- October 17, 2022
- Gambling
*** Trigger warning *** Gambling, the wagering process, “bad beats”, big wins, etc are all discussed in this episode. Please listen with caution if these topics are potentially triggering.
Suicide contemplation is also mentioned in this episode. If you or someone you know is experiencing thoughