For many people, social gambling is an innocuous way to pass the time. For others gambling is something more — an addictive thrill that adds excitement to life. Who is a candidate for a gambling addiction, and who is not? And is it worth taking the risk to find out?

Gambling: the sure way of getting nothing for something. —Wilson Mizner

There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune: go there with a large one. —Jack Yelton

Not so long ago, Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser received a call from a crying wife, married but a year. It wasn’t the typical shalom bayis phone call. Between sobs, Beth (names have been changed) related that she and her husband Eli had recently visited friends in Chicago for a simchah. Shortly afterwards, they got a call from their friends. “Yossi lost his wallet,” they said. “Did you by any chance see it anywhere?”

Neither Beth nor her husband had any idea, and the subject got pushed to the back of their minds. Two weeks later, they spent a Shabbos at Beth’s parents’ house. When they came home on Sunday, Beth’s mother was on the phone. “Did anybody see my diamond ring?” she asked, panicked. “It disappeared this Shabbos. I’ve looked everywhere!”

Beth and Eli hadn’t seen the ring, and had no advice for Beth’s mom. It didn’t occur to Beth to see any connection between the two incidents until she happened to go to the bank one morning to take out some cash.

At the window, the teller pursed her lips and shook her head. “I can’t give it to you, honey,” she said. “You’ve only got $50 left in your account.”

The room swam before Beth’s eyes. “There must be a mistake!” she cried. “There was over $7,000 in that account!”

“There isn’t any more. Looks like the other party withdrew it all in the past two weeks.”

That night, Beth called her husband on the carpet to account for the missing money. He turned bright red. “I was hoping you wouldn’t find out,” he stammered. He told her he had taken the money for an urgent matter, and would soon replace it, and more. “I know what I’m doing,” he insisted.

Wanting to be a good wife, Beth decided to trust Eli, and let the matter drop. The next paycheck was due soon anyway. But as time passed, it became clear many bills had not been paid. Beth picked up her mail to find cutoff notices from the gas and electric companies. Suddenly it occurred to her that perhaps their friend’s wallet and her mother’s ring had met the same fate as the $7,000 in her bank account.

That’s when she called Rabbi Goldwasser, and dragged her husband in for a meeting. “Okay,” Eli finally admitted, “I gamble a little.” (“Like most gamblers,” Rabbi Goldwasser comments, “he tended to downplay the problem.”)

But as they spoke, it came out that Eli had borrowed money from the “wrong” kind of people, people who don’t take kindly to not being paid back. So he felt obliged to “lift” a few valuables.

“We began talking about gambling addiction, that he ought to get himself into counseling and connect with Gamblers Anonymous groups,” Rabbi Goldwasser relates. “But he wasn’t really convinced. As things got worse, though, he came in again, and we talked about the kinds of highs he got from gambling, and the aveiros it was leading him to do. Eventually he took his problem seriously, and got the right help. But that was after dragging his feet on it for a long time.”

What finally overcame his resistance to going for help? Was it his dire financial straits? The risk of destroying his marriage? Rabbi Goldwasser smiles. “No,” he says. “I got him to go to Gamblers Anonymous by betting him two to one he wouldn’t show up.”

How Gambling Stacks Up

No one in this life is exempt from taking chances, or from experiencing the luck of the draw. There’s a large dose of mazel in everything we undertake, from getting married to choosing a job or a yeshivah for our children. In the business world, some forms of risk taking — e.g., investing in the stock market, working in the futures market — are richly rewarded and even applauded, although when the risk doesn’t pay off both the rewards and the applause are noticeably absent. (This irony was not lost on 19^th-century author Ambrose Bierce, who wrote, “The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.”)

Recreational gambling, like drinking, is an activity that, under normal circumstances, plays a minor role in most people’s social lives. In the same way many of us occasionally take a glass of wine or a cocktail at a simchah, lots of us play cards for entertainment, attend Chinese auctions, bet on sporting events at the office, and spin dreidels with our children. Others regularly buy lottery tickets, in spite of physicist Roger Jones’s well-known comment that lotteries are a “tax on the mathematically challenged.” The National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) estimates that 85 percent of American adults have gambled at some time in their lives, and 60 percent in any given year will participate in some form of gambling.

