The Las Vegas center is the VA's second inpatient treatment facility for veterans, who are at higher risk of gambling addiction. <\/p>\n
Steve Walsh reports on the VA's second inpatient clinic for problem gamblers.<\/p>\n
Army veteran Ronnie Reyes said the time he spent in the military is a big part of the reason why he became a gambling addict. <\/p>\n
Reyes spent twelve years in the Army. Though he didn't see combat, he was a victim of military sexual trauma. After he left the service in 1991, he became a frequent gambler in Las Vegas casinos. <\/p>\n
\"I think it has a numbing effect,\" Reyes said. \"When I'm in the heat of the moment, at the tables or a slot machine, I just get tunnel vision. And nothing else seems to matter.\" <\/p>\n
Reyes got a job in a casino as a blackjack dealer, even as his gambling addiction worsened. He said it was hard for him to admit he had a problem until he was thousands of dollars in debt. <\/p>\n
\"There is not a substance attached to it,\" Reyes said. \"There is no drug, there is no bottle. It's a behavior that can be easily hid.\" <\/p>\n
Reyes now is seeking treatment through the Department of Veteran Affairs Southern Nevada Healthcare System. Late last year, the system opened an inpatient gambling treatment program - only the second such program in the VA. The first opened at a VA center in Ohio in 1974. <\/p>\n
In the Las Vegas program, veterans spend up to 45 days in therapy and group activities that attempt to treat their addiction. <\/p>\n
Roxanne Untal, who runs the 20-bed Las Vegas clinic, said she has patients with more than $100,000 in debt. Researchers say that's one reason veterans with gambling addiction have a higher suicide rate. <\/p>\n
\"You can treat the gambling, and once you treat the gambling, you're still facing that debt,\" Untal said. \"And how do you go about living a life that is meaningful with that? I think it's just very different consequences and very different pathways.\" <\/p>\n
VA research concluded that among people who have tried gambling, about five percent are addicted. But the number among veterans is eight percent. Vets with PTSD have a 60 percent higher rate of gambling addiction than the general population. <\/p>\n
And the VA statistics may be low, because the agency doesn't screen for gambling addiction the way it does for drugs and alcohol, Untal said. <\/p>\n
Gambling also hasn't attracted nearly as much funding as drug and alcohol addiction. <\/p>\n
\"Drugs and alcohol have public voices, public faces, and a much longer history of those voices advocating in this field,\" said Bo Bernhard, executive director of the International Gaming Institute at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. \"Gambling addiction is really a newer field.\" <\/p>\n
For the VA, Las Vegas was an obvious choice <\/p>\n
The history of seeing gambling as an addiction actually starts with one pioneering VA doctor - Robert Custer in Ohio. <\/p>\n
Custer opened the first inpatient treatment center for problem gambling in 1974 near Cleveland, after he saw symptoms among his drug and alcohol patients.<\/p>\n
\"Many of them were 'swapping seats on the Titanic,' as he used to put it,\" Bernhard said. \"We're switching from a drug and alcohol addiction to what he thought of, first, as a gambling addiction.\" <\/p>\n
Custer left the VA shortly after creating the first treatment program. In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association formally recognized gambling as an addiction, largely because of Custer's work. <\/p>\n
There are outpatient gambling programs throughout the VA system. But for decades, Custer's Cleveland-area VA remained the only inpatient treatment clinic. With its high concentration of gambling and a growing veteran population, Las Vegas seemed the obvious choice for a second. <\/p>\n
One thing that makes gambling addiction different from drugs or alcohol is \"the chase.\" The feeling that no matter how deep the hole, a gambler can somehow win everything back. <\/p>\n
\"I get paid one day, the next day I'm broke,\" said Las Vegas patient Jim Romero, who was a mechanic in the Air Force in the early 2000s. <\/p>\n
Romero was homeless by the time he entered the VA program. He's been battling one addiction or another for 20 years. <\/p>\n
\"I thought I had it under control, but I'll never have this disease under control,\" he said. \"It's something I'll have to fight every single day.\" <\/p>\n
This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans. Funding comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. <\/p>\n
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In Las Vegas, The VA Has Opened A New Center To Treat Veterans With Gambling Addiction - WUSF News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Las Vegas center is the VA's second inpatient treatment facility for veterans, who are at higher risk of gambling addiction. Continue reading