missing, and he started gambling, Casino’s, roulette was his drug of choice. At first, it made him feel great, and he’d won, but then when his luck ran out, he found that he had to go back and try and recoup his losses. Eventually, he embezzled money from his wife’s pension, stole from his children’s education accounts, and funneled money from his business to pay for his gambling.
“I was lucky I wasn’t sent to prison. My wife left me, took the kids, and my business was liquidated, and the money went to pay my creditors. But, I still wasn’t ready to quit, I hadn’t hit my rock bottom yet.”
A cell phone alarm went off. “I’ll wrap this up. That was eight years ago. My ex-wife talks to me now, and I have a relationship with my kids. But, the best thing I got from coming into this program and quitting gambling was peace of mind. My life is better, because I don’t gamble. Welcome, Tony, I hope you hear something today that gives you hope, that you too can stop gambling.”
The next several people shared, some with less time without gambling, one person who’d gambled only the other day and was, in his own words, a chronic relapser. The stories all had a similar theme. Some people became addicted or compulsive about their gambling and did it even though it was clearly ruining their lives. Step One, several people cited, was to admit powerlessness over gambling, and that your life had become unmanageable.
Antonio had his arms crossed much of the time.
He hadn’t lost a wife, business or home. Of course he didn’t have a wife or business, he was just a little behind on his lease payments. He’d gone through his entire paycheck even though it was huge compared to most people. Was he a compulsive gambler? Was he, as that book had said, a ‘very sick person’?
No, he told himself. He was just a little reckless. He’d made some mistakes, but he could control this.
Antonio felt himself wavering between wanting to relate to what the others were saying about their gambling experiences and wanting to separate himself from these ‘very sick people’.
When the break was called, he got up and headed out.
“Where you going?” asked Elbow Patches.
“I just need a smoke.”
“See you back here in ten minutes then, Tony.”
Antonio nodded and hurried to get out of the room before someone else approached to ask him what he thought of the meeting so far.
When he got to the front he stopped in his tracks. Joan was standing near the bottom of the steps, twenty feet away, speaking to some man. He didn’t like the way the man was talking to her – leaning into her, touching her arm, coming onto her.
Antonio’s eyes clouded with little green spots. He caught a glimpse of Joan’s face. She hadn’t noticed him yet, but he could tell she wasn’t happy speaking to the guy. Her expression was pinched and impatient and she kept looking up the road, her body language clear.
Antonio decided that he could begin repairing the damage he’d already done to Joan by rescuing her from dweeb who obviously didn’t have a clue that Joan wanted nothing to do with him. Before he could move she detached herself from the man and starting walking away.
He started to go after her, but stopped when a police car drove by and he saw that the dweeb was flagging it down and pointing to his Maserati.
“Shit,” Antonio said, realizing he had parked illegally again. He realized something else too – maybe the police had been looking for the car that had broken out of impound before they’d had a chance to lock it behind the gate. If that was the case then they might have more than just traffic tickets and impound fees in mind. They might have a warrant for his arrest!
He hurried back towards the GA room, ducking inside.
“I thought you’d left us,” Elbow Patches said as Antonio walked by him on his way to the kitchen to hide.
“Sorry, got tied up on a call,” Antonio lied.
A moment later the two police officers walked by and Antonio watched them surreptitiously from the kitchen. They looked inside, smiled and nodded at the members, then walked on. Antonio assumed they were checking the restrooms and was glad he hadn’t considered hiding in there. He busied himself at the coffee station, waiting for the police to pass by again, and felt relieved as the two policemen walked past the room and the sound of their boots echoed down the hall.
Elbow Patches restarted the meeting while Antonio was still in the kitchen.
“Pablo? Why don’t you share next and we’ll ask Tony the twenty questions once he’s had a chance to settle back in.” He repeated his request in Spanish and everyone nodded. Pablo went to the podium and started to share, but stopped and looked to the door after a few words. Antonio cowered back into the kitchen, hiding from whoever Pablo was looking at.
A few moments later one of the members got up to close the door and the group was quiet as they all listened to the sound of two pairs of boots receding down the hall.
Antonio let out his breath in the silence.
“That’s one of the best things about not gambling anymore. I no longer have a heart attack anytime a policeman pulls up behind me, or comes within twenty feet.” Pablo said.
Everyone in the room started busting up at that and Antonio felt a sudden kinship with the group as he too began to laugh.
A few minutes later Pablo wrapped up his share. “That’s it for me,” he said and he sat down. “Your turn, Tony.”
Uncomfortable about standing at the podium, Antonio reluctantly entered the room but went to his seat instead.
“That’s okay, Tony, you can answer from there. It’s painless and we’ve all done it,” said Elbow Patches.
Pablo had the honors of asking Antonio the twenty questions of GA which were designed to self-test if a person had a problem with compulsive or uncontrollable gambling.
Antonio was honest with his answers as he could be, lying only about having broken the law, or that gambling had affected his reputation or ambition, or that he’d ever considered killing himself.
In the end, he’d answered yes to the majority of the questions.
They asked him to read out loud a short sentence at the end of the page. He read it in Spanish and understood the meaning. “Most compulsive gamblers will answer yes to at least seven of these questions.”
Everyone in the room said “Welcome,” as he finished the sentence, and despite an initial urge to get away from these other people with real gambling problems he felt a rush of peace wash over him. He was home.
“Now it’s your turn Tony. Why don’t you tell us what brought you here?”
Antonio shared but he didn’t say too much, admitting only that his gambling was getting out of hand recently, and that even though he knew he should stop he kept finding himself back in a poker game or at a casino. He added a few words about how much he appreciated hearing everyone else’s stories at the end.
“Keep coming back,” several of the members said when he finished. After the meeting he was approached by Elbow Patches and several others, each of them saying that they were glad to have him and that the meetings would help him, there was hope on the horizon.
Antonio felt as if a weight had lifted off his shoulders as he walked back to his hotel.
He had a lot of things to worry about - his car, maybe getting arrested for stopping an impound in progress, Joan... But somehow he felt as if he could handle it all if he just didn’t gamble.
It scared him to think that he’d seriously considered taking his winnings and trying to win more, even though there would
be barely anything left after he paid off his bookie, his hotel bill and the cost of getting his car out of impound, assuming the police had towed it away for real this time.
What if they locked him out of his apartment?
What if he couldn’t get his car back?
Antonio realized that he’d been thinking only about his financial stresses as he sat during the first half of the meeting, but, after answering yes to so many of those questions, and after sharing about how he gambled even when he didn’t want to, he realized just how insane it would be for him to take that money and go anywhere near a gambling establishment.
How would he handle it, if he ended up broke?
With his car in impound, and no money to get it out he couldn’t even go back to Plan A and sell the damn thing. He’d have no possible way to pay the mob his outstanding loan payment, short of robbing a bank.
Was he nuts? He’d have to be, to even consider taking such risks.
He couldn’t expect his new godfather to bail him out like he’d originally considered, not with his fiance blaming him for Joan’s arrest.