KICKING THE HABIT

By Andrea Chambers

"You're looking at a guy who used to buy transistor radios from kids on the train just so I could hear the score," blurted out Ronald L. of New York City as 16 men and one woman listened solemnly. "I used to bet on everything, even the turnstiles at a ball game," he confessed. Then, in a quivering tone, Harold B. told the group: "I degraded myself in every way. I robbed like a bastard." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I was nothing more than a piece of garbage."

The confessions lasted for 3 1/2 hours as a Gamblers Anonymous chapter held its weekly meeting in a church basement in New York City. G.A., which now has 450 chapters across the U.S. and others in Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, was founded in 1957 when two addicted gamblers met by chance on a Los Angeles street. One of the gamblers was rushing to a card game, the other to a race track, and they started telling each other their problems. There are now 5,000 members of G.A. in the U.S., but they represent only a tiny percentage of the nation's compulsive gamblers, variously estimated to number from 1 million to more than 4 million. Therapeutic talk sessions are the backbone of the organization, as in Alcoholics Anonymous.

The gamblers at G.A. meetings come from a variety of social and economic backgrounds. Says Dr. Robert L. Custer, a psychiatrist with the Veterans Administration in Washington and an expert on gambling, alcohol and drug abuse: "The compulsive gamblers don't follow any pattern. The only similarity is the addiction." Custer has termed compulsive gambling a "progressive behavior disorder," and points out that whereas the casual gambler goes to the track or casino with friends, the compulsive one usually goes alone.

After studying 50 cases in a special treatment program at the VA Hospital in Brecksville, Ohio, in 1972, Custer and two associates produced a composite picture of a compulsive gambler in an advanced stage. The portrait, in part: he is a male in his 30s, without any financial resources; he sleeps poorly and is indifferent toward sex; he drinks a good deal; he is tense and irritable; he has thought of suicide; he thinks about gambling constantly.

Frank W., a young man who answers the G.A. hot line in Boston, recognizes much of his former self in the description. He confesses: "When I was gambling, my wife could have been home dying from cancer, and I could not have cared less." G.A. Member Myron R. of New York City actually stole money from his four-year-old to go to the track. One possessed gambler even admits to digging up and selling coffins to get cash for a bet.

The hardship endured by the families harboring hard-core gamblers has fostered two G.A. offshoots, Gam-Anon for addicts' spouses and Gam-A-Teen for their children. Gam-A-Teen sponsors weekly meetings where children as young as nine bolster one another emotionally concerning their parents' plight.

The family ordeal may last a lifetime. G.A. admits that 90 out of every 100 gamblers who approach the organization eventually return to playing with chance. Even those who faithfully attend the weekly meetings have only a fifty-fifty hope of completely overcoming their addiction, largely because it requires such a massive psychological adjustment. As G.A. Member John R. puts it: "Gambling was everything. It was my life. It was better than sex. Now I have to learn to live, really live for the first time."

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