Saturday, January 27, 2007

The allure of gambling calls out to Matthew Bowles-Roth wherever he goes.
When he drives on the freeway, casino billboards entice him with riches.
When he buys cigarettes at the convenience store, lottery tickets shine
under the glass counter. When he flips through TV channels, guys his age
appear in high-stakes poker tournaments, beaming like movie stars. Each
time, Matthew pauses. He can't take that path again. He forces himself to
remember what it was like when he did: Lying. Stealing. Dropping out of
college. "There's tons of things that I just wish I had never done," he says
now, four years later. At 22, Matthew has experienced the grip of gambling
in a way most people never will. In just three years, he went from someone
who had never gambled to compulsive gambler to recovering addict. He is part
of an age group that is drawing increasing concern from gambling-addiction
counselors, government regulators and college administrators.
Card playing and Internet gambling have increased among college-age men in
recent years, according to one study in Pennsylvania. And many of them
learned the game in high school. In many cases, "parents are actually
strongly encouraging their kids to play poker," said Jeff Derevensky,
co-director of the International Centre for Youth Gambling Problems and
High-Risk Behaviors at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. "They would
prefer them to be in their basements playing poker than doing something
'more dangerous' like drinking and doing drugs." Research is scant about
college-age gambling participation over time. And studies conflict on the
question of whether young people are more susceptible to become problem
gamblers - some studies say yes, others cast doubt on that premise. Still,
researchers are concerned that gambling accessibility could lead to more
problems. At Project Turnabout/Vanguard in Granite Falls, Minn., which has
an inpatient gambling treatment program, the number of clients younger than
25 has gone from about three per year in 1992 to between 20 and 30 per year
now, estimates Sandi Brustuen, gambling program coordinator. "It's just
increasing all the time," she said. The program takes people who are 18 and
older, but "most of them are doing it before then, in their basements and on
the Internet and with their friends." The state of Minnesota has brought a
responsible-gambling campaign to 10 college campuses. Roger Skogman, who was
on the advisory committee, said they wanted to increase awareness after
hearing from high schools and colleges in recent years.

"We've heard from high schools that kids are showing up who haven't been to
bed at night because they've been at the casino all night long," he said.
"You hear stories about parents setting up Texas Hold 'Em nights. ... These
kids are doing side bets and everything else."

Some establishments keep an eye out for trouble. Canterbury Park Racetrack
and Card Club in Shakopee, for instance, has security staff watch for people
who might have gambling problems and tries to connect them to services, said
Kevin Gorg, media relations manager.

While a select few players win enough to earn a living, far more lose money.
And for some, like Matthew, gambling takes over their lives.

Late on a July night, Matthew stood with his friends outside the doors of
Mystic Lake Casino, his driver's license in hand. When the clock ticked past
midnight, he turned 18 and was legally old enough to gamble. He headed for
the blackjack tables.

As he laid his first bet on the table - two $1 chips - his heart raced. At
that moment, nothing else in the world mattered except the cards being
flipped over in front of him. He brushed his hand across the soft felt of
the tabletop. He fingered the chips and was comforted by their sharp
clicking.

"It was instantaneous," he said later. "I fell in love when I got there and
fell deeper in love with every bet."

He walked out into the sunrise with an extra $97 in his pocket.

I could come here and win $100 every night, he thought. Throughout his
senior year at the Academy of Holy Angels in Richfield, Minn., Matthew had
watched his friends head to the casino to celebrate their 18th birthdays - a
rite of passage for many these days.

Matthew didn't seem a likely risk for developing a gambling problem. The son
of physicians, he grew up in Minneapolis and got good grades in high school.
He played saxophone in the band and acted in high school theater. His
parents, Carolyn Bowles and Craig Roth, said they never gambled. They didn't
like it and discouraged it.

Gambling addiction is an "equal opportunity destroyer," Derevensky said.
"Doesn't matter if you're rich or poor. Doesn't matter if you come from a
good home."

After that first visit, Matthew went back. Again and again - almost every
night after his shift delivering pizzas. He says he broke even by summer's
end, when he went off to college.

At DePaul University in Chicago, he needed to be 21 to go to a casino. So he
didn't gamble, but he thought about it - all the time.

He daydreamed about the mansion he'd buy someday with his winnings. It would
be somewhere warm, and it would have a garage to house the red Porsche and
black Lamborghini he planned to buy. He spent hours playing video games and
card games on his computer, trying to recapture the rush he felt at the
casino.

His classes went on without him. He fell behind and dropped most of them
before the second semester ended.

Back home for the summer, Matthew headed to the casino. On his first trip,
he said, he won big: $4,000.

