Listen, okay. I used to work in a gas station and as part of my job I sold lottery tickets. I'm about to tell you The One Big Secret State Lotteries Don't Want You To Know:
Scratchers have more prizes when the game is new, but those prizes are pretty much enough for you to break even and get addicted to the game.
They are the "first time it's free" wins. Because your brain doesn't remember that you won $10 on a $10 scratcher, it only remembers that you won. So you go back. And you go back. And in a few weeks you spend $100 to win $10 but it's fine, it's just a streak of bad luck, this game pays out all the time.
I once watched a woman pour almost $500 into scratchers, using her "winnings" to buy more and going back to her car and coming back in, jittery and shaky like every depiction you've ever seen of a speed addict in withdrawal. The symptoms didn't end until she lost her last dime. And then she tried to use our ATM. I'd actually called my manager in between buying bouts to beg her to let me do something, because I wasn't allowed to refuse the sale and if I did and it got back to corporate I'd be fired but I felt like I was handing lit matches to someone covered in gasoline, and she'd told me I could say the ATM was borked. So I taped a huge sign over the screen that said OUT OF ORDER STUCK CARD.
She was the most dramatic case, but far from the only one. I had people who came in every day after work and dropped $100 on scratchers. Daily. And that's not even the scariest part.
I had a customer I became friends with. We'll call him Jim. Jim invited me out for his birthday with his husband and a couple of other friends. We went to a casino, and because it was my first time I got a $10 free credit. And I was like "cool! I can play nickel slots all night long and never spend a dime of my own money!" And that is indeed what I intended to do. Early in the night, I won a $56 jackpot. I decided that was super-cool--I could fill my gas tank, grab a snack, and still have a little left over to throw in my savings account. Only five or six bucks, but hey! That adds up.
So I spent out the end of the original $10 and ended up with $63 total in winnings. At this point we'd been there like three hours, I was out of the money I'd been willing to spend/lose, and the noise and cigarette smoke was getting to me (the casino had gone nonsmoking but the carpets and stuff were still totally saturated, it was awful). So I said I was going to cash out and call it a night.
Jim physically took my playcard from my hand and forced it into a machine and said "no, no, you have to spend it ALL." He literally wouldn't let me leave the casino until I'd lost my winnings. And again, these were not huge winnings. These were "oh, that's nice." But he couldn't stand the idea of not gambling to the last penny--not just his last penny, but anyone's last penny. I hadn't realized until that moment that he had a problem--because he spread his lotto buys between multiple gas stations and never shared how much he spent at the casino.
Now Jim was a very nice guy with a very big problem (a few months after this he ended up in therapy for gambling addiction). I don't say this to slag off on him. We're actually still friends on Facebook. But he lost tens of thousands of dollars, several friends, and almost lost his husband, and he was taking other people with him. He was so deep in his addiction that he was putting the financial stability of other people at risk. I drew the line at spending my own cash--I'd actually left my bank card at home on purpose--but what if I hadn't? What if I wasn't autistic enough to basically have a built-in timer for flashing lights and ringing bells instead of finding them attractive? What if I hadn't grown up hearing my mother say "never take more money into a casino than you're willing to lose"?
Gambling addiction isn't just life-destroying, it can (in a way) be contagious. Your boss buys you a scratcher to put in your holiday card as a nice little token. What can it hurt? Your church holds a weekly bingo game for cash. It's just a chance to get out of the house, right? Your friend has a little casino outing for his birthday. You're just going to have a couple of drinks, play slots or blackjack for a couple of hours, meet some interesting people and go home--
--until you do more than that.
Be wary, kiddos. Don't take more than you're willing to lose. And the minute you think "this time I'm gonna--" you get your ass up and get out. Because that way lies debt and destruction, and the people raking in the billions don't care.
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