[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 139 (Friday, September 8, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13134-S13135]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           THEY PLAY TO LOSE

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, some weeks ago, I gave a lengthier 
than usual talk on the floor of the Senate about the growing problem of 
legalized gambling in the United States.
  This is not a phenomenon only in the United States. The Jerusalem 
Post contained an article about the problem in Israel. The title of 
this article: ``They play to lose.''
  The subhead is: ``Compulsive gambling is a disease that gradually 
overwhelms one's life, Ruth Beker writes.''
  There is an unfavorable reference to the United States.
  The article quotes a Dr. Yair Caspi as saying: ``Together with an 
increase in use of alcohol and drugs, gambling is part of a general 
addictive phenomenon growing rapidly in Israel, trying to be little 
America.''
  I ask that the article be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:
               [From the Jerusalem Post, March 25, 1995]

  They Play to Lose--Compulsive Gambling Is a Disease That Gradually 
                Overwhelms One's Life, Ruth Beker Writes

       Gambling is a gate to dangerously false hope.
       For Michael, 53, a compulsive gambler, it was sweet at the 
     beginning, hell at the end, and many things in between.
       Michael's sickness--for that's what it is--is rooted in the 
     Holocaust.
       When he was six months old, he was given to a Gentile 
     family for safekeeping before his parents were sent to Bergen 
     Belsen, where his mother died. ``After the war [my father] 
     found me and took me home. When I was eight he remarried. It 
     was disastrous.
       ``My father and stepmother always punished me harshly for 
     no reason. Once I spent three months in my room on bread and 
     water. I was never allowed to play outside. My father forced 
     me to wear a skullcap to school. This was very cruel as we 
     lived in a Gentile neighborhood.
       ``My father and stepmother crushed my spirit and destroyed 
     my willpower. I could not think for myself, make any 
     decisions. My self-confidence was shot. I'm still afraid of 
     my father and he's been dead for years.''
       Such a background, according to at least one expert in the 
     field, is typical.
       ``A compulsive gambler is like someone who touches a hot 
     stove, gets burned yet keeps coming back for more,'' explains 
     Don Lavender, clinical coordinator at Arizona's Sierra Tucson 
     Treatment Center for Psychological and Emotional Disorders. 
     He was in Israel recently to give a one-week workshop at the 
     new Herzliya Medical Center for Addictions at Beit Oren.
       Gambling becomes the lover, the best friend, the only 
     comfort as the sufferer runs from a pain he cannot deal with, 
     Lavender explains.
       ``I didn't know I was addicted, but I knew something was 
     wrong if I organized my whole day around gambling,'' Michael 
     continues. ``At first gambling was fun, a diversion. Then it 
     became a habit I couldn't live without and finally an escape 
     for all my problems. I spent my business money, my children's 
     money, everyone's money.
       ``My wife knew nothing about my gambling. I was a great 
     liar and came home with a thousand stories. I was clever at 
     ``combinations,'' the expertise of every gambler. I hid the 
     truth brilliantly from everyone, including myself.
       ``I was in a trance, in a blackout when I played. Lost to 
     the world. If the man next to me dropped dead I wouldn't look 
     up. I wouldn't go to the bathroom.
       ``I could feel the adrenalin pumping in me while I was 
     playing. I felt alive.
       ``You always lose. I didn't care. A compulsive gambler 
     plays; it doesn't matter if he wins or loses. It has nothing 
     to do with money.
       ``I know I have tons of anger in me and I can't let it go. 
     I'm afraid to show my anger or any other emotion. I'm afraid 
     to be myself.
       ``Nothing was sacred. I gambled everything away. If I had 
     money to pay the bills, I gambled it away.
       ``Because gambling isn't physical like drugs or alcohol, it 
     is hard for people to understand what a dangerous addiction 
     it is,'' warns Michael. ``It sneaks up on you.
       ``Win or lose, I kept playing. I couldn't stop. My business 
     was ruined. I owed money everywhere. I couldn't sleep. 
     Suicide seemed the only way to go. Gambling had gobbled up my 
     life.''
       At that desperate point, Michael read about Penina Eldar's 
     gambling disorder clinic. The treatment has been successful 
     so far. ``I can't ever gamble again, not even for a penny,'' 
     he insists.
       Eldar opened the Center for Compulsive Gambling in 
     Jerusalem in 1991, and recently opened a branch in the Center 
     for Alternative Medicine in Tel Aviv.
       ``The Jewish people are more vulnerable to this disorder 
     than others because of their troubled history,'' Michael 
     says. ``The Holocaust had a lot to do with all this.''
       Dr. Yair Caspi, a lecturer in addiction at the Hebrew 
     University Law School and the Tel Aviv School of Social Work, 
     defines a compulsive gambler: ``What place has gambling in 
     his life? Does he think about it all the time? Is every 
     vacation planned around it, whether the casino is in Turkey, 
     Egypt or Rio?''
       ``Gambling gives you the same high you get from drugs. It's 
     easy money. You don't have to work, you just play games,'' 
     said Dr. Val Velkes, co-director with Dr. Pinhas Harris of 
     the Herzliya Medical Center's addiction clinic.
       ``People here are addicted to Lotto, Hish Gad, Toto, all 
     the state lottery games,'' says Harris. ``Gambling is much 
     more of a problem here than anyone wants to admit.'' He adds 
     that Jews are big gamblers.
       ``The mania of gambling sweeping Israel is going to cause 
     lots of problems,'' Penina Eldar warns.
       ``Eldar is former director of the department for the 
     treatment of alcoholics at the Ministry of Labor and Social 
     Affairs, and founded Alcoholics Anonymous 20 years ago.
       ``Now with credit and access cards you can phone around the 
     world and bet on any sporting event you want, a dangerous and 
     tempting situation for compulsive gamblers and people 
     vulnerable in that direction,'' she warns.
       Eldar began the gambling program four years ago, but 
     despite extensive media attention and an advertising 
     campaign, ``of the 100 people who came to talk to me, only 50 
     decided on treatment.''
       ``That in itself is no part of the problem. ``It is very 
     hard for a compulsive gambler to admit his sickness,'' she 
     says. ``Today we are treating 12 people in intensive 
     treatment and 30 in group therapy. It is a commitment many 
     are not ready to take.''
       ``Eldar's method of treatment is more attractive than that 
     used in Spain and France, 

