Kurt Dahl > Quotes

“The morning, after I wrote the above paragraphs on gambling withdrawal, I was on my walk when, unexpectedly, out of nowhere, Mr. Addiction suddenly wedged his foot in the door of my brain. A minute later he burst through, opened his arms, smiled, and in his best Jack Nicholson voice announced: I'm Back! Let's go! It had been many months since I had gambled and at that moment my defenses were dormant. The guards were asleep. Without even offering a show of resistance, I immediately got in the car and drove south to where my favorite slot machine lived. I played for over eight hours at my usual furious pace until my available money was all gone and my brain was fried. I'm writing about this relapse story now, six days after that episode, having just gone through all of the ugly phases of a serious relapse, immediately after writing about it! Ironic, I guess. Kind of circular. I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm not making this up. Though in retrospect, I've realized that I should have expected Mr. Addiction to show up and test me during this process.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Here is your four-step plan to stay alive:

1. Accept the fact that you might consider suicide after a bad relapse. Do that now.

2. In the minutes and hours after a relapse, give yourself permission to ignore the consequences of your relapse. Don't think about the lost money, or the consequences for family, work, or your own self-worth.

3. Wait four days before taking any direct action to address your gambling issues. Do not gamble during this time. Do not chase your losses. Do not "confess" to a significant other during this time. Do not rob a bank to cover your losses. Wait four days to make plans for recovery. Wait until your brain both is willing and able to help you make good decisions.

4. After four days, start to restore hope. Call the state helpline, get a recommendation for a therapist. In most cases the state will pay for therapy. Then go see the therapist. Find a GA meeting and start attending. Make thoughtful, careful plans about how to go about discussing your addiction with loved ones and how to deal with your financial problems.

But most of all, understand that there is hope for you to live a life free of gambling. Thousands upon thousands have recovered. You can too.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“The twelve-step program has no benefit to a dead person. In order to recover, the addict must stay alive.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Urges are a normal part of your recovery. They will always be with you in one form or another. Just as what we are instructed to do during mindful meditation, when we have thoughts, and we accept them just as thoughts, and then we let them pass, simply accept the urge as an urge and as something that is normal during your recovery, and then mindfully allow it to slip away. Urges have a very short half-life — they will lose their power over you in less than a half-hour. Know that it will pass if you can just wait a while.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Most literature about suicide proposes the encouraging idea that if you can survive the first five minutes (or the first few hours, or the first twenty-four hours) of that moment when suicide seems like the only solution to your situation, then you probably will not kill yourself (at least for a while).”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“The essential idea of this book is that the problem gambler must anticipate, even expect that in the course of their quest to stop gambling they will at some point face that horrible decision. That at some point they will seriously consider killing themselves.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Unlike most other addictions and disorders, gambling most often is done in secret.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Slot machine addiction is a solitary undertaking. It is not a social event like drinking or drug use. Slot machine addicts can gamble compulsively for years without family or friends even suspecting.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“As we addicted gamblers plunge into our addiction, and as we see and know how much financial damage we are doing to our family and friends, our despair, shame, and guilt multiply. All too often this leads to suicidal thoughts and actions. Therefore, the sooner you can keep family assets safe from the gambler, the less likely you will have to deal with the horrifying aftermath of their death.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“As I walked into the casino committing suicide was the very last thing on my mind. Yet twelve hours later it was the only thing on my mind.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“I would assert, and I know this personally from years of living with it, that the shame of not being able to quit, of being too weak to stop, of being unable to do the right thing, unable to do the thing that everyone else that I know could easily do - that weakness, that level of shame changes your life. You can deal with the financial losses, and you can even deal with the lies (they have a short half-life, either you get away with it, or you apologize and say you won't do it again). But the shame, guilt, and loss of respect for yourself when you can't make yourself stop, that awful sinkhole of personal failure, never goes away.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Right now, while you are reading this, your brain is functioning normally. But when you walk out of that casino your brain is seriously screwed up. Your willpower is weakened, your risk-taking tendencies are increased, and your decision-making system is not functioning in a way that can protect you from harm. As you walk out of that casino your brain is trying to kill you (or at least not able to prevent you from killing yourself). This is why, last year alone, thousands of people, who were okay 8 or 12 hours earlier as they walked into the casino, are now dead.

This is why you must prepare now, while your brain is working properly. You can do things right now to prepare for that life or death moment. The primary goal of your preparation is for you to be able to walk out of the casino, get into your car, drive away, and totally ignore what just happened. Ignore the emotions, ignore the losses, ignore the despair, ignore the hopelessness – just drive on home as if nothing had happened.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Another trait that gamblers possess is optimism. All gambling episodes begin with the positive belief that this time they just might win. Optimists generally don't prepare themselves to consider suicide. On the day that I walked into the casino on that day that led to my high-speed search for a concrete wall, I was happy, excited, looking forward to playing the slots.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Immediately after you step through the exit of the casino and find yourself outside, stop. Then look at your hands for ten seconds. Examine them, turn them over, look at the lines, the freckles, the dirt under your fingernails or your chipped nail polish. Really focus, really study them, for ten full seconds. This is a surprisingly powerful mindfulness technique. It forces you to jump back into the present, thereby interrupting your thoughts about what just happened.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Slot machine addicts’ brains are tuned to hope for, and even expect, that they will get the big reward (a big win) right down to their very last spin. Studies have indicated that the anticipation of a reward activates the dopamine cycle even more than an actual reward.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“If you can eliminate the need for escaping from your negative thoughts, you can eliminate the need to gamble. Make that your quest.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Gambling suicides are also frequently impulsive. My attempt to find a concrete wall to splatter myself on is, unfortunately, quite common for compulsive gamblers. I've had many conversations with other gamblers who tell the same story — looking for something to smack into on the way home from the bad beat at the casino.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“The first step in that preparation begins now, well ahead of the relapse. Get out a three by six index card and write these thoughts on it:

