Adam Osmond was running a convenience store when he began playing scratch-offs out of boredom.
A former convenience store owner in Connecticut spoke to the Daily Mail about how problem gambling led to financial ruin the loss of his business. Adam Osmond, a 49-year old accountant living in Connecticut, once owned a Kwik-E-Mart.
Osmond described that the tedium of manning his store’s cash register all day led him to play scratch-off lottery tickets. At first, he gambled only a few dollars here and there.
Over time, Adam Osmond was spending thousands of dollars a week on scratch-offs. Anytime he won money, he would reinvest the winnings into his lotto habit. Soon, he was spending his regular income in the lottery tickets.
Spirals Out of Control
From 2002 to 2008, Osmond describes he had his worst years of lottery playing. His habit was a constant, seven day-a-week struggle to play the lotto. Mr. Osmond estimates that he spend over $1 million on his habit. He said owning a convenience store with a lottery machine was “living having your own casino. It was me and the machine all the time.”
At one point in 2007, Adam Osmond won $50,000 on a lottery ticket. After taxes, he had $37,500. Within a week, he has lost every single bit of his lotto winnings. By that time, he also was losing all the income he generated at the store.
2008 Nervous Breakdown
In March 2008, Osmond suffered a nervous breakdown. The break came while he was printing out 54,000 lottery tickets in one single day. He never even checked to see if any of the tickets were winners. Checking 54 thousand tickets seemed like an impossible task. Also, he no longer had the money to pay for the tickets.
During that stretch, Adam Osmond printed out a quarter of a million dollars worth of tickets. Eventually, the Connecticut Lottery noticed something strange was happening at his store, so they revoked Osmond’s license.
Connecticut Lottery De-Licensed Him
The Connecticut Lottery wanted Adam Osmond to pay for the tickets, so he began making a good faith effort to pay off what he had printed. Eventually, state court found that he did not have to pay back the lottery, because the tickets had never been cashed.
In the article with The Daily Mail, Adam Osmond told the readers that the moral of the story was “addiction can happen to anyone. It will start small and then get bigger until it takes over your life.”
The Common Factor in Addiction
People might quip that Mr. Osmond should have picked a better form of gambling. Lotteries are notorious for having the worst odds of all forms of gambling, usually with a payback percentage of about 60%. Most forms of casino gambling have a payout between 90% and 99%. 80% is the lowest allowable in many states, usually for lotto-style casino games like Keno. It is no overstatement to say, if the lotto was not run by the state itself, states would declare them illegal.
That being said, psychologists say addiction tends to be a symptom of a deeper problem. A person lives an unfulfilling life, so they try to fill the void either with excitement, escapism, or comfort — or some combination of the three
Why Problem Gambling Happens
Gambling brings an adrenaline rush. Porn addiction and binge shopping does the same. So does taking the drugs called stimulants or uppers. Narcotics and alcohol are depressants, which allow a person to escape the bad feelings inside them for a time. Food addiction brings a form of comfort — they call it comfort food for a reason.
Addiction comes in many forms, though, besides the obvious ones. A person can form a dependence on the television, their smartphone, or the Internet. If taken to an unhealthy level, they can escape into works of fiction or hobbies. Many try to find fulfillment in the latest self-help philosophy or get-rich-quick scheme. Some are addicted to other people, needing their narcissistic supply of attention and admiration.
Filling the Void
Name any one of these activities and it involves filling a void. That is not to say that any of the things above are bad in moderation. It is in the extreme form, when the remedy becomes the problem, that addiction takes over one’s life. Thus, gambling is not the problem itself, but a symptom of a larger issue.
As Humpty Dumpty said in The Looking Glass, “The question is, which is to be master — that’s all.”
In the life of a compulsive gambler, their problem gambling controls the addict, just as alcohol, drugs, pornography, or any other form of pleasure-seeking controls those who become addicted to them. While it is true that some drugs are bad for people in even small amounts (and should be banned), the central truth is that any form of addiction begins as an escape from the emotional, psychological, and physical pains of everyday life.
