As casinos open and online betting accelerates, the state needs to invest in treatment and public awareness before more lives are upended.
When I was a kid, some of my happiest memories involved gambling.
My grandfather would babysit me while my parents worked. We’d pull our chairs up to an old World War II trunk to use as a table where we’d play Crazy Eights, poker or dominoes for pennies. Those moments meant everything to me. They were full of laughter, competition and one-on-one time with someone I adored.
I don’t look back on those memories as dark or harmful. I look back on them with love. But I can also see now how early and how thoroughly gambling was normalized in my life.
That matters, because for people like me, gambling did not stay small.
I spent years struggling with addiction. Drugs and alcohol were the addictions I recognized first. They nearly killed me. My drinking led to cirrhosis, months in the hospital and, after proving I could stay sober, a liver transplant. That crisis forced me to confront what I needed to do to stay alive.
What I didn’t fully understand until then was that gambling had been traveling the same road alongside those other addictions.
Like many people, I thought gambling addiction looked like a dramatic, obvious collapse. I thought it was all about huge losses and desperate choices.
But for me, it looked quieter. It looked like small bets adding up. It looked like obsessing over outcomes. It looked like telling myself I could win back what I had lost to pay the bills I’d set aside. It looked like chasing the same relief and escape I had chased through substances.
That is what people need to understand: Problem gambling is not just about money. It’s about the grip gambling can get on the brain, the secrecy it creates, the shame it feeds and the way it can quietly take over a person’s thinking, relationships and stability.
And today – as we mark the end of Problem Gambling Awareness Month and hope our March Madness brackets don’t bust and blow our chances in the office pool – that risk is growing faster than ever.
Virginia’s legal gambling landscape has changed dramatically in just a few years. Casinos are opening. Sports betting is everywhere. Online gambling is expanding rapidly — even as far as predictions over which celebrities might show up at the next big event.
What once required a trip somewhere now lives in your pocket, on your phone, 24 hours a day. During the pandemic, when so many people were isolated, stressed and online, that access intensified. For me, sports betting became another way to disappear into myself.
The danger extends beyond the growth of gambling. That growth is happening faster than the public’s understanding of the harm it can cause.
That is why the work of the Virginia Partnership for Gaming and Health matters so much.
At VPGH, where I now work as a peer recovery specialist, we are trying to grow alongside the problem. In my view, that makes this program a leader and an innovator in Virginia. Rather than treating gambling harm as an afterthought, we’re treating it as the public health issue it is.
We connect Virginians to help quickly, often within a day of reaching out. We coordinate care with trained clinicians and peer recovery specialists who understand gambling addiction specifically and often personally. We provide ongoing support, not just a phone number and good luck. And if cost is a barrier, VPGH can cover treatment so people aren’t shut out from recovery.
The results show both the need and the impact. In 2025 alone, VPGH served 1,267 individuals across the state, with 93% connected to treatment a week. Follow-up outcomes showed that 95% to 97% reduced or stopped gambling across time periods ranging from one week to one year.
Those numbers matter, but what they represent matters more. They represent marriages under strain, people drowning in financial stress, families trying to understand what is happening and individuals who finally found a place where someone said, “This is real, and you are not alone.”
As someone in recovery, I know how powerful that moment can be.
Peer support works because lived experience breaks through shame. When someone calls for help and hears from a person who has been there, the conversation changes. It becomes more honest. More human. More hopeful. We don’t replace clinical care. We strengthen it.
Virginia has done something important by building a coordinated response as legalized gambling expands. But we cannot stop here. If gambling opportunities continue to evolve, then prevention, treatment and recovery services must grow with them.
That requires sustained attention and more funding.
If we can invest in gambling’s expansion, we must also invest in the systems that help people when that expansion causes harm. We need more outreach, trained providers, peer support and capacity to reach people before financial, emotional and behavioral health crises spiral further.
I know gambling can hide in plain sight. Mine did.
I also know recovery is possible. Virginia has a model worth building on. Now we need the will to match the scale of the challenge — and the courage to fund hope before more people lose far more than money.
