Overcoming Gambling Addiction: Beating the Odds

Beating the Odds: Overcoming Gambling Addiction tells the powerful story of Michael Mooney, whose first memory of gambling came at just 10 years old — tossing coins against a wall with classmates to win lunch money. What began as harmless fun soon grew into something much more destructive: a gambling addiction that would shadow him for years.

By 17, Michael was behind bars for heroin possession. While he served his sentence, his family moved to Las Vegas — a city of bright lights, second chances, and for many, heartbreak. Given a choice between prison time and recovery, Michael chose sobriety. He quit drugs through a 12-step program in 1991 and began to rebuild. But he hadn’t yet confronted his gambling addiction — the hidden struggle still waiting to surface.

On his honeymoon, a quick visit to the hotel casino turned into a devastating seven-hour spiral. Michael lost more than $10,000 — every dollar they’d received as wedding gifts — to his gambling addiction. Overcome with shame, he made a life-changing decision the next morning: on May 1, 1995, he quit gambling for good. He hasn’t made a single bet since.

Fueled by the pain of his experience and a desire to help others, Michael earned a master’s in psychology and became certified in both substance use and gambling addiction counseling. Today, he leads Choices Counseling Center in Roseville, guiding others through recovery from gambling addiction.

Beating the Odds: Overcoming Gambling Addiction is more than a story of addiction — it’s a story of redemption. Michael’s journey shows that even after deep loss, healing is possible, and purpose can grow from the darkest places.

Quotes

“When I was a little boy, 6 or 7 years of age, I remember getting together with other children and we would pinch pennies … as innocent as that sounds, it kind of set the mind that there’s a way that you can advance in life without putting effort, just if you’re lucky or if you’re skilled or if you could win a game some kind of way … that you wouldn’t have to really work for a living. So I grew up with the fascination of gambling.”

“Gambling, for many people, is a social type of event – gamble for fun, gamble for entertainment. But when it comes to the problem side of gambling, the hallmarks of my addiction, as others, is the mental obsession, the physical compulsion, and the loss of control.”

“Chasing the high is a common experience but it often is an escape to try to gain more pleasure or relief from some of the stress of daily life … for problem gamblers there’s financial stress and pressures, and to gamble gives them at least a temporary relief in the hope that maybe things will get better despite their history of losses.”

“It’s not hard to win money gambling. The hard part for the problem gamblers is to actually leave with the money still in their pocket. … the more you win, the more you play, the more you play, the more you lose.”

“Many gamblers that eventually develop a problem report having a significant win early on … that seems to set a hook that over time will draw you back and back.”

“Beginniners luck is really that you have healthy boundaries – you don’t stay longer than you planned on staying, you don’t gamble with money you can’t afford to lose, you’re not lying to anyone – so it’s not hard to win when you have boundaries and actually take the money out of the casino.”

“Over time, many gamblers, our attention, are drawn to the excitement, the exhiliration, of the casinos becuase the truth is that in our modern society, nothing comes close to the high levels of stimulation and excitement [of gambling].”

“As time progresses, for some, it enters a desperation phase, when there’s a lot of secrecry – you’re gambling with money that you know cannot be replaced, you’re mentally obsessed when you’re not gambling, and for some gamblers, after going through that, there’s the hopelessness phase. This is where you’ve done things gambling that there’s no coming back from and it is this hopeless sensation that often leads gamblers to contemplate suicide or attempt suicide much more than alcoholics or drug addicts.”