lifestyles
Photo Illustration by Paul Kotz / KANSAN
From lottery tickets to riverboat casinos, legalized gambling is increasing the odds that rolling the dice could become more of an addiction than a weekend activity.
By Casey Barnes
Kansan staff writer
When the Argosy Riverboat opened on June 22 in Kansas City, Mo., Tim Gaigals was already an experienced gambler.
Gaigals, Shawnee senior, had been going to The Woodlands dog and horse racetracks three times a week since he was in high school. He had played poker with his friends, made bets on dart games and pool games, and for his 21st birthday, his dad took him to Las Vegas.
"Some people like to go to movies or ride bikes," the Gaigals said. "I like to gamble."
Since it was legalized, gambling has become more than a pastime for many KU students. It has become an addictive form of entertainment.
Gaigals said he went to the Argosy about once a week. He has won up to $650 in one trip.
"it's fun," he said. "I'd rather go and spend my money on gambling and have a chance to win it back then go just spend $50 on another form of entertainment."
Gaigals said that although he gambled often,he said he did not have problems or obsessions with gambling.
"I heard a story about a man who went to Las Vegas to get married, started gambling and lost his car dealership, his house and all
of his possessions," Gaigals said. "It happens to some people, but I don't get that stressed about it. I think I'm a level-headed person, and I don't get worried. I know how much I have to lose, and I don't lose more than that."
Howie Cornbbleth, compulsive gambling counselor at Charter Hospital of Las Vegas specialized gambling treatment center, said gambling was more serious than a drug addiction because there was no substance to control. Gambling was purely a mental addiction, he said.
"Gambling is the purest form of psychological addiction there is," Cornbleth said. "Once someone is hooked, they are completely hooked. Gambling controls them, and it is impossible to stop."
But for most people it is not that easy.
He said gambling could be done for entertainment, but those who had an addictive personality may cross the line, which is when it became a problem.
Cornbleth said some of the most serious symptoms of an addictive gambler were considering or committing illegal acts to finance gambling and considering self-destructive behavior because of losses.
The biggest key to determining if people were addicted to gambling is if the gambling caused problems in their life.
Cornbelt, a reformed gambler, has not made a bet in 20 years and said he had seen people lose everything to gambling.
"The end is tragic and can be as low as suicide, prison or an insane asylum," he said.
The Charter Hospital of Las Vegas is the only charter hospital that has a specialized gambling program.
And Cornbleth said the hospital had seen many success.
"Through the studies we have done, 53 percent of the people who go through our program for gambling and follow up with Gamblers Anonymous meetings have refrained from gambling for at least the first year," he said. "But that is as long as we have followed anyone."
While the recent surges in gambling have had a large impact on Gaigals, Kellie Gilliland, Hutchinson senior, said she had no desire to gamble on a regular basis.
Gilliland said women were less likely to become addicted to gambling because they liked to spend their money on things that were important to them instead of possibly losing it all by gambling.
"I think I would be thinking about what I could buy with the money I'm setting out on the table," Gilliland said. "There is too big of a risk involved."
The symptoms
1. Family, job or social problems due to gambling.
2. Loss of a consistent ability to control gambling.
3. A need to gamble more money in order to get the desired effect of gambling
4. marked changes in behavior or personality when gambling.
5. Gambling much longer than planned.
6. Breaking laws while gambling
7. Gambling to escape worry or trouble
8. Change in sleeping or eating habits due to gambling
9. Celebrating good fortune by gambling.
10. Missing work or school to sample
11. Gambling to obtain money for debts.
12. Borrowing money to finance gambling.
13. Considering self-destruction because of gambling.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NOVEMBER 15, 1994 PAGE 6A
News of the Weird
Lead Story
On Oct.17 the federal government announced it would reduce funding by $55 million for food banks and other programs that feed poverty-stricken Americans. That same day,it spent $47 million in new funds to create Jobs and job training for the much-reviled Haiti police force.
Adoption agency official Mary Graves, in a Doylestown, Pa., case in which a girl had been taken from her father after the mother passed away, testified in August that she favored keeping the girl with the adopted family. With her father, Graves said, "She would have none of the benefits but all of the disadvantages of a mother who is dead."
Well Put
A New York City Transit Authority
spokesman, describing in August how his agency would handle female toplessness in subways after a state court ruled that women had the same public nudity rights as men: "If [the topless females] were violating any other rules, like sitting on a subway bench topless smoking a cigarette, then we would take action."
James A. Kowalski, following his conviction on child sexual molestation charges in Prince Frederick, Md., in July said, "I can't help myself. If I could stop, I would. It's no fun being the slimy underbelly of human sexuality."
In a July article, the Daily Oklahoma newspaper quoted state Sen. John Monks as once arguing, while defending the "sport" of cockfighting, "The first thing the Communists do when they take over a country is to outlaw cockfighting."
The Weirdo-American Community
In September in Pittsburgh, Dewitt Smith, 46, received a five- to 10-year sentence for aggravated assault for a 1992 incident in which he broke away from courtroom marshals and bit his judge, Walter R. Little, on the face, sending him to the hospital for stitches. Smith said he did not understand what he was doing because of "voices."
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