Hello my beautiful people! Today we’re talking about why gambling is evil for me as I’ve lost about $500,000 in my life gambling (lol. oh boy) and per usual, a story to go with it... you can skip ahead as I always break things into bolded chapters.
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I - Prelude
I wanted to start off by saying “Happy Sunday!” with exclamation marks and all. But, this is not one of those newsletters.
You’re not a client I write emails to during the week. You know, the emails that start with “I hope your Tuesday is going well…” “Happy Friday”.
Please, I’ll leave that type of communication for the people who want to use my skills and connections to help make them money as I oblige by creating wonderful things to get paid. from them.
You’re not those people.
By the way, if you’re one of “those people” reading this newsletter, you can stop with the “OOO” emails. CongraTulAtiOns, you’re vacationing in Egypt. Unless you’re going to share pictures of you eating Egyptian crusted salmon with couscous… there’s nOo need to flood my inbox with OOO emails when I reply in an email thread.
I don’t even know who you are or what you do Rebecca! Why are you on this email thread? Learn to communicate in a meeting that you’ll be gone for a week. Regardless, I know you’ll get to your work when you get to you work. We’re goOd.
Basically, what am I saying to you, the one reading this right now, we’re not here to exploit each other for money. We’re here together to just have fun reading. I promised you from the beginning… just me. thoughts. no fcking b.s.
II - Welcome
Again - Hello my beautiful people, the beauts, the popular misfits… my mf’ing friends,
I hope your Sunday is sprinkled with subtle bliss. I’m currently visiting my mother in San Diego, but she’s spending the weekend with her new boyfriend. I haven’t met him yet, but I have tasted his food. This guy cooks damn good french food.
Big fan of her new boy-toy. Get it mom!
So, instead of being home, I’m writing this at 8:10am at my favorite Philz, where the baristas here are chill, cute, and have that “Yo, I’m a girl who rides a skateboard-type-vibe”. I tell them this, they laugh.
I’m a sucker for a good laugh. It’s a great way to make Sunday feel like Sundays.
Life is beautiful! Anyway, I don’t know how to transition to this, but I want to talk about my gambling addiction, which will hopefully lead to everything I want to write about today.
III - Losing $500,000 via Gambling
There is this odd male cultural movement where being vulnerable and sharing your faults can seem like a weakness. But, I think it’s because many do not know the difference between being vulnerable and… complaining.
I think complaining and doing nothing about your faults isn’t being vulnerable, it’s again - complaining. Distance yourself from being constantly dissatisfied. My father was a complainer… look where he’s at now: a troll living alone.
Again, complaining, unless hyperbolic for the laughs is unattractive. However, I think being vulnerable and open - with purpose - is what I’m striving to do more. I’m defining “purpose” here to mean reflective and hopeful to action.
And, I believe being vulnerable with purpose is the one of the best ways you can improve and be accountable for your actions.
Personally, I need to be more accountable. I make a ton of a mistakes every single day. This is why I made this newsletter, to be accountable for my actions.
I’m not going to lie, being open and vulnerable has been a massive learning experience: giving away too much at one point can turn people off, but giving too little can have a girl you dated for six years go, “you’re so mysterious, we’ve been together for so long, but I have no idea who you are…”
I’m learning to balance.
I started gambling online at the age of seventeen, online poker. Then, at 18 I was brought to the Indian casinos in San Diego, and this is where I would begin to see my summer job money go to waste… all on the poker felt.
$50 there. $100 there. $150 there. Insufficient funds.
When I attended UC Berkeley. Private games with college kids. More online poker. Sneaking into Oaks Card Club, Lucky Chances Casino, the list continues…
$50 there. $100 there. $400 there. Building a stack of $20k-$30k online in a week. Losing it all and more. Insufficient funds.
Then I got lucky, while still at Berkeley, I started a company that brought me to the land of managing YouTubers. They hit it big and fast.
This brought money. Real money. Young and with lots of money, I fell into the inner gambling world of Los Angeles. We’re talking card clubs and private games from every disgusting back alley to the nicest hotel rooms imaginable.
$500 here. $1000 there. $10,000 there. Insufficient funds. I squandered the opportunities I kept getting, by giving it all away at these games.
The poker scene in Los Angeles isn’t glamorous like what you see in movies like Molly’s Game, or the prestige to what you see on television. 90% of the people on the poker felt at Card Clubs / Casinos, or these private games, are disheveled zombie like degenerates.
