INDIANAPOLIS — For the first time in years, maybe ever, a handful of gambling addicts are feeling lucky.
They're not holed up in a casino or picking losers at the track. They're living in the old psychiatric ward of an Indianapolis hospital, where some of the best minds in the compulsive gambling field have joined to create Trimeridian, an innovative residential treatment center.
The only thing the patients of Trimeridian are betting on these days is their future. Among them, a 38-year-old Cincinnati truck company worker named Bruce, who was squandering his money, marriage and mind on longshots.
"I understand now I have a disease, but suffering is optional," he says during one therapy session at the new center. "I almost feel I've been exorcised."
But millions of others remain possessed, because places like Trimeridian--created exclusively for problem gamblers--are in woefully short supply.
Although there are an estimated 4.4 million compulsive gamblers in the U.S.--and more venues than ever for them to play out their addiction--there is almost nowhere for them to seek shelter from the cyclone leveling their lives.
"I think the public at large sees someone with a gambling problem as a bad person, not a sick person. Someone who's weak, not someone with a disorder," says Joanna Franklin, executive vice president of the National Council on Problem Gambling. "This is a legitimate mental health concern. It costs the nation billions of dollars when these gamblers are not treated."
Although there are about 10,000 treatment programs around the country for substance abusers, fewer than 150 centers minister to bettors. And just a few of those are geared solely for habitual gamblers, who medical experts say suffer physiological cravings similar to those of alcoholics and drug addicts.
Complicating matters, there are only about 1,000 therapists and counselors nationwide certified to provide gambling treatment, schooled in the unique nature of the addiction. Often, insurance companies don't cover the costs of therapy.
"Compulsive gambling is where alcoholism was 40 years ago in terms of acceptance of the disease," says I. Nelson Rose, an expert in gambling law and history who teaches at Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa.
The majority of compulsive gamblers are on their own, seeking help--when they choose to do so--mostly through Gamblers Anonymous meetings, which are sparsely available in some parts of the country.