But a small percentage of the population isn’t able to simply play a few games and walk away. Once they start gambling, they can’t stop until their last dime is spent. After that, all they can think about is finding the next opportunity to play. Approximately 2 million Americans (1 percent of the population) can be considered pathological gamblers, and another 4 to 6 million have lower-level gambling problems, with disastrous consequences: According to Debt.org, the average male gambler racks up between $55,000 and $90,000 in debt, and 65 percent resort to crime to support their habit.

The problem has increased with the greater availability of opportunities. While years ago gambling was illegal almost everywhere, today 48 out of 50 states in the US have legalized gambling (Hawaii and Utah are the exceptions). The global legalized gambling industry is expected to reach annual revenues of $182.8 billion by the year 2015, according to the accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers. But the biggest money is in illegal gambling, which still flourishes. For instance, illegal sports betting alone brings its organizers an estimated $380 billion a year, according to the National Gambling Impact Study Commission. No one knows for sure what total annual revenues are for illegal gambling, says Roger Dustan, who authored a report for the state of California, but it’s a safe bet that it’s a lot.

“It used to be that you had to leave your home to gamble,” Rabbi Goldwasser comments. “You had to go to a casino or the racetrack. Today, there are Internet gambling sites that make it very accessible. All you need is a credit card. There are also neighborhood card games that appear socially acceptable.”

Gambling tends to increase during difficult economic times. When money is hard to come by, everybody dreams of the big win that will solve all their problems. Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, in his book Compulsive Gambling: More Than Dreidel, recounts the story of a client who had a job as teenager in the 1950s, but when he made $54 one day at the racetrack — the equivalent of several months’ salary — he was hooked for life. Today, in a generation accustomed to instant gratification, winning a fortune through one roll of the dice can seem particularly seductive.

Who Gambles?

David Kohn, a licensed clinical social worker and CASAC (Certified Alcohol and Substance Abuse Counselor), works with gamblers at SAFE, an addictions treatment center in Brooklyn.

“The typical profile of a gambler,” he says, “is a white male, usually intelligent and personable — someone with a lot of social skills. He’s a guy who gets bored easily, who needs a lot of stimulation. He likes to think he’s above the system, that he’s capable of figuring it out.”

He says a gambler’s personality usually reflects the type of gambling preferred. More social types will gravitate toward card games, while the loners will choose scratch-off cards or online games.

Another two groups especially vulnerable to being lured into gambling are adolescents and the elderly. Adolescents are prone to lots of high-risk behaviors, but while most of those pass with age and maturity — a kid who goes bungee jumping at age 16 probably won’t still be doing it at 50 — gambling that begins in adolescence tends to continue into adulthood. Elderly people get involved with gambling because they may be looking for social outlets or ways to pass the time. Unfortunately, sometimes that results in gambling away their Social Security checks.

Although gambling has traditionally been considered a male affliction, today the gap between male and female gamblers has almost closed. Women today are more likely to have their own sources of income, and Internet gambling has made it easier to play from home.

“Online gambling was actually made illegal in the US,” Mr. Kohn remarks. “But those sites simply moved themselves offshore.” He adds that men and women tend to gamble differently. In Atlantic City, for example, women are drawn to the slot machines, while the men find the high-stakes poker games.

How prevalent is problem gambling within the Jewish community? Rabbi Dr. Twerski says some Gam-Anon groups are 30 percent Jewish, although not all those people are religious; in Florida, the figure is closer to 90 percent.

Rabbi Binyamin Babad, the director of Relief Resources, says problem gambling definitely exists in frum circles, but he wouldn’t call it a “crisis”; these days that term is most frequently applied to Internet addictions.

“My position at Relief offers me a unique vantage point, like being an air traffic controller, seeing the community’s problems from 30,000 feet in the air,” he says. “And what we see from up there is that gambling is one of the issues we deal with, but I wouldn’t say it overshadows other problems. Still, when you have a significant number of guys people ruining their families, that’s a big problem.”