Gambling replaced his summer job. He made sure he was gone by the time his
parents got home from work, because he knew they would disapprove.

At Mystic Lake, his bets grew bigger. Sometimes, he'd put $200 or $300 down
on a single hand. He was treated like royalty. A valet parked his car. The
casino gave him free meals. Workers brought him free cigarettes.

He sat in the high-roller room and reveled in the fact that people were
watching him play.

A lot of his friends stopped going with him - none of them wanted to stay as
late as he always did. But he still used them as cover, telling his parents
he was staying overnight with them.

He once stayed at Mystic Lake for three days straight, he said. Dealers left
and came back the next day for their shifts. He was still there, he said,
still playing cards.

"No sleep, no eating, no showering, no brushing my teeth," he said. "I
gambled until I was physically unable to gamble anymore."

He finally drove home, unable to see straight, shaky from exhaustion and
falling asleep at the wheel.

By that fall, Matthew said, he had won more than $10,000. But after a
marathon summer at the casino, who could concentrate on school?

Back at DePaul, he spent his winnings. A new computer. Designer clothes. A
Louis Vuitton purse for his girlfriend. Golf accessories for dad. Perfume
for mom.

He dropped his classes within about six weeks but stayed in Chicago for the
rest of the school year. He came home for the summer, broke and depressed.
And with one thought: to get back to the casino.

That summer was a haze of listlessness. He couldn't seem to get ahead at the
blackjack table like the summer before. He kept thinking he just needed a
little more money to make it work.

Matthew's parents were worried. They knew something was very wrong with
their son, but they didn't know what.

They caught him in lies. Money was disappearing from their house. He didn't
have a job. Their bright and motivated son was no longer acting either
bright or motivated.

Matthew maxed out his first credit card. Overdraft envelopes arrived in the
mail. His mother stayed awake at night, combing the Web for clues to his
problem. The only addiction she could find that seemed to fit was gambling.

So she and her husband questioned Matthew. They argued and pleaded with him.
Matthew resisted. Lied. When nothing changed, they eventually kicked him
out.

"We couldn't trust him," Roth said. "It scared us deeply. ... We felt like
we were enabling him to ... live this kind of lifestyle."

For the next month, Matthew crashed at the home of a friend. He slept on the
couch and spent his days watching talk shows and poker tournaments on TV. He
had stopped gambling, but only because he was broke.

"It was almost unbearable," he said recently. "I did absolutely nothing. I
had no interest in anything."

One evening, there was a knock at the door, and in walked his parents. The
parents of another friend were behind them. Matthew looked up, surprised,
from what he was eating.

We think you have a problem, they told him.

They had staged an intervention. One by one, the adults told him what they
had observed: He wasn't hanging out with his friends anymore. He wasn't
talking to his parents anymore. He was spending way too much time on
computer games.

That's not right, Matthew remembers thinking. I've won more than I've lost.
How can I have a problem?

Matthew's parents weren't at all certain they were right. But they were at
the end of their rope. There's a gambling-treatment facility in Granite
Falls, Minn., they told him. We want to take you there.

Matthew thought about it: If he sat through the 30-day program, he'd have 30
days with a roof over his head. And 30 days of food.

OK, he said.

Roth waited while his son packed. In the darkness of an autumn evening, the
two drove west into the countryside.

At the assessment the next morning, Matthew now says he did his best to lie.

Still, the counselors at Project Turnabout/Vanguard found cause for concern.
They admitted him, and for the first two weeks he played along. He learned
the lingo and told them what he thought they wanted to hear. But he still
believed there was nothing wrong with him.

His family drove to Granite Falls to participate in sessions. Halfway
through the program, Roth began to believe his son's problems stemmed from
gambling after all.

Matthew had begun seeing things differently, too. "I had a spiritual
awakening," he says now.

He was ready to confront his addiction.

Two years later, Matthew is a student at Augsburg College's StepUP program
for students with addictions. He checks in regularly with counselors. His
parents help manage his money.

He made a 3.62 GPA last semester, holds a job refereeing youth sports and is
meeting his responsibilities in the treatment programs, he says.

Matthew knows he's lucky that his addiction surfaced when he was young, when
he didn't have a house, a career or a wife to lose.

He is telling his story now, he says, so that others might see in themselves
what he didn't at the time.

From now on, his guard will always be up, he says. When he sees
advertisements for gambling - billboards on the freeway or Powerball tickets
at the convenience store - he plays out in his head what would happen if he
started again. Sometimes he calls a network of people who can help him
through it. Often, he goes to extra treatment meetings to listen, again, to
the horror stories of people whose lives were swallowed up by gambling.