The first of the month and I am standing in line at my neighbourhood branch of the bank with which the government has chosen to bank for this purpose. I thought I would arrive at opening and avoid a crowd, but poor people think alike I guess and so here we all are in our collective poverty. We are bored and hot in our winter wear, yet gladly anticipating what this hour’s waiting will bring. There are sounds of rubber stamps and sighing. I crouch low to rest my back and spot a dollar glinting in dust under the counter.

The only way to get it would be to remove myself from the line by several feet, rouse the suspicion of the security guard by getting down on all fours, put cheek to floor, and reach elbow deep into the dirty crevice.

Would this kind of awkward effort count as investing in a cryptocurrency? Ba-dum cha-ching.

Would it be considered bank robbing? Hmm…

As of late I have come to better understand the value of a dollar, but I decide that it’s just not worth it, and so I stand up again hoping no one noticed my bald spot.

oh but what’s this half hour in i overhear teller two telling a roving manager heels-and-pantsuit type that the bill counter isn’t working then teller three telling this tiresome truth to an exasperated client with her most professionally sympathetic suddenly no-cash countenance the client leaves in a huff and there are coughs and murmurs in the crowd as if only computers can count coin and then oh lord almighty the guard is pulling the accordion door out of the wall and drawing it across the desk and pantsuit is all five minutes please we appreciate your purgatory

(I know what you’re thinking – it’s not like I’m late for work. But I’m uncomfortably warm, paranoid about banking bedbugs, and trying to play up the inconvenience for effect.)

Five minutes is more like ten, but then service resumes and the line moves faster than ever with the bill counter resurrected and whirring away.

Now it’s my turn (finally! ugh! etc.) and I ask the teller to deposit a large portion of my cheque directly into my landlady’s account. Still a month behind in rent but it feels good to make the payment and keep to my word this time.

Out the door and into the world with a decent sum in my wallet. It has been a while and it feels great.

Should I reward myself with a pack of cigarettes? Yes! It will help with the stress of being poor, but this is my last pack. Yes, in the next few days, these twenty ivory pillars are going to help me construct the newest and best ever version of my life! It’s going to be tough writing those cover letters. Breaks will be needed. Imagine the relief…

Ah, the pitiful rationale of my addicted mind. It gets worse.

I used to think that I could only buy transit fares at the stations, but of course, that’s not true. In fact, there’s a list of shops on the website that have the capability to load a fare card and distribute tickets. Thank goodness one of these shops lies between the bank and the nearest bar that has the machines, otherwise odds are that I wouldn’t be able to get around the city this month. I really tried to not go in, using some of the mental techniques in the literature, but the devil on my shoulder is so sly:

“Just $20. If you lose, it’s only $20. If you win, you could get groceries and pay your phone bill. Who knows? You might win really big and then you can catch up on your rent, too.”

“Wait ten minutes. If you’re still tempted after ten minutes, wait another ten minutes. Call someone.”

“Only $20. You can do it. You’ve been through enough lately that now you know not to blow it all. Prove to yourself that you are stronger now.”

“What if your landlady happens to drive by as you go in?”

“Here we are. She won’t see you.”

I slink into the bar, brushing past a portly older man smoking and talking too close to the doorway, his hands holding a cigarette and a cellphone to his stubbled face.

Not yet noon but still there are a handful of portly older chaps scattered around, the small tables before them spread with bottles and pint glasses, hats and gloves, cigarette packs, a few coins the older portly bartender must have left for change. There’s a screen set to a beloved sports network but many turn to give me the once over as I head over to the glowing corner.

Us slot junkies are noticeably thinner, and I am somewhat surprised and somewhat unsurprised to find four of them already stuck in their seats like straws in complementary pop, deep in the trance. The last time I was here it was just me, but everyone’s rich today I guess.

I sidle in to the cramped corner and sit at one of the older machines. The graphics aren’t as good on these but there are still some good games. Hell, I love every one of them as if they were my friends.

I pull a five dollar bill from my wallet.

I have to pause here in the story because I’m experiencing some feelings of guilt and anxiety about sharing it. I don’t wish, in recounting experiences of my addiction, to trigger someone who is recovering from his or her own to relapse, or even to simply aggravate a healing wound and cause any kind of debilitating negative emotion.

My intention is to have the reader sit with me and witness what is going on in my mind as I engage in what for me has been a very destructive habit. May it promote understanding among addicts, those susceptible, and others.

