Table of Contents
For the Scheherazades Sisters,
for the women who have not been
able to stop gambling,
for the women who have.
If I had one wish for women who have mortgaged their souls and traded their power for the illusion of the big win, it would be for them to find just one person who will tell them, Gambling is something you do, it is not who you are. You are not a worthless piece of shit; you are a person whobecause you have a deadly, vicious, and aggressive diseasehas made some really bad choices, and with encouragement and support, you can learn how to make different choices that will give you back your life.
Carole Seeley, Gambling Addictions Counselor
USERS GUIDE
If youve opened this book, chances are you or someone you know may be a woman trapped in compulsive gamblingblackjack, poker, bingo, slot machines, keno, lottery tickets, craps, online gambling sites, even the stock market, or what was once a relaxing game of Bunco. And you may be seeking relief.
Welcome to my world. I have been, and I will always be, a woman one bet away from being imprisoned by a slot machine. I structured this book so a woman, her family, her partner, and her friends can easily find those sections that will be most useful.
If Id come across this book when I was finally accepting that my gambling addiction had ravaged me, Id have been most eager to find out that I was not alone. And Id want hope. I played slot machines for fourteen years, the last nine years compulsively. By the time I quit, my life and nervous system were in ruins. So, Id have gone to the Introduction, then Chapter 1: Meet the Sisters, then Chapter 8: A Long and Winding Road, about withdrawal.
Perhaps, unlike me, you suspect you have a problem, but youre not sure. Take a look at Chapter 2: Crossing the Line. If you do know and are terrified by what you know, you might jump straight to Chapter 7: The Partys Over, where you will read about how and when other women gamblers learned they had to stop. In Chapter 8: A Long and Winding Road, youll learn about the multitude of symptoms of both early and postacute withdrawal syndrome. Chapter 9: What It Takes walks you through the resources and work of recovering with, as opposed to from, gambling addiction.
Chapter 3: Dopamine Is Queen is about the basics of this addiction at the level of brain chemistry and function. Chapter 4: Freud Was Wrong debunks early theories of gambling compulsion and sheds light on more useful and practical contemporary research and theory. Chapter 5: Girls Night In brings you into a circle of recovering women gamblers as they talk about how being women impacted their gambling addiction.
Chapter 6: Get Her to Sit Down exposes the powerful strategies the gambling industry creates to hook compulsive gamblers and keep them playingin the industrys wordsto extinction.
If you have already quit and are facing life without your favorite drug, read Chapter 8: A Long and Winding Road for the lowdownthe low lowdownon withdrawal. You will learn that you have not gone crazy; you are just in the grips of a brain that longs to gamble.
Chapter 10: The Slip explores the reasons a woman recovering gambling addict goes back to her drug and offers strategies to prevent and interrupt a slip.
Desperate? Go directly to Chapter 9: What It Takes. In withdrawal or in the grips of binge gambling? Go to Chapter 8: A Long and Winding Road. You might read Chapter 3: Dopamine Is Queen and learn that you are not immoral, weak, or doomed. In Chapter 6: Get Her to Sit Down, you can read about the exquisite strategies the gambling industry brings to play on a compulsive players brain and body and know that you had help in crossing the line from fun to torment.
Bored cross-eyed by statistics? Read Chapters 2, 4, or 5 for stories from real women compulsive gamblers talking to save their lives, or Chapter 12: Down the Road, in which youll find the stories of women who live in gambling recovery on a daily basis.
Finally, if you are free from gambling compulsion but love a woman who is trapped, Chapter 11: Its a Family Affair may provide hope and the knowledge that you are not alone.
The life of a woman compulsive gambler is not a straight line, though in the worst moments of feeling trapped she may feel as though she is in a dark and endless tunnel. Life is a series of winding paths, delays, and loops. And this is where She Bets Her Life starts.
If you start with the Introduction, you might find yourself looking in a mirrora mirror in which not one, but many womens faces are reflected. Some faces will be familiar, others will not. In Chapter 1, those faces might come into focus. Youll find yourself in a unique circle, a womens group of compulsive gamblers who no longer make that first bet. They are Scheherazades Sisters. They do not tell stories to gain another day of life from a cruel husband, as in the old legend from The Arabian Nights. Instead, they spin out words and memories, anger and laughter, gorgeous and tattered threads of how each woman gambler is different and all are the same, into lifelines. The women tell their stories. As their words unfold, you might remember the power of story. A story can save a life.
Scheherazade was a gorgeous woman who had the bad luck of being chosen by a sultan to become his next wife. He was a whimsical fellow who married the most beautiful women of his emirate, bedded them for one night, and killed them in the morning. However, Scheherazade was no fool. The night of their wedding, she began a story for her captorand did not finish it. She was such a wondrous storyteller that her husband was desperate to hear its end. He spared her life for one more day and one more night. Nine hundred and ninety-nine nights later, with one thousand and one stories ringing like crystal bells in their bedchamber, he knew he had fallen in love with Scheherazade and would not be able to bear living without her.
Scheherazades Sisters was an inspired name for a group of women desperate to free themselves from a deadly addiction. Through telling our stories we began the slow, patient work of saving our ownand each otherslives.
May this book be an invitation. May it bring you into a circle in which you or someone you love might find belonging.
She Bets Her Life is not authorized Gamblers Anonymous literature, though aspects of information and theory draw on Gamblers Anonymouss (and Gam-Anons) twelve-step principles.
INTRODUCTION
Problem gambling is gambling behavior which causes disruptions in any major area of life: psychological, physical, social or vocational. The term Problem Gambling includes, but is not limited to, the condition known as Pathological, or Compulsive Gambling, a progressive addiction characterized by increasing preoccupation with gambling, a need to bet more money more frequently , restlessness or irritability when attempting to stop, chasing losses, and loss of control manifested by continuation of the gambling behavior in spite of mounting, serious, negative consequences.
National Council on Problem Gambling
2.7 percent of American citizens suffer from moderate (problem gambling) to severe (pathological gambling) forms of disordered gambling.
Women make up the fastest growing group seeking help for problem gambling. Women generally develop a gambling problem faster than men do. Of femaLe compulsive gamblers, 93 percent prefer slot machines and lottery games.
