October 26

I’ve been treating some compulsive gamblers in my psychotherapy practice, and I’m thinking about the relationship between debt and gambling. Debtors and compulsive gamblers have a lot of behaviors and attitudes in common, and many of our problems are the same. We make money into our god, and try to fill up the holes we feel inside with money and possessions. We think money and possessions will solve our problems. We’re looking for a big payoff. We look for handouts, and bailouts. We get obsessed, and lose our way, all because of money.

For that matter, even “normal” people sometimes fall victim to this syndrome. In our culture, where wealth is measured not in wisdom, but in dollars and cents, everyone wants more money. Since our economy is driven on the advertising principle of creating a perceived need where a true need does not exist, people get duped all the time into buying stuff they don’t need, or even want, in order to fill a hole within them that doesn’t even really exist. That’s the irony and tragedy of our culture. Gamblers and debtors seem to fall victim to these thinking errors in an even more profound way.

Now that I think about it, I suppose I have even more in common with gamblers than I think. I was gambling, in a way, every time I charged anything on credit. Most of my debting was business-related, at least initially, and I was gambling on the notion that I was going to have more money as the business grew, and then I’d be able to pay off my credit card bills.

What ended up happening, of course, was that I did not have the money to pay off my bills, and my minimum payments just got higher and higher, as I got deeper and deeper in debt. I would have less cash available because of my debt, so I would have to keep debting to make up for the missing cash. I was making bets on my future success, trying to “hit the jackpot” instead of being patient. It was a vicious cycle, and I’m glad to have broken it. I wish I could do more to help others to break it, too, but I guess I have to help myself, first.