I check my messages at shebetsherlife@gmail.com.  A woman has written.  I see my story, maybe your story.  I offer you her honest and generous heart.  Jess writes:

 I'm thinkin' about this addiction thing.... alot....often.  I was cleaning out some stuff.... ya know, I was so broke for most of my 20s, 30s, 40s that all I wanted to do was "get stuff" -- and now I have "stuff" and all I want to do is divest myself of it. We humans are so weird..... anyway, I found this pottery jar that someone (a friend??) gave me a few years back. Not that many years ago. Presumably to horde quarters until our next trip to the casino. (it is empty, by the way) It made me think of you and this battle you wage. I don't think I am really a gambler because I am at my core too cautious, too afraid of losing and having nothing, but like I said to you a few weeks back - I totally get it. And the situation I described to you - the ATM machine beckoning is very real... not just my empathy in overdrive. But you know, I'm trying to sort this out... why it's bugging me so much...I told you my first trip to a casino was when my sis and I took my dad to Atlantic City when he came to visit me in NY. He's been dead for 6 years now, was sick for one, and this was pre-diagnosis... so let's say it was about 8 years ago. We took a bus that threaded its way through Staten Island - a god-forsaken-place if you ever wanted one -- and then down the Jersey coast line. We went to the Showboat at the northern end of the boardwalk. I still remember how intimidated I felt when we walked onto the floor teeming with people. I didn't know what I was doing and felt I did not belong. We fooled around with a poker machine but quickly abandoned that because we didn't quite get how it worked. And then we settled down at slot machines. Three in a row -- and you had to pull the arm (that appealed to my obsessive nature -- very soothing activity). The machines there at that time weren't the stupid video things they have now.... and they took and dispensed REAL quarters. (those are the best). Ding ding ding ding ding was accompanied by jingle jingle jingle jingle jingle. Music to a novice's ears. The thing is we had beginner's luck. I won $200. My father (who actually WAS a gambler, but he preferred horse races) wisely told me to put it away and not use it, and I listened to him. My sister won about $75 and in his very last act of the day - at a dollar machine (which I thought was a foolish waste of money) - his last dollar brought a $700 jackpot. We were all flying high -- I still have hanging on my wall about 6 feet from where I am sitting, his smiling face clutching seven one-hundred-dollar bills in front of the slot that awarded it (this photo was taken before security saw my camera and told me I couldn't take photos .... babes in the woods were we....). It was a truly great day.So my problem was I kept trying to re-create it. And it has never happened. Hence every time I get sucked into a casino, I feel that down-to-the-tips-of-my-toes depression. I can't win. If I pour money into a machine, I get depressed. If I don't pour money into a machine, I get depressed. And every time I leave, I say to myself - do not go back. Why go back? It just depresses you. And I struggle. Here's the struggle.... it goes something like this... maybe I'll win.... I won't spend much. I'll limit myself - $20. No more than that. Play nickel machines.... hell - play 2 cent or 1 cent machines. It'll take longer to spend the money. But wait, you figure out that if you bet more than one line, you have a better chance of things landing where you want them to, and if you double the bet, a win of 4 doubles to 8.Wow. Now we're getting somewhere.  By the time you do "max bet" which some of them seem to force you to do, you're spending like a dollar - or more. Why not go play the dollar machine?Whoa girl. Maybe limit yourself even more than $20. How about $5. Stop on the way home from work - $5. that's all. Once a week.. what can it hurt? Maybe you'll win.The casino is no longer 3 hours south in Atlantic City or 3 hours northeast at Foxwoods in CT. There's a casino in Yonkers - maybe 4 miles from where I live. There's a casino on Route 17 in Tioga that I pass by four times a month going to and from Batavia (where my brother is in a group home). There's a f** casino in Batavia! Batavia Downs for heaven's sake.... a few year's ago, they got smart and said, ya know - we can raise a whole lotta money by doing more than just horse races.. there's nothing but nothing to DO in Batavia and there are a lot of poor, unemployed or underemployed folks looking for something to do.  So - that's the problem... it's not just that I face a once or twice a year jaunt that takes the whole day to go with my girlfriend south to AC or north to Foxwoods.... it's that there are many that I pass on the way from here to there and I always always always think - maybe if I try, I can win this time.Now..... here's the reality. I have never set foot in the casino in Batavia. Amazing. I almost always PLAN to go. I think, I'll finish with my brother for the day, and then the long evening stretches out before me - so I'll go to the casino. Just for an hour. Sometimes I actually drive up in that general direction and hover in the Kmart parking lot across the street. And then I think, no, not tonight. Not this time. Next time. And so I am safe.... and only a little depressed but I am very good at delaying gratification. Always have been. I get by because I think - I'll go next time.And then there's the trip to and from Batavia on route 17 -- one long grueling drive. Luckily most of the time on the way there, it's like 6 in the morning when I pass by and it's CLOSED. All good gamblers are in their beds with visions of cherries dancing in their heads. It's the going home on Sundays where the temptation lies. Most of the time I'm in a hurry and that saves me. I think - I just don't have time today. Gotta get home, have a paper to finish. Gotta get home, have to get groceries, do laundry. Maybe next time. This winter, I gave in to the temptation, and stopped. And lost. And was depressed and felt defeated. Now I try desperately to remember that depressed and defeated feeling and think, I want to avoid that at all costs. I think that when the depressed and defeated feeling looms larger than the optimistic maybe I can win feeling, that's when I really win, and just drive past...Thank you, Jess.  There isn't a textbook account of compulsive gambling that can touch this straight shot from your heart.  I hope more than a few women write you c/o shebetsherlife@gmail.com so I can forward their messages to you.