Arnie Wexler, a reformed gambler who has become a certified gambling counselor and national expert, says it can be hard to help Jewish gamblers, because of the fear of exposure in the community, and religious issues like not wanting to attend Gamblers Anonymous meetings in churches (or not being able to obtain kosher food in residential treatment centers).

“I’ve lectured in Lakewood, but you can’t set up a GA meeting there, because nobody wants to run into anybody they know,” he says. “They’d rather be anonymous, somewhere more removed.” While he mainly helps Jewish gamblers in the US, he says the problem seems to be even greater among Israelis.

“Gambling has been going on in the Jewish community for a long, long time,” offers Lewis Abrams, an LCSW and CASAC with practices in New Jersey and Manhattan. “It’s part of our history. Frum people have frequented Atlantic City for years. Many Jewish businessmen visit the casinos when trade shows bring them to Las Vegas.” The difference between recreational gambling and abuse, though, is being able to walk away from it when it begins to produce negatives consequences in a person’s life.

Mr. Abrams points out that gambling may be hard to detect early on. Unlike alcohol, you can’t smell it on the person or find physical evidence. Married gamblers fib to their wives that they’re on business trips or working late, while bochurim have little accountability to anyone.

“In the yeshivah world, gambling can pass under the radar more easily than most other at-risk behaviors,” says David Kohn. “Sometimes the boys play cards in the dorms, and nobody thinks much about it. In Brooklyn there are poker houses that frum men occasionally get drawn into.”

Inside the Gambler’s Mind

Chaim Brill, LCSW, another certified addictions counselor, explains what it means to have an addiction: “The addict seeks to alter his mood and thinking on an ongoing basis. He’s a person who isn’t happy in his own skin, so he tries to get out of himself.”

The vehicle of choice for accomplishing that depends on the type of mood he most enjoys, which in turn depends on his own particular biological makeup and psychological dynamics. “People with food addictions look for the calming effects of food. People who do LSD are attracted to fantasy. Gamblers are drawn to excitement and risk, to the rush of high stakes.”

Brill adds that some gamblers tell him their favorite part of gambling is getting into the car, late at night, and driving to Atlantic City with the anticipation and excitement building inside them. “If gambling was just about winning, then the gambler would be able to walk away once he’s made money,” Brill says. “But he goes back to the table so he can feel the excitement again.”

Mr. Abrams characterizes gambling as a disease of many components. On the biological level, some people seem more susceptible, more “hard-wired” to seek pleasure from risk taking. On the psychological level, gambling may be a way to mask pain or bolster low self-esteem. It may also fill a spiritual void. Other people meet their social needs through recreational gambling.

As with all addictions, a compulsive gambling habit develops over time, in stages. “In the history of a gambler, there’s always one big win in the beginning,” says David Kohn. “After that, the gambler is always chasing after that win, going back to the table over and over.” Gambling is therefore called a “process addiction,” as opposed to a substance addiction, because it happens when a dysfunctional behavior becomes repeated and reinforced over time. As the gambler becomes progressively enslaved to his addiction, his thinking becomes more and more irrational. He keeps telling himself, ‘I’ll just win back my money, and then I’ll stop.”

But as the symptoms become worse and the collateral damage sets in — as the financial ruin deepens, as marriages fall apart, as the gambler loses respect for himself and others, as loan sharks threaten him — it becomes harder to ignore.

“But it’s still hard to get better, because even when the gambler starts hitting the consequences, he’s still enjoying the benefits of the mental high it gives him,” Mr. Brill says. “So he blocks out the consequences — he’s in denial. We call it DENIAL, Don’t Even Know I Am Lying. You can’t reason with an addict.”

Rabbi Dr. Twerski has stated emphatically that no one should think he can “help” a gambler by giving him money to continue, or bailing him out of his debts. If you pay off a gambler’s debts, he warns, you simply enable him to rack up bigger debts, and cushion him from the consequences of his actions.

“Sometimes askanim get involved when someone has a gambling problem,” Mr. Kohn says. “They’ll go bail the guy out of jail if he’s facing charges, raise money to help him. But generally speaking, you shouldn’t prevent a gambler from experiencing the consequences of his actions.”