We have bags under our eyes, we smell, too many yicky-yacked yellow teeth to count, everyone’s ego is at play, and everyone (even the “girl waitresses”) - they’re all trying to angle, meta, and hustle each other. It’s all flash. Nothing important.
You can’t trust anyone.
Yet, even witnessing all of this, I still consider it fcking fun.
I’m an addict.
There’s nothing like bluffing someone off a hand, or trapping someone to call off their entire stack. Or the joy you feel inside when you tilt someone to a point where they keep rebuying and rebuying till they go broke. It was like the social deduction game Among Us, before Among Us, but open 24 hours.
I was consumed. I’ve been consumed.
But it wasn’t until 2016, New Years Day, that it finally made sense that what I was doing was destructive. On that day, I wasn’t having fun, I was working.
I looked outside of my window and I saw people enjoying their lives, gallivanting gleefully on the streets. I opened up social media to find see my family and friends reveling in celebrating… and here I was working to pay off a debt.
It hit me.
I graduated college and I’m not enjoying my early 20s.
In this addiction, I could never keep an account balance over $10,000, found myself lying to my (ex)girlfriend, friends, and family when they asked if I could hang out or go on trips because I was wasting my vacation / play money and my time gambling.
I will repeat - I was always working to cover a debt or chase a bill or chase someone I had to pay off. I was wasting my youth.
My gambling addiction has led to breakup(s), losing clients, getting fired too many times, living in my car, sleeping on couches, and even sleeping behind dumpsters to keep warm.
Don’t even get me started on “dating around” or “being intimate with others” because I often pushed these away due to my growing financial insecurity.
I think what’s worst is my addiction is the #1 reason why my own personal projects have stalled or halted. Money affords you the time to focus on your personal projects, chasing money to pay off a debt doesn’t.
Later in that year, I filed for bankruptcy. The women filing my bankruptcy papers, shook her head and said, “you’re too young for this”.
I know.
That day, the only thing that got expunged was the $60k payday loans I accrued. But the back taxes and people who I owed money to… well that doesn’t go away. Let’s not even discuss the credit card debt I / I’ve built up as well.
I stopped gambling.
Sorta.
I would relapse often. Yes, I still gambled, but now it was for a new reason.
The poker table is now the place I go to, to feel pain. If I feel undeserving of the things that I’ve been given, the only way to balance things out is to go to the poker table and lose it all. Sadistic.
With everything, my debt came close to $500k.
Since my teenage years I’ve been working. Working for a better life, a better career, and then once I got it… because of this debt, I continue to work to deal with what I gave myself. It’s my responsibility, I must be accountable to these actions.
Even though I’ve built a decent career as a creative director, I still uber, I still do as many side jobs as I can, and because of all of this - my debt has now subsided from 500k to around 70k.
But I don’t work to grow. I don’t work to enjoy. I work to not die.
I’ve lived an amazing life filled with the most amazing opportunities one can imagine. I’m legitimately one of the luckiest people in the world. But I haven’t been able to truly lavish in these rewards, or even share these experiences with anyone because I’ve had to share it with my gambling addiction first.
If you’re reading this, whatever your addiction, there’s always help. My current favorite website to find meetings is: gamblersinrecovery.com. But, sometimes people’s stories during meetings can trigger me to go back out there.
Therefore, what I find helps the best for me, is a licensed therapist. Though, therapy is a privilege as it’s not affordable for everyone.
IV - Relapsing… for the last time?
On December 24th, 2022 I won’t get into the reason why, just know this…
I had a bipolar / manic episode. I haven’t had small ones before, but not a big one like this in awhile. I relapsed.
Gambling every. single. day.
I couldn’t, I can’t stop.
I found myself just saying, “nothing matters” “I need to be punished” “nothing matters”.
My bills not being seen as a priority.
My debt screaming my name to stop.
I wasn’t stopping.
But then, on January 5th, 2023 - I would be given an opportunity to do the right thing.
This is going to sound egotistical, but I believe in signs. The fcking universe or in my case, my beloved deceased grandparents, send me signs from above to guide or warn me to do the right thing.
They warn often.
I’m talking putting in a credit card and the ATM sending “can’t read” multiple times, a car accident in front of the casino, having a special person call or text me right before I enter into a casino… it’s weird. it’s scary.
It should be obvious that even if the signs were big, I oftentimes ignored their warnings altogether. This is a reason why I have found myself praying on rosary beads many nights asking for forgiveness.
