re: Do you know anyone who's a compulsive gambler?

I knew a guy in college who went off the deep end with video poker and sports gambling. His parents got him into rehab more than once but he always fell back into gambling. He hung himself while watching a Saints game that he had bet on.

On a lighter note, I dated a girl whose dad loved gambling. He and a buddy would tell their wives they were going duck hunting at the camp for the weekend but they’d fly to Vegas with nothing but the camo hunting clothes they were wearing. He went to the Fairgrounds so much, he had a press pass to get in free but never worked for the media. We went to the FG one time and I hit 2 exactas - he really liked me; his daughter didn’t.

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They used to have nights where they'd get up 10-15K, stay in a comped room, and got up and lost all of it and more, the next day.

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I don't get why this sounds like a good idea. But, there's the Dallas factor. Gotta display rich, even if you're broke. That goes for most of the wives of TD too, but DFW is something special.

Having more money to lose is a signal that you could lose the $10k you already lost was inconsequential, which implicitly means you rich. DFW has no bigger obsession than proving wealth. There is a caveat that I've watched accountants two years out of a degree at UGA buy cars that cost more than their annual income and a condo at least 2x their income in Atlanta. Social media.

My wife’s aunt is a complete gambling addict. I remember a group of us went to Tunica once. This was sometime around the late 1990s. We were there for three days. I didn’t really pay attention until we left; but according to my wife and her cousin (this aunt’s daughter) she spent the entire 72 hours of the trip on the gambling floor playing nickel slots. She never once left the slots for the entire weekend. She literally played nickle slots for three days non-stop.

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We’ll be going to Biloxi next month

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stop by the veteran's cemetery & salute the Pride flag

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Let her live out her last few years being as happy as possible.

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This reminds me a bit of Denis Leary's "No Cure for Cancer." Paraphrasing, everyone is told they should stop smoking because it cuts years off of your life, but it's the miserable ones at the end!

Not that I know any of you or your families personally, but the absolute firewall has to be that family behavior cannot impact your direct families, finances, college savings, etc. Would you buy crank out of your kids college fund to make the M-I-L happy? Then don't pay her mortgage while you don't contribute to the 529 because there is an addictive problem.

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sports and gambling are all he talks about

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Let him cook

Me

/thread

My brother in law is a degenerate gambler. His family has a business in Hong Kong that he used to manage when his parents would travel back to Canada. He started to take money out of the business for gambling. He stopped showing up to work and the business can't pay its bills. His family finally tracked him down in a casino in Macao. He says he is done with gambling. All I know is I'm not loaning him any money.