<
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/mobile-sports-betting-gambling-addiction-fanduel-draftkings-1235444172/>
"For Andrew Douglas, bottom was seven cops banging on the door of his
apartment. He’d sharpened the knife “good,” filled the bathtub with water, and
downed a vial of Coumadin to bleed out faster. Had his dad not sensed something
and dialed 911, Andrew, a star baseball player turned gambling addict in
college, would have quietly checked out at age 33, leaving his twin infant
sons, his guilt-crippled parents, and many thousands of dollars in gambling
debts behind.
For Jonah, bottom wasn’t failing out of college and mulling suicide. Nor was it
the month in a Florida rehab, where, for some fool reason, they let him have
his cellphone and he bet money he’d stolen from family on four-legged parlay
bets. (More on parlays later.) No, for Jonah, a lacrosse player at a powerhouse
program, bottom was crossing the last bridge of honor: trading inside info with
players at other schools to cover the over/under on games they bet.
For the seven mostly young men sitting around this table, bottom was a grave of
their own digging — a hole so deep that their cries for help went unheard. “My
thoughts were too crazy, I thought that no one would get them,” says Marcus, a
mid-twentysomething dressed like a gamer: black glasses, high-top Chucks, and a
Playskool-colored sweatshirt. At his bottom, he was staring out the window of
his apartment, weighing whether a fall from five flights up would kill or
merely maim him. “I got to where suicide sounded sane.” (Excepting Andrew,
above, the gamblers in this story spoke in exchange for anonymity.)
We’re lunching at a sports bar in a Philadelphia suburb, picking at taste-free
wings and waffle fries. It’s a curious place to bring a group of recovering
gamblers, but the man at the head of the table has his reasons. Harry Levant
has always been a rower against the river: a former criminal-defense attorney
who lost his license, and nearly lost his life, to his own gambling jones a
decade back; a second-chance crusader and addictions counselor who mainly
treats folks gutted by gambling disorders; and a peripatetic opponent of the
online gambling behemoths DraftKings and FanDuel, and the other sports-betting
operators (hereafter, SBOs). Forty weeks a year, Levant’s somewhere in the air,
lecturing state legislators and groups of physicians about the betting apps’
ploys and snares, as well as the harms he says they’ve levied on Gen Z males.
That grail of Levant’s reads lonely and self-devouring: the mania of the
gambler repurposed for public service. “Every addictive product has
regulations,” says Levant. “Why is this the only one without them?”"
Via
Garbage Day: The Great Dumbening
https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-great-dumbening
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
