[williame]

Looking foward to looking at my 1st G.T post years from now in reflection how my gambling addiction impacted my life and what I did to abstain from this disease for the rest of my life.
Being my 1st post here about my disease, Ill start off by saying hello to everyone who reads this, my name is Will E and im a compulsive gambler in the grips of this horrible disease. Gambling destroyed a big portion of my life. From the beginning, which was at the age of 15 betting my first horse race ($1 triple box 123 at Roosevelt Raceway in 1983 and hitting it for $100, worse thing that ever happened to me. It’s kind of scary that I can remember exactly what wager it was that triggered the start of a gambling addiction in my brain. I instantly and compulsively got interested in harness racing from going to school for it to become a race horse driver in harness racing or trainer, to betting on it using a computer program i created on my computer (prior to this I would of been considered, or was considered by some, a computer geek.) Learning computer programing started in 1982 which if you research it by time line, was very early for a student to have interest and ended up graduating high school with many college offers to follow the computer thing. But I used it to help me gamble, and it destroyed a good portion of my teen years. I had a friend Mike P who also was addicted to gambling, and for years into my 20’s I worked very hard, made a very solid living, and gambled I’d say pretty much all of what I made weekly at the local OTB betting horses reading the program and not realizing back then you cant beat the track takeout+otb takeout and make money gambling on horses. But back being much younger, I didnt realize why Id go to an OTB or to a racetrack and bet what ended up Id easily say in my lifetime $1,000,000+ in losses betting on horses alone. Remember all I did with my free time was smoke pot with Mike P and read the daily racing forum all night then park in the OTB parking lot in my work truck and wait for the doors to open. Had a rule, never walked thru the door without $200 minimum, which was obviously broken at times, but I bet heavy (Mike P and I called it "firing the cannons" , which were $100 bills). Had many big cashouts, but obviously more losses along with the stealing of your soul by this disease and transforming me into a compulsive liar, theif, con man, stoner, withdrawn person that I became. In having this disease, those horrible defects just come with the addiction, its simply progressive and you end up crossing lines and doing things that you normally would never do. Continued in future post……

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