In fact, at Gamblers Anonymous, gamblers are encouraged to prolong feeling the consequences of their gambling via a technique called “keeping it green.” Instead of paying back gambling debts as quickly as possible, they’re advised to pay back their loans slowly, month by month, so they continue to feel the suffering that gambling wreaks on an addict.

When the gambler does sink so low that he can no longer deny the mess he’s gotten himself into, the resulting depression can be devastating, even life-threatening. According to Arnie Wexler, “the suicide rate for compulsive gamblers is many times the national average.” Mr. Kohn adds, “When you’re driving home at four in the morning, and you’ve just wiped out all your money, the despair can be overwhelming.”

Help Begins at Home

Given the ease with which gamblers can dissemble their habit, it may take time before a spouse catches on to what’s happening. As one might expect from poker players, gamblers as a group tend to be excellent bluffers — manipulative and conniving. A gambler may seek to deflect the blame by foisting it on his wife, saying it’s because of bad shalom bayis that he’s driven to gamble.

“There’s a line that says, ‘How do you know when a gambler is lying?’$$$SEPARATE QUOTES$$$” Mr. Brill comments. “The answer is, ‘When he moves his lips.’$$$SEPARATE QUOTES$$$”

“Gamblers’ wives need to protect themselves,” Mr. Kohn warns. “A husband can demolish her credit and that of their kids. If a wife isn’t much involved in the family finances, if she tends to just sign whatever papers he passes her to sign, she could end up in very big trouble.”

Once a wife is wise to the situation, she needs to get herself not only financial protection but emotional support as well. Gam-Anon, the family support arm of Gamblers Anonymous, is the most effective place to start, offering education and support groups.

“The family should start the process even if the gambler refuses to get help,” Mr. Abrams says. A wife can block her husband’s access to money, and casinos will often cooperate in limiting the betting of a pathological gambler. A computer program called GamBloc works to prevent the addict’s computer from linking to gambling sites — although a determined gambler can easily enough find someone else’s computer to gain access.

Since the gambler is too deeply in the grips of his obsession to help himself, the family usually has to force him into taking the first steps. “When the gambler hits a wall, he still thinks he’ll get over the wall,” Mr. Brill says. “So you have to work with the family to make the wall immovable. I won’t work with anyone who doesn’t get into a 12-step program. The gambler needs a group with whom he can identify and find support, and people besides the therapist he can turn to when the urge to gamble hits.”

A special benefit of Gamblers Anonymous and Gam-Anon is that meetings are often held concurrently, in the same building. Hence, if a wife tells her Gam-Anon group that her husband stole her wallet that week, the leaders will immediately march down the hall and confront the husband in the Gamblers Anonymous room.

Addictions can be arrested, but never cured. A pathological gambler has to quit cold turkey and never get near it again, the same way an alcoholic cannot allow himself even one drink. One of Rabbi Dr. Twerski’s reformed gamblers refuses to even play dreidel with his children on Chanukah, for fear of falling back into the abyss.

Therapists for gamblers must have special training in addictions counseling, preferably CASAC certification, since most psychological and psychiatric programs give zero or minimal training in this area. Within the therapy setting, cognitive-behavioral therapy has been particularly effective. It helps identify the triggers that entice a gambler back to his habit, such as stress, boredom or money problems, and teaches him to refocus his attention.

Rabbi Goldwasser suggests that if the gambler still misses the “rush” he once got from risk taking, even after going to GA and receiving other therapies, he can look for other more constructive ways to get a thrill, such as sports. A hobby or social outlet can fill the time that gambling once took up and meet the same social needs. A frum gambler might try to fill the emptiness with Torah learning, family time, and community work.

But Mr. Brill says you have to go even deeper than putting a stop to the gambling and replacing it with more constructive activities. In the same way you have to dry out an alcoholic to start rebuilding his life, a gambler has to stop his habit and then pick up the pieces of those wasted years and psychological emptiness.