- 1-800-273-8255 (National Suicide Prevention Hotline)
- This will pass
- My brain can’t be trusted right now
- I won’t kill myself today (I can always do it tomorrow)
- For now, I will IGNORE, IGNORE, IGNORE, IGNORE
- 1-800-273-8255”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“If you are the significant other, there is one more thing you should do - check carefully to see if the addict has taken out, or recently increased, a life insurance policy. If they have, then you know what that means. They are considering (or planning) a suicide. You must figure out an appropriate way to intervene. I can’t help you with that - just get help from a therapist, loved one, priest, and do whatever you can (quickly) in a thoughtful way that won’t make things worse.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Figuring out how you can face your gambling problem is a complex issue. There are many choices. Recovery is not something you can will yourself to do in a day or two.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Mindfulness will play a prominent role in learning how to derail your urge to go to the casino.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Do this. Right now, while you are thinking clearly and can prepare positively (sound familiar?) make a list of all the excuses that you use to justify your gambling. You know them all too well. Keep the list handy, memorize it. Tell yourself that when your addiction is cramming any one of those excuses into your brain, that this is the trigger to get you to pause, go back, and figure out why this is happening. What were the emotions? What were the thoughts that caused the emotions? What thoughts would your better-self have had instead?”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“In some ways, the decision to voluntarily exclude yourself from all the casinos in your area is a litmus test as to how committed you are to your recovery. By doing this you can be proud of yourself and encouraged that you can stop gambling. It is a very positive step. Do it. You are worth it!”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Writing this book is an intense experience. I'm writing about an addiction that I suffer from, I'm doing the research, I'm reading about it for hours, writing about it for hours, I should have expected that that extreme daily exposure to my addiction would eventually lead to strong urges to gamble. I should have been prepared! But I wasn't.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“That's a 40 to 1 ratio of substance abuse sufferers seeking treatment vs. gamblers seeking treatment. In other words, substance abusers are 40 times more likely than problem gamblers to seek treatment - i.e., to find a therapist, or an inpatient program, or to attend an AA meeting. It's likely that this ratio is also accurate (if not higher) for GA attendance vs. AA attendance.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Put these steering wheel cards and things somewhere in your car. Put your radio station of choice on one of your preset buttons. Do this now. Don’t wait. Then, if you relapse and when you get to the casino before you go in, take them out and put them on your seat or steering wheel. Set your radio to the station you have chosen, so that all you need to do is turn it on. Please don’t avoid doing this because you might be embarrassed or think it’s stupid. So what if it’s stupid? You are at the casino. You are already being stupid. Not to mention, these simple stupid actions just might save your life.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Often when the problem gambler decides to gamble, they will plan to do it “responsibly”. They will get a set amount of cash and intend to leave when that amount is lost. I have used exactly this plan approximately a million times—basically every time I’ve gone to the casino. The problem with that plan is that after I’ve lost my allotted amount, I don’t want to quit gambling. By that I mean I desperately want to keep playing. I will walk around the casino looking for cash on the floor (you would be surprised how many times I find bills down there), I’ll collect two cent tickets until I have enough to get a dollar bill. I’ll go out to the car and scrounge for change on the floor or in the ash tray. That’s how desperate the addicted gambler gets when they are physically in the casino, staring at the machines, and unable to play because they are out of money.

If I do have any credit cards in my wallet that have available cash advance amounts, I will take that card to the cage and get whatever the maximum allowable cash advance. Often that amount is a thousand or more dollars. This scenario is played out by every addicted slot machine player that I have ever known, over and over again. If I went to the casino with $300 in my pocket, knowing that was all I could afford, by getting an advance I could easily walk out having lost $2,300. It is precisely that unanticipated failure of my plan, that now unmanageable loss, the confusion, shame, and despair of my weakness, that leads to the sudden and unexpected impulse to commit suicide. This is why restricting cash advances from your credit card is so important.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Once you stop gambling, you can start to feel and think like a normal person (assuming there is such a thing). Your immediate financial situation will improve because you will no longer be stuffing $100 bills into those evil machines.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“Our governments are complicit in gambling addiction. They make millions of dollars by supporting gambling (unlike drugs, for example), so they owe it to you to help you recover from your addiction.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.

“There are just 59 beds for 5 million problem gamblers. In contrast, over 2 million people received inpatient treatment annually for substance abuse in over 15,000 facilities across the country.”
― Kurt Dahl, Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.