Guest Contributor – Adam Lyons
Hi, my name is Adam and I’m a compulsive gambler. My last bet was February 8, 2022. I gambled from the age of 18 to 38. I was taught how to play poker at a young age, and by the time I got to college, which also happened to be the beginning of the Poker Boom, I was hooked.
I took a year off of college and ended up working as a Poker Dealer at a casino in Connecticut, and that is where my gambling went to the next level. Poker didn’t interest me as much now that I had the thrill and the rush of slot machines and table games. After a few years of this, which included many cash advances and a lot of poor decisions, I found myself at the first of many rock bottoms, having to declare bankruptcy before the age of 30.
After the bankruptcy, I was able to not gamble for a few months due to the shame and embarrassment, but soon after “the itch” came back and I was back gambling. This is when I also began to lie, cheat, steal, and commit illegal acts to fund my gambling.
Running from Myself
With my life going nowhere, I thought I just needed a change of scenery. So for the next 10 years, I lived in five different cities and had over 20 jobs. One of those jobs was working for MGM Resorts, and one of the cities I lived in was Las Vegas. A perfect city for a compulsive gambler, right?
During the later years of my gambling is when I began to borrow money. I would borrow from family, friends, coworkers, subordinates. I would lie and manipulate them into loaning me money. It cost me my career with MGM, and I was running out of opportunities after burning so many bridges over the years, both personally and professionally.
My gambling was no secret. Sometimes I would make a joke of it. Sometimes I would use Gamblers Anonymous as a ploy to get people to loan me money.
“I promise, I’m going to GA tomorrow, I just need to pay the rent,”
I would tell anyone who’d listen.
Half-Hearted Attempts
Throughout the last six or seven years of my gambling, I knew I had a problem. I would make half-hearted attempts at getting help—seeing a therapist, self-excluding myself from casinos, or lying about going to 12-step meetings. At the end of the day, I always found myself back gambling.
My last half-hearted attempt was to move to Austin and work in a poker room in Round Rock, TX. There wasn’t a casino within four hours. I thought I was safe. And for six months, I was. Until that fateful night, January 30, 2022, when I drove to the nearest casino in Oklahoma, in the middle of the night by myself, and I lost thousands of dollars.
It was after that 24-hour straight session of gambling that I found myself in a parking lot in the middle of Oklahoma, far from home. And a feeling washed over me. Call it God, call it the universe, call it a higher power. But I was ready to stop. After 20 brutal years, I was ready to surrender. A week later I went to my first GA meeting. And it saved my life.
A New Purpose
3+ years later, I am working the 12 steps and staying away from a bet one day at a time. But now I have another purpose in life, and that is to spread awareness about this baffling, insidious disease.
And I do that through my podcast The Modern Meeting. It’s an additional resource for those who may not be ready to walk into that church basement. We will share stories and share our experience, strength, and hope with not just the addicts, but those affected by addiction.
Welcome to The Modern Meeting.
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