Gambling addiction trapping women

" ... in the past nine years, the number of women compared with men seeking treatment for gambling addiction
has increased from 37.2 percent of the total in 1996 to 52.3 percent last year."
(Webkeeper's note: There were no casinos in Oregon before 1995)

Gambling addiction trapping women

Treatment - Oregon Lottery games that allow solitude produce a new set of problem gamblers, often resulting in costly and severe consequences

As the rain whips leaves against the window, 10 women gathered around a conference room table describe how gambling destroyed their lives.

"My mother, who was dying of cancer, came to the casino at 4 a.m. to get me," says a third. "I was in a casino when she died."

Collectively, the members of this confidential support group have gambled away $3 million. They've hocked jewelry, lied to their husbands, stolen from friends, threatened suicide. Before they blew their savings and mortgage on video poker and line games, they worked as writers and office managers, and instructed new lawyers.

For the first time since 1995, when researchers began studying Oregonians' gambling patterns, more women are seeking treatment for addiction than men. The most high-profile Portland-area case is Elma Magkamit, the former West Linn finance director who will be sentenced this week for stealing $1.4 million from city funds to feed her slot-machine addiction.

Magkamit's game of choice was not unusual, experts say. Women prefer the privacy of video slots to card games, sports betting or other forms of gambling that men typically pursue. And since last year, when the Oregon Lottery legalized video line games, the machines are easier to find. That worries addiction counselors, who say the number of women seeking treatment will increase.

"We're just beginning to see the slots players coming into treatment," said Peter Walsh, program manager at Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare, which treats problem gamblers. "You don't have to go to the Coast; you can go to the corner restaurant or delicatessen, and each is like a minicasino in itself."

Oregon appears to be mirroring an international trend, said Rachel Volberg, president of Gemini Research, a company that specializes in studies of gambling and problem gambling. She said the number of women calling gambling addiction help lines in the United States and abroad has increased in the past five years. "Part of it probably is a function of more women gambling," she said, "but I think it's also a function of the problem gambling advocacy community getting the word out to people."

In many ways, Magkamit, 53, fits the profile of a typical problem gambler in Oregon, studies show: Most are between 45 and 54 years old, married, have attended college and earn $50,000 or more a year in a professional or technical field.

Magkamit, who pleaded guilty in September to 57 counts of first-degree theft and first-degree aggravated theft, told police she wrote herself checks from city funds to cover a gambling addiction. Police found lottery tickets and casino receipts in her golf-course home. She told them she intended to pay the city back but could never win enough to replace the money.

Magkamit's lawyer, Whitney Boise, declined to allow his client to be interviewed. But he said Magkamit experienced a high from gambling. Addiction counselors say it resembles the feeling top athletes get when they exercise. Imbalances in the brain's store of serotonin and dopamine may be factors in compulsive gambling, researchers say.

Women gamble for reasons different from those of men, researchers and addiction counselors say. Men tend to seek the excitement of card games, and gambling on games of skill such as bowling or pool. Women tend to gamble to escape feelings of stress or chronic pain, and prefer the solitude of video poker or slot machines.

The stress of managing her husband's East Multnomah County business and dealing with chronic nerve and chest pain led Elizabeth Wallace, 54, to the video poker machines and line games at Dotty's.

"I never thought you could be addicted to gambling," said Wallace, who spoke on the condition that her maiden name be used to shield her family. "I planned ways of getting out of the house to gamble. If my husband went to his parents' home to eat, I said I was too tired and I'd gamble. I used the money I would have used to cut my hair, and I'd put it in the machines. I was in a fog for so long."

Ten-minute lunch breaks turned into two hours. The losses piled up. Wallace and her husband were forced to sell their house on a one-acre lot with a pool out back. Over 31/2 years, she said, she gambled away $750,000. She considered suicide, but her kids talked her out of it. Instead, in August, she checked herself into the state's first long-term residential treatment center for gamblers.