[[Page S 13135]]
     where compulsive gamblers are kept in psychiatric wards. Eldar espouses 
     rehabilitation and group and family therapy. The gambler 
     seeking help gets 10 one-on-one sessions, 10 group meetings, 
     two meetings with the family, and, if therapy is going well, 
     monthly group sessions that continue ``for as long as 
     necessary, sometimes forever.''
       ``Compulsive gambling disorder is a man's disease,'' Eldar 
     explains, ``though it is the wives and mothers who face the 
     dire economic consequences.'' An alcoholic may drink only a 
     bottle a day and still be an alcoholic, but a compulsive 
     gambler spends all the family's money, leaving them 
     physically and emotionally destitute, she says.
       Playing cards with family or friends is okay, but stay away 
     from gambling clubs, she warns. ``It gets tricky when you 
     start playing two to three times a week. Then it's only a 
     matter of time.'' She says it can take five to seven years 
     for gambling to develop into a compulsion.
       ``According to my statistics, 67,000 compulsive gamblers 
     need treatment here, and there are between 50,000 and 200,000 
     gamblers at risk in Israel.''
       The hundreds of illegal casinos mushrooming all over Israel 
     signify the breakdown of Israeli society, warns Dr. Yair 
     Caspi.
       ``This wasn't here 20 years ago. Not the growing gambling 
     phenomenon, nor the drugs or alcohol. It isn't that we 
     weren't aware, it just wasn't here.
       ``Together with an increase in use of alcohol and drugs, 
     gambling is part of a general addictive phenomenon growing 
     rapidly in Israel, trying to be little America.''
       Caspi holds an opposing view to the widely accepted theory 
     that addiction is caused by individual deficiency.
       ``Israel has lost its traditional Jewish value system. The 
     '50s immigration from North Africa and Eastern Europe lost a 
     value system from which they never recovered. Then Zionism 
     and socialism and idealism were still strong and gave 
     something back to replace it.''
       Religion, he says, has ``reneged on its job.''
       

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