Linda Selymes started gambling two years before her retirement as an executive at Boeing Aircraft. But after retirement, she began gambling more often.
Linda Selymes started gambling two years before her retirement as an executive at Boeing Aircraft. But after retirement, she began gambling more often.
She went through $500,000 in retirement savings, fell behind on house payments, and hated the person she had become.
At the height of her addiction, she would draw out $500 from her credit union account and head for the casino.
After losing that money, she would use her debit card to get another $500, then add $300 more to credit cards.
On one occasion, she had in her purse $14,000 that she had won, but the money was all gone in just three days.
At first Linda’s husband did not know what she was doing since she managed the household finances. But after an all-nighter at a casino, her husband threatened to leave her-though never did. Finally, her husband, her son, and her doctor convinced her to get help.
It took several months to eventually gain control and completely stop gambling.
She now says she will never stop going to her support group meetings because she knows that if she gambles again, she will be on the fast-track to being back where she was.
She says there is one thing she keeps telling herself: “At least
for today I won’t give in to this urge. I don’t have to deal with my whole life all at once.”
What a tragedy!
Linda Selymes had been a successful
businesswoman. She had amassed a large amount of money that would have provided her with more than enough for the rest of her life.
But she wasted it all on gambling-an addiction that hooked her before she even knew it.
Gambling not only did that to Linda Selymes; it will do it to anyone who thinks he or she can play around with it and remain immune from its lure.
THE ROOTS OF GAMBLING
“Love of money” is the root of gambling. The love of money is one aspect of the “lust of the flesh” (1 John 2:16).
The word used by John is one that means an inordinate desire for something. It is desire that goes beyond normal.
The desire to get more and more is often caused by a lack of faith concerning the future (Matt. 6:25-34).
Jesus asked, “What does it benefit a man to gain the whole world yet lose his life?” (Mark 8:36)
THE RAVAGES OF GAMBLING
The examples of the ravages of gambling are numerous.
Gambling creates no new wealth. Redistributes wealth on an inequitable basis. Enriches the few and impoverishes the many.
Gambling depresses legitimate business, siphoning off money from the regular business community and dislocates the purchasing dollar.
Business leaders are reluctant to invest money in areas that sustain large gambling enterprises because of the ensuing bad debts, delinquent time payments, and bankruptcy.
Gambling disrupts the normal checks and balances of a well-ordered community, not to mention restrict business, increasing welfare costs, and weakening the stability of family life.
Gambling lowers the standard of living and necessitates a larger welfare burden, thus raising taxes. It also leads to increases in crime – a rise in the number of murders, assaults, robberies, crimes of violence of all kinds, etc.
The underworld thrives on gambling; corrupts government, and forces police costs to increase. Gamblers are soulless in attempting to corrupt police, judges and legislators.
Instead of the state controlling legalized gambling, the professional gamblers often end up in control of the state.
More importantly, gambling victimizes the poor. It leads to embezzlement, bribes, extortion, treason, suicide, and corruption of not only government officials, but filters down into college and professional athletes.
Those who can least afford it usually gamble the most, because it exploits the weaknesses of individuals. Gambling and poverty go hand in hand.
In winning, one obtains the wages that another person has earned without giving anything in exchange. The larger the winnings, the more someone else had to lose.
Gambling produces the wrong attitudes toward work – promotes the idea that a person can live by his wits and luck without making any contribution to society.
Gambling contradicts social responsibilities. Mature adults try to minimize the risks in life; gambling seeks to maximize risks. Responsible societies attempt to build security into life; gambling undermines security.
Gambling deliberately creates artificial and unnecessary risks. Gambling militates against the highest values of human welfare. History shows that a major increase in gambling has signified the decline of a nation.
Gambling revenues violate all the sound theories of taxation, because gambling revenue is regressive, inequitable, variable and unpredictable. To make public service dependent upon erratic gambling “taxes” is totally irresponsible. Public service should be soundly financed.
As a source of state revenue, gambling has a consistent record of failure. Proponents promise huge government income from legalized gambling, but only a trickle of money results.
Even in Nevada, only about one-third of the state’s budget comes from gambling. Lotteries have, also, been discredited as a source of school funding.
Gambling is socially disintegrating, politically corrupt and morally dangerous. It is just bad business, bad politics and bad morals. No state has, or ever will, gamble itself rich and prosperous.
Not everyone will become addicted to gambling like Linda Selymes. Or people like Greg Hogan, Ben McCausland, Henrietta Rundell, or Fred Cappellano.
No one knows who will and who won’t. What may start out as only “entertainment,” as some like to call it, may become much more-an addiction that will last the rest of their life, one that will control them and control their future.
When a person chooses to gamble, he truly gambles with his life.