And while I’m out here in the realm of soliloquy, I might as well apologize for my misuse of a word a few paragraphs ago. Compliment/complement have long been “spelling demons” for me, and as this project is being written in the interest of vanquishing and/or preventing the spread of certain demons, I feel it is fitting to point out the error. I have little doubt I will make future bonehead errors, and I may or may not go to the trouble of acknowledging them. Please forgive me in advance. For now, here’s to clean, effective similes! Cheers!

I always feed a bill into the machine with the face up, the crown of the head pointed to the right. Unless, of course, the machine doesn’t like it for whatever crease or tear it detects. In these cases, I’ll try any which way, but it rarely helps. Sometimes one machine will accept what another rejects. Back home I once witnessed my friend who introduced me to the machines kind of buff a wrinkled bill back and forth over the thin metal lip of the coin tray under the button panel. Sometimes hardworking wait staff will reluctantly exchange bills. Pitiful.

No problem with this bill this time. As the credits appear on the screen, so does a well-meaning multiple choice question: How long do you wish to play? There’s the option of choosing 15 minutes, 30, 45, or 60.

My answer to this question never has to do with time management, but rather to do with my mood combined with some facet of the distorted thinking that comes along with compulsive gambling. Maybe it’s payday and I’m happy. This might warrant 60 minutes. Maybe I just won some yesterday and don’t want the Ghost to think me greedy: 15.

Almost never 45, though. Who ever plans to do something for 45 minutes? That’s just silly and if I press that button on the screen, the Ghost is bound to recognize my lack of sincerity and it is more likely that I will lose.

Of course, whenever whatever amount of time I’ve selected is up, a notification appears to temporarily suspend the trance, and I am given the option of continuing to play. Again: 15, 30, 45, 60? I could have begun with 15 but then I start having such a “good time” it’s 60, 60, 60 all night long.

But on this day I put the five in and press 30 minutes, putting on my best mask of hope (not desperation) and joviality (not excessive indulgence) before Ghost, who I’ve come to believe is watching from inside the machine, although I’m not certain. It’s a hopeless endeavour to try and capture the vitality of the face I had when I first got on this dopamine rollercoaster, to recreate the sense of unfamiliarity with the buttons in front and the payout charts above, the kind of freshness the Ghost will throw money at like a wormed hook to a fish.

The head rushes come in both obvious and subtle ways.

A reel on the left drops the bonus symbol – little hit.

Two reels drop the symbol and the remaining undropped reels speed up and sparkle, make sounds like revving engines, etc. – bigger hit.

The third symbol might drop after the 2/3 rev-sparkle show and an even bigger hit hits as an alarm sounds.

One long, sustained hit as the “free” spins play out: Jackpot?! Jackpot?!

Even if the Ghost is just haunting and taunting and I don’t win after all the fanfare, I’m still so hit and so lit.

Hit: Even the symbol with the smallest payout lining up twice or more.

Hit: A high paying symbol lining up four times, but alas, the middle reel just askew from the pay line.

Hit: The coin-clink noise as any amount of credits are added.

Double hit: Anything I accumulate in the bonus spins are added to my credits again in one shot along with a congratulatory graphic.

Hit: I was betting low but now I’m betting high. (!)

Hit: The person next to me has been hit hard and their machine is noisily hitting me too.

Hit: Dazzling, clever animations throughout.

This is my cheesy addiction and I have been full of shame and self loathing about it ever since the first big loss that followed the first significant win. What a curse that win had been for a naive person like me with pre-existing financial problems and unresolved emotional problems. I began to chase the possibility of consistent winnings like that, but the Ghost… At first I had been legitimately trying to escape the debt, but then it also became a matter of escaping the shame of blowing all my rent money in pursuit of a third jalepeño symbol.

Why didn’t I stop then and there? Why didn’t I just take that money from Mom and vow to stop? This is a question I don’t ask myself as I sit in this bar on cheque day, reeled.

Truth is, I did stop for a spell, but then the answer becomes a maddening mix of “I don’t know” and “brain chemical dependence” and “compounded sadness” and “utter loneliness” and “I got this” and “The Ghost owes me” and “God owes me” and “such evil was not possible” and “existential disappointment” and “suicidal apathy” and “odds are now in my favour”…

There’s a consistent mental process that I’ve gone through countless times:

1) Belief that I can play again in moderation.

2) Hope that I might win.

3) Disappointment in losing the gambling budget I’d set.

4) Irrational faith in the near misses as signs of an imminent win.

5) Renewed hope as I withdraw more money. (The Ghost will surely reward me for my perseverance!)

6) Deeper disappointment, shame, and self loathing as I near losing it all again.

7) Enter suicidal apathy. (Take it, you bastard.)