On January 5th, 2023 I received a sign.
I walk out of the casino. It’s Hollywood Park Casino to be exact.
Disheveled.
Confused. “Why did I just throw $100 into the trash?”
My bank account reads low. The girl I like texts me but I don’t want to respond because… she can’t know, she won’t know, I can’t let her know why I’m not reaching out to her.
It’s been an eleven straight days… of a binge.
If I don’t stop, I’ll be broke soon.
I’m headed there.
Nothing matters?
Right?
No.
Things matter. Let’s get out of here. I open my phone to navigate home, when suddenly a notification app pops up.
It’s from Uber Drive. “Your document is expiring, please submit a new one”
The fuq? It’s 11:00pm.
I open up the app, the message reads that in 30 days I need to add a new registration picture to keep driving. Fck it. Is this a sign? I click “go online” on the Uber Drive app. I turn on the car engine, backup, and…
“Ding”
11:08pm. Ride requested, 4 minutes away from the casino. $18 estimated ride. The passenger’s name is Toret or Troy. Whatever.
This all seems doable, “fck it. let’s do it…”
When I arrive I make sure to put my game face on, professional with good vibes. I look to see a man with a beanie, dark clothes, and a walk slow enough to make women think “he’s sultry”.
Smooth.
He looks clean, but it’s clear he had a day.
Toret: “How are you?”
Me: “I’m good man, life is beautiful (my common response)! You?”
Toret: “Ya know ma’n I like that answer. That’s good ma’n. Just here cause my baby mama needed help. ya know.”
Me: “I don’t know, I have no baby mama… but I hear you man. I hear you.”
Toret: “Haha haha - right - right. ha. you look young to be driving this late.”
Me: “Ha. It is what it is”
Toret: “Right - you right”
We drive past the casino.
Me: “I hate that place.”
Toret: “Me too ma’nn, why do you hate it?”
Me: “Can I be real with you?”
Toret: “Only way to be.”
Me: “I have a gambling addiction and that’s why I’m ubering right now.”
Toret: “Oh ma’n. Let me tell you my story…” ”… it’s when I looked at my tax documents and I realized that I made $75,000 that year and I had noth’in to show for it. Noth’in! I was 38. I had no car. I had a kid, but no girl. I was living at my moms. $75,000 and Noth’in! Do you know what that feels like ma’n?”
Me: “Man. I actually can relate. I’m not 38. But I hear you. I get you. I see you.”
Toret: “Ha. Right - right…” ”… But now I’m 42. I work. I also have a trucking company with 4 trucks. I have a small 4 unit apartment complex. It’s small. Ya know…”
Me: “Holy shit. that’s amazing.”
Toret: “Yeah ma’n. I got money. Girls like money, people like money. Hell, everyone wants my money, someone broke into my house - stole $200,000 cash.”
Me: “What? You just leave cash like underneath your mattress or something?”
Toret: “Right - right. Banks. I don’t trust banks ma-n…” “… when you don’t gamble ma’n things like this can happ’en. You can make good money. Just don’t gamble”
Me: “I hear you. I can only say that you’re right.”
Toret: “I am right. I am.”
We arrive at his destination and before he leaves we exchange our final words.
Me: “Hey man, I was going through a lot, but I want to thank you for sharing. I really do appreciate this conversation. I hope you have a nice night.”
Toret: “You know ma’n, you a good kid, here’s a 100.”
I can’t even turn my head fast enough, when suddenly I hear Toret reach into his pocket and throw a crisp $100 bill onto my front passenger chair. He opens the car door, gets out, slams the door shut, and walks off to the side.
Badass.
WAHT?
The guy is doing his best Batman impression to vanish from the scene. I’m not having it, I pull the car forward, pull my window down, and just say in his direction…
“Thank you. Oh my god, thank you.” He doesn’t even look back… he just walks straight to what I can only assume is his house.
I pull up a bit.
I look at this $100 bill.
My adrenaline.
My heart.
Grandpa. Grandma.
Are you watching over me?
Am I tearing up a bit?
What the hell is this…
What are the odds of this…
This is it…
This is a sign.
I drive home.
I snap out of my mania for a second.
Time to the call the therapist.
Time to head back to a meeting.
It’s time to be accountable again.
—
Thanks for listening.
Finished writing at 12:32pm. Jan 8th 2023.
Location: Philz Coffee Shop (El Camino Real Highlands) - San Diego, California.
2 of 52 stories told.
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