By the time I was 29 years old, I felt I'd made the right decisions on a lot of stuff throughoit my life. I never started smoking, drinking alcohol or taking drugs. However, I had done all three of these things. I was tricked into taking a puff off a cigarette. (A boy told me that if I held the cigarette an inch from my mouth and inhaled, I wouldn't breathe in any smoke. He lied to me.) My Mom and Dad let me take some sips of beer and wine. (I didn't like the taste of either.) And I got a contact high when I was in college. (But I didn't feel particularly inclined to smoke weed, even though I could have continued doing it just by freeloading.)
So, it was a shock to me that at the lowest point of my life that I would become addicted to gambling. I should point out that it never got so bad that I bet the rent, but I did blow money that could have been put to better use. The thing is, if I was winning, I didn't feel like I had a gambling problem. If I was losing, then it was an issue.
I really enjoyed playing Blackjack in Las Vegas and thought I was pretty good at it. In San Diego County in 1993, there were three Indian casinos within a 30 - 40 minute drive away: Barona, Viejas and Sycuan. I mostly went to Barona because it was the closest and they had the nicest facilities at that time. It was no hassle to play Blackjack there. (Actually, due to legal reasons, they referred to it as "Jokers Wild 21" instead of "Blackjack." The others referred to it as "21," but make no mistake, it was Blackjack.) The casinos did not bank the 21 tables. Outside businesses set up people to sit at the tables and control the banks. Individuals could also come up and bank the tables. In the long run, those businesses made quite a score off the tables. Personally, I didn't want to bank, because I never had enough money. But knowing my luck, I would get one of those times that the dealer goes bust every hand.
I went to Viejas once. At the time, it was just this single building with a dirt parking lot. I sat down at a table with a sign that said the minimum bet was $5. An individual was banking the table and there was one older woman playing. I put a $5 chip on the table and the banker said, "No, the minimum bet is $10!" "The sign says $5." "I don't care what the sign says. I say it's $10!" "The sign says $5." The dealer called over the pit boss and he told the banker that he had to comply with what the sign said. He picked up his chips and left. The dealer gave me my $5 chip back. I guess that guy had been bullying the older woman into playing $10 a hand.
There was one other 21 table open. There was an available seat, so I took it and started playing. Then the banker from the other table sat down. And it appeared that almost everyone at this table were trying to be bankers. The way it worked, a person could bank for the entire duration of a shoe of cards as long as they were able to back up the bets. Once the shoe was over or the banker ran out of money, the ability to bank would be offered to the next player. However, in order to bank the next shoe, you have to be playing a few hands before the banker changes. This guy didn't play. He just sat there and waited for his turn to bank. He was telling another banker about what had happened at the other table in which the casino wouldn't allow him to set the table limit (which he was doing because there was only one other person playing). The other banker said, "That's not right!" I decided to never set foot at that casino again. But Viejas managed to expand into a large shopping center within the next five years.
As for Sycuan, I couldn't figure out how I could play the table games. I guess there was a waiting list I was supposed to sign up for. I wasted a lot of time trying to find it, so I never went back there again.
Typically on payday, I would take care of my bills first. Then, I would get my groceries. If I had about $40 left over, I would try to turn that into more money so I could do stuff like go to the movies. I would drive up to Barona and try my luck. If I won, great! If not, that 30 minute drive back home felt like an hour.
Gambling hit something in my brain that sparked so many levels of experience. There's the strategizing, figuring out the odds, the rush when you win a risky bet and the short-term depression that sets in when you weren't expecting to lose. So many highs and lows. I know that if I had taken up any of the other bad habits, I could have become just as addicted to those. When I had the gambling problem, I could at least say that it was better to blow the money gambling than to use it on cigarettes, alcohol or drugs.
Once I got back on my feet about a year later, I didn't go to the casino so much. But I would probably go about once a month and lose money that I didn't need to. This routine pretty much continued until I moved from San Diego in 2003. The place I moved to, San Jose, didn't have any Indian casinos close by. The nearest one is an hour's drive away and the nearest really nice one is two hours away.
I thought my gambling problem was behind me, but I was wrong. Ms. Ogolon wanted to go to the nice casino and it wasn't long before she wanted to go up more often. During the period of time in which she was wrestling with her demons, she would call in sick and we'd drive the two hours to get the casino. If I didn't have a gambling problem myself, I probably could have kept that from happening.
We stopped going after our son was born. Sometimes, it takes a major life change like that to help avoid returning to an addiction, but that doesn't always work with everyone.
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