8) Totally broke, shocked, numb. Just me and a dormant random number generator.

Of course, a few wins happened to help string me along. Once I won $1500 on one machine and $1000 on another shortly after. I cashed out, bought myself a new bike, a printer, some cologne… Two weeks later, broke and desperate, I’d sell these things used for 1/5 of what I paid.

Indeed, wins occur. In fact, the two guys beside me have just won $700 and $300. I should probably head off to another bar where the coffers aren’t guaranteed depleted or come back in a few hours after they’ve put it all back in. Nope. Stuck.

About an hour in, on literally my last spin, I get five oranges and reclaim the $100 I put in. While it likely feels the other two guys look more haggard and impoverished (and they do) and therefore more deserving, the Ghost must see something in me, too. Maybe it knows I was in the hospital in December and January and shouldn’t be playing at all. Maybe this is a peace offering. But to me, so hit, lit and just seconds ago resigned to eat shit, it feels like another chance. Rome wasn’t built in an hour, but maybe two.

But suddenly I realize my mouth is dry and it doesn’t feel right to keep playing on this machine, so I print my ticket, take it over to the bar to exchange for more bills, and while I’m there I order a beer. I seldom drink, but sometimes the Ghost approves of it when I do, and today I must work hard to win its approval. I make sure to give the bartender a better than average tip just in case there’s some switch he can flip under the counter that will improve my odds. Round two, new machine, GO.

Of course, I’ve already confessed that I didn’t win. I could go on to describe many other ways I tried to persuade the Ghost, but I am out of money and there’s no sense staying here.

I’m sure thank the bartender on my way out with the hope that my thanks will prevent him from feeling any guilt for my renewed destitution.

Out on the street now in the early afternoon sun, I light a cigarette and calm myself with its toxic comforts. In my coat pocket I finger the three dollars I will need to be eligible for free dinners at the Mission.

*****

This is just my gambling story, someone who was too misanthropic to understand the nuances of table games and the race track. I can’t claim that everyone who plays has the same experience, although there will certainly be similarities.

And I’m sure that there are people who can play without destroying and/or ending their lives, but tragically there are too many who cannot. I believe this is largely a problem of deep shame of admitting the addiction working in lethal tandem with the societal value of independence.

Why not a sticker on every machine/table/bottle/baggie warning of the risk of addiction under financial and emotional stress? And then below that sticker maybe another one that reads: “It’s okay to admit fault and ask for help” and maybe then another that says “So many people out there who are ready and willing to help you” And then below that there’d be that iconic image of Uncle Sam pointing at the viewer. Then maybe “Come back when you’re truly wealthy, healthy, happy, and in control.” Because the well-meaning reminders to set a budget and a time limit and the 1-800 number that’s sometimes listed aren’t speaking to the ego in the right way.

*****

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” – Benjamin Franklin

*****

Gambling Scrapbook: Five Photographs in Orange Sepia

1) Young. Lunch out with Grandma. Chocolate milk and Nevada tickets!

2) Adolescent. Lost $200 betting on the rainbow wheel at the fair. Telling Mom I lost my wallet.

3) Summer 2016. Two world-weary friends a little drunk and stoned, play VLTs together. Laughing uncontrollably at the corny wheel bonus, I feel like I am on a game show.

4) November 2017. First time at the biggest casino in the country. I walk out with $2000, never to return.

5) December 2017. Remembering that one of my nephews is named after me as I pen my suicide note.

Five More (Double Jackpot/Lucky Me)

1) January 2018. A remarkable nurse brings me three English books to read from her personal library. One of them is Fight Club.

2) January 2018. My sweet landlady sitting with me and telling me “He would never hurt you.”

3) February 2018. A kind stranger heaps a plate with food and passes it to me over the counter, no questions asked.

4) February 2018. My mother dropping into a mailbox an envelope with a gift card – not cash – inside.

5) February 2018. In the Fight Club circle, never more alive.

*****

Afterword

I started writing this a month ago before posting it here. Today is a another cheque day. I have paid my rent, paid for my transit, and I am not at all tempted to gamble what little I have left. I have not placed a wager since February 1, 2018. In the past month, in addition to completing this creative writing project, I have found a job and I have quit smoking. I have also taken a healthy hiatus from smoking weed and searching for codependent relationships. I feel better than ever, full of self worth. I couldn’t have done it without the support of a multitude of new friends in my 12-Step program. I have a lot more work to do, of course, but I feel excited about it, not scared.

Best wishes to you, dear reader. You are not alone and you are worth it. Please reach out if you need to. No shame. Much love.