Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. So I have recently moved to Atlantic City maybe about seven months ago. Came from small town, Pet Nokxino's, had no access to gambling where I was from.
And since then, I have picked up a pretty nasty habit that's going to casinos. In the past couple of months, I'd say less than two months, maybe six weeks or so, I've lost about $45,000 to $55,000 of my money, basically, everything that I have. It started small, started with little bets, $25 here and there going out with some of my new friends that I met town. And then all of a sudden, before I know it, I was going out alone.
That's one up to $100 a night, and then $500 a night, and then next thing, I'm going in $2,000, $3,000, $5,000 a night. And over the course of maybe a week and a half, I really lost a big chunk, and I tried to chase it. And then over the past maybe three weeks or so, I've lost everything. James, I'm sorry.
How old are you, honey? Just turn 25. Pretty scary to be. There's a lot of control in it.
What's really kind of scary for me too is I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't do anything at all. I live a fully sober life.
I don't do anything else. I've never had an addiction, anything. Never use nicotine, nothing. So first real addiction, I think I've ever felt.
Yeah. Well, you're feeling one. There's no question. I'm not going to be a pro of that.
You're watching yourself almost out of body experience do life-destroying things and still do them anyway. That's the sign of an addict, right? Yeah. And what's really crazy to me is it's like I black out whenever I go.
I don't even just feel like I'm not even myself. And then the second I leave, the second I leave, it feels like I'm kind of back and I realize what I did. Are you working? Yeah, yeah.
What do you earn, sir? About 120 years. Doing what? I want to do this.
OK. Good. All right. George and I are not PhD in counseling like Dr.
John Deloney, who's on with us from time to time. But sadly, for 30 years, I've dealt with addicts and because 100% of addicts eventually have financial trouble. And so I'm afraid I've gotten to know something about this, the hard way, just by working with a lot of folks struggling with this. So that's the basis I'm answering the question on.
So I'm not telling you I'm a clinical expert. I'm not. I'm just a practical expert because I've dealt with so many people in your situation. So if I woke up in your shoes, what would I do?
I would do three things immediately, as soon as you hang up the phone. OK? One, I would find gamblers anonymous in your area and contact them. GA.
It's Alcoholics Anonymous for Gamblers, 12 step program. And they have probably one of the better results of helping people with this than anybody out there. Number two, I would find a coach or a counselor, a therapist in the area that you can meet with one on one. And you make enough money to afford to meet with some one on one.
And you need to start meeting with them immediately. You are in crisis. OK? They got to give you language for the way your brain is functioning.
So you can learn both of those places will help you with that. So you can learn how to navigate your way away from this. OK? Now, you move to Atlantic City to open this business?
No, I've been there for here and there, and I've been out there. And then I guess you could say yes, technically. But I didn't move there too. Open it specifically.
It just kind of happened that way. OK. What is your business? It is electronics.
What's that mean? So selling, fixing phones, computers, basically anything. If you don't have success doing those two things, and the third one I'm going to tell you is find a good church in your area and start developing relationships with good men that are not hanging out in casinos. OK?
If those three things together, gamblers and analysts, a therapist in a good church and revitalizing or causing, for the first time, your spiritual awakening inside of you, that's going to be part of your healing process. If you can't get those three things together to work, you have to move away from the casinos. I live in Nashville. There's not any here.
The big problem I've been really having recently is life has just become not fun anymore, like daily things. Or I don't get the level of excitement that I need from anything. It's a false narrative because what happens is that any time you're in an addictive feedback loop, the addict's mind says the only fun thing is when I'm doing the addiction. And so everything else is boring.
You're chasing that high, and so you always need the newer, better, crazier high, and that's what happened in your situation. So you're going to need to replace those habits with other things that are healthier. Do you have any hobbies currently? Not anymore.
I used to be in a sports and back girls from my head a lot of friends, but since I moved up here, I don't really know many people. You've got to rebuild a friend group intentionally as a part of this healing that is not going to casinos. Because you do become who you hang around with. You notice that, right?
And then they push me. I think I'll go with me a bit. Big money. So it kind of pushes me to, you know, like, you feel like a wimp.
I'm going to drop in 10 and they're dropping 100. Or they're dropping 100. They're dropping 1,000 and you're dropping 100. Whatever it is.
But, you know, you feel like a wimp. And the opposite is true. I'm the biggest wimp of all, if that's the case, because I can walk through those places and watch other people lose money all day long than bother me a bit. I don't feel pressured at all to join the parade of bodies created by these things.
And, you know, I'll throw out one other piece of information. James, will you do those three things for me to take care of James? Yes. Something I've already done as well is Atlantic City has a government funded trying to go with phrases like a kind of like a GA almost.
Yeah. And I don't know anything about the inner workings of that. Or if it's successful. But I'm always suspect when the Fox says, oh, to the hen house, here's how you fix it.
You know, it's funded by the gambling people. I mean, I'm not saying it's nefarious. I don't think it is. I think it's well meaning.
But it's also a reaction to they had to do something because the PR around the number of lives are destroying is pretty incredible. And so they had to. Well, if you have a gambling problem, dial 1-800. I've got a gambling problem.
And they put that after all the FanDuel ads now. For FanDuel, I made about $80 billion a minute off of people just like you. And so it just pisses me off. But yeah, that's a good, that's not a bad move.
But it can't be your only move. Yeah. And then on top of that, there might need to be some guardrails around your bank accounts and your finances to stop you from doing something or action spending a lot of money. That might mean putting limits on your bank accounts.
You can't spend over a certain amount. Or if you have a trusted friend that can keep you accountable, that's going to really help with this. Just to remove, right now you need more friction stopping you from doing the thing. So as much friction as we can add, removing apps stopping you.
I know there's some apps out there that can help with that as well as I was looking this up. Gambam, Betblocker, there's all kinds of things out there that can help. But which one are you actually going to stick with and do? That's the question.
At the bottom line is, what's up? Man, yesterday, scarcity loop. Oh, yeah. Read scarcity loop by Michael yesterday.
And it's a good book. It's worth reading. And any of you that are just interested in this subject. It's a full unpacking of how the feedback loop works in the brain on several different things.
Scarcity brain, Michael. Scarcity brain. Thank you. I called him Mr.
Mike. Sorry, Michael. It's a familiar. Yeah.
Michael Easter. Thank you. I know him. And he's been here and on the show, but on stage with us.
And I should have known his name. I apologize, Michael. But he's really brilliant. My brain couldn't scare city brain.
But it's talks about this idea that we chase what we think is scarce. And the gambling addict is the primary thing that covers and that he gets into in this book. And it's pretty interesting read. Yeah.
The good news is, Michael James is young enough that he's going to recover from this. And it'll just be a giant stupid tax. Hopefully he looks back on. Yeah.
Yeah. You will call us $50 in one night when I was 21 playing on hand of poker. I didn't know how to play. Last time I played.
Wow. That was 45 years ago. That's the hot stuff once. My addiction lasted one night.
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