In their own words.

I never once set foot in a casino. That was the story I told myself for two years — I'm not one of those guys, I've never even been to Vegas. I had an app. I had four apps. I bet on second-half totals in college basketball games between teams I could not have placed on a map.

It got to where I was betting in the bathroom at my daughter's swim lesson, because that was a forty-minute window where nobody was talking to me. That afternoon I put the lesson money in on a live parlay and lost it in about nine minutes, and then I sat through dinner and said the check had cleared weird. That is the part I still think about. Not the money. The dinner.

My wife found the statements in November. I did not get help because I was strong. I got help because she found the statements and gave me a choice. The helpline lady did not sound shocked at anything I told her, which is when I started crying, because I had been sure I was the worst version of this.

I was nineteen. It was a promo code from a group chat. Free money — everyone said that, and for about three weeks it was true, which is the worst possible thing that can happen to you.

By senior year I was taking out the private loan for tuition and putting a piece of it on parlays because I had convinced myself I could turn eight hundred into the four thousand I actually needed. I wasn't stupid; I was in a maths programme. I could recite the house edge and I bet anyway.

What actually stopped it was a friend who said the sentence out loud — “I think you have a gambling problem” — and did not soften it or take it back when I got angry. I hated her for about a week. I would not have a degree without her.

People want the story about greed. It was never about winning. Winning meant I got to stay longer. It was about the fact that in front of that machine nothing in my life was asking anything of me.

I started after my husband died. Eleven years in I had cashed out the retirement, both cars, and my mother's ring, and I had a system for who I called and what I told them. I was very good at this. That's not pride, it's a warning — the competent ones are harder to catch.

I go to Gamblers Anonymous on Thursdays and I do not say I'm cured. What I'll say is that I have a Thursday, and a sponsor, and a bank account that declines the machines. That's the whole architecture. It's enough for this week.

There is no smell. That is what people don't understand about this one. There's no bottle in the garage, no lipstick, nothing you can hold up. There is just a number at the bottom of a statement that is smaller than it should be, every month, for a year and a half.

I covered it three times. I want to say that plainly because I read all the pamphlets telling me not to and I still did it, because the alternative was my kids finding out. Every time I covered it, it came back bigger. The third time was seventy-one thousand dollars.

Gam-Anon did not fix my marriage. What it did was teach me the difference between helping him and paying for it. If you are the wife, the husband, the parent — go before you have made up your mind about anything.