Counselors say it's not uncommon for gamblers to lose their homes, their cars and their 401(k)s before they'll admit they have a problem. Unlike serious drug or alcohol addicts, whose addictions interfere with their work, many gamblers are able to hold down managerial jobs, taking long lunches to play slot machines or ducking into a deli to play video poker between picking up the kids and grocery shopping.

Prosecutors report seeing more cases of women in positions of trust -- treasurers, bookkeepers, financial managers -- stealing money to gamble.

"Clearly, there are more women, and the amounts are more," said Janelle Factora Wipper, a Washington County deputy district attorney. "It used to be that if it was in the tens of thousands, it was significant. Now we're seeing cases in the hundreds of thousands."

Bev Johnson, a former supervisor at the Multnomah County district attorney's office who trained first-year lawyers in court procedure, once was a regular at the video poker machines at Carly's Pizza and Heidi's in Gresham. Trying to suppress childhood trauma and the sadness of her granddaughter moving away, Johnson gambled as much as $10,000 a day as she tried to recapture the thrill of her first three jackpots of $1,800. Even after she served jail time for theft -- appearing before the same judges she had met as attorneys, and guided them through the intricacies of discovery and grand juries -- she continued gambling, signing her husband's name to checks and cashing them to play the machines.

"I think about it now, and I'm appalled because I'm not that kind of woman," said Johnson, who also asked that her maiden name be used. "I would not prostitute or kill to get gambling money, but I'd do just about anything else."

The addiction had such a grip on her, she said, that when a counselor told her to write a goodbye letter to the idea of gambling, she struggled to come up with the words. She finally wrote, "You can't be part of my life. You've destroyed me." Johnson said she hasn't gambled since Sept. 14, 2004, but the past still ripples through her daily life.

"Financially, we're as well as we'll ever be," she said. "The house won't ever be paid off. I have no checking account. But the bills and credit cards are paid, and we don't have to juggle the bills."

Voters approved the Oregon Lottery in 1984, which now finances economic development, public education, parks, salmon habitat restoration and watershed enhancement programs. Of the $483.6 million in profits that have gone to the state in fiscal 2005-06, $4.65 million has been allocated for gambling addiction treatment, said Chuck Baumann, a lottery spokesman.

Lottery officials say they've taken measures to address the issue of gambling addiction. Two years ago, they ran a series of ads called "Get your life back to normal," which targeted women gamblers by convincing them they could give up gambling and return to a "normal life" of taking walks and visiting friends. The ads resulted in more women calling the state's gambling hot line.

More recently, lottery officials have slapped stickers with the hot-line number on the faces of video poker and line game machines; incorporated clocks in the software of video poker and line games to prevent players from losing their sense of time; and installed a feature allowing players to display the amount of money wagered and won in dollars rather than solely in credits. Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, based in Washington, D.C., said Oregon has one of the best support systems in the country for problem gamblers.

But in the past nine years, the number of women compared with men seeking treatment for gambling addiction has increased from 37.2 percent of the total in 1996 to 52.3 percent last year. More women than men gamblers are now enrolled in treatment programs, said Jeffrey Marotta, who coordinates state services for problem gamblers.

Wallace said the stickers with the gambling hot-line number never deterred her. Pamphlets listing the number, along with the dangers of gambling, were in plain sight when she gambled, but she and her fellow gamblers "used to joke about it. We'd say, 'I'd really like to call them, but I don't have time because this machine is really working for me now.' "

At the support group Wallace attends weekly, one newcomer recently described a game she discovered on the Internet that involved betting $20 a spin. She showed her son, who watched the winnings increase to $4,000. "It's like an adult carnival, a ride," the woman said.

Several women in the room suddenly became animated. Their eyes brightened. They sat up straighter. Marcia Mattoso, the counselor who was leading the group, quickly cut off the story. It was too risky to share with women struggling to wean themselves from gambling, she said.

Wallace could feel a goofy grin spread across her face. She was remembering what it was like to win.

Softly, she said, "I can't stop. It will kill me if I gamble again. I know this."