The World We Live In

Barry

The adrenaline rush I get from doing it,

It’s exciting and exhilarating, I love it.

Being in that environment and the ambience,

The bright lights, the sounds of the machines playing.

People mentally focused at the tables on their games,

Trying to win some money and beat the machines and the dealer.

The competitive nature of playing different games,

And trying your luck with different things to see what you like.

For me, it started at a young age with a fake ID,

I was spending my nights in casinos gambling my money away.

Being in college and doing a work study wasn’t paying me well,

So I’d used a little of it to see if I can double it and even triple my profit.

Some nights I’d get lucky and others I wouldn’t,

It was just the risk I would take to try and win some good money.

Once I went in a casino that one time, I knew I’d get hooked,

I started trying to find ways to get to the casino daily.

Borrowing money from my parents to go to the casino,

And see if I can increase my earnings exponentially.

As I got older I didn’t know it would come back to ruin my life,

I was in a relationship in my 20s and was engaged to be married.

The night before my wedding I had a big bachelor party,

I ended up at the casino, drinking heavily and gambling the night away.

 I hadn’t paid for the rest of my honeymoon yet and I used it to gamble,

My greed and temptation, I gave into it and gambled thousands of dollars away.

Lost all of my money and then borrowed $500 dollars from my best friend,

Gambled that and lost all of that money too.

The next morning, I was hungover out of my mind and sick,

I basically left my wife to be at the alter and she broke it off with me.

My friends tried to cover for me but the wounds were too deep,

She was already lying to her family about my gambling problem.

She had covered for me for far too long and I knew it,

We had a future together and I planned on buying a house with her.

Our lives were going to be great and wonderful but I have a serious problem,

So here I am, living in my parent’s house in their basement and broke.

After missing work too much, I was eventually fired from the company,

With this tough job market, I can’t find anything to save my life.

I maxed out my credit cards and I can’t pay that back so I’m in debt,

My parents aren’t going to help me with that, I owe them thousands of dollars.

The sound of those chips clicking together at a poker table,

The sound of the machines dropping change to the winners is what looms in my mind.

My gambling habit has cost me the people I’ve loved most,

Even the woman of my dreams all because I wanted to pull a slot machine.

Now that I can’t get to the casino and gamble, I go through withdrawal,

Spending my days on free websites playing games just for fun.

Any money that I can get my hands on, I go and gamble it,

 Spending time online trying to get some extra money in my pocket.