“Gamblers tend to be grandiose people,” he says. “They have big egos, but low self-esteem underneath. When they don’t have the props that make them feel like winners, they feel very low, like nobody. Recovery is about learning to connect to themselves, and building meaningful connections to other people.”

In the meantime, as cartoonist Kin Hubbard (1868–1930) once quipped, “The safest way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket.”

Torah Views on Gambling

According to the mishnah in Sanhedrin, gamblers are disqualified from serving as witnesses in court. “There’s some discussion,” Rabbi Goldwasser says, “as to whether gambling here refers to something that is done full time, or only occasionally. Full-time gamblers are not considered productive members of society.”

The legitimacy of gambling wins relies on the principles of asmachta — the idea that if we make a bet and I win, you’ve agreed to give up your right to your money. The Rambam doesn’t agree that betting gives the winner the right to the other’s money. In his Hilchos Gezeilah V’Aveidah, he calls such transactions robbery, because a person acquires money frivolously, without having toiled for it. Since the yishuv shel olam is based on man toiling for his food and shelter (Iyov 5:7, “Man is born to toil”), gambling is an attempt to sidestep the normal path Hashem laid out for us to take.

When the Vilna Gaon saw people playing cards, he was disturbed even more by the bitul Torah than he was by the chance of losing or making money inappropriately. “What will be with such people after 120 years?” he asked. Similarly, the Minchas Yitzhak comments that when Dovid HaMelech refers to “moshav leitzim” in the first perek of Tehillim, this includes people who gamble.

Like any addiction, the gambler’s need to fuel his addiction leads to any number of other aveiros, which range from the mild (missing zmanim for tefillah) to the egregious (stealing, lying, mistreatment of a spouse). Alcohol and drugs often accompany gambling settings, encouraging yet more behaviors not befitting a Torah Jew.

Are You a Problem Gambler?

Below are the “20 Questions” from Gamblers Anonymous. “These are about as good as any diagnostic tool for determining whether a person has a gambling addiction,” says David Kohn.

1. Did you ever lose time from work or school due to gambling?
2. Has gambling ever made your home life unhappy?
3. Did gambling affect your reputation?
4. Have you ever felt remorse after gambling?
5. Did you ever gamble to get money with which to pay debts or otherwise solve financial difficulties?
6. Did gambling cause a decrease in your ambition or efficiency?
7. After losing did you feel you must return as soon as possible and win back your losses?
8. After a win did you have a strong urge to return and win more?
9. Did you often gamble until your last dollar was gone?
10. Did you ever borrow to finance your gambling?
11. Have you ever sold anything to finance gambling?
12. Were you reluctant to use “gambling money” for normal expenditures?
13. Did gambling make you careless of the welfare of yourself or your family?
14. Did you ever gamble longer than you had planned?
15. Have you ever gambled to escape worry, trouble, boredom or loneliness?
16. Have you ever committed, or considered committing, an illegal act to finance gambling?
17. Did gambling cause you to have difficulty in sleeping?
18. Do arguments, disappointments, or frustrations create within you an urge to gamble?
19. Did you ever have an urge to celebrate any good fortune by a few hours of gambling?
20. Have you ever considered self-destruction or suicide as a result of your gambling?

Resources for a Gambling Addict

SAFE Foundation: a Jewish, Brooklyn–based drug and addictions counseling service. (866) 569-SAFE

Recovery Road (residential treatment center in West Palm Beach, Florida, kosher food available): 1-888-LAST BET www.aswexler.com

Gamblers Anonymous (12-step program for gamblers): www.gamblersanonymous.org, 877-664-2469

Gam-Anon (for families of gamblers): www.gam-anon.org, 718-352-1671

National Council on Problem Gambling: www.ncpgambling.org, 1-800-522-4700. They publish a free booklet titled Personal Financial Issues for Loved Ones of Problem Gamblers.

New York Council on Problem Gambling: www.nyproblemgambling.org, 518-867-4084

Columbia Gambling Disorders Clinic (free, and has groups for women): www.cumc.columbia.edu, 212-543-6690

New York State Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS): www.oasas.ny.gov, 800-553-5790

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 800 273 8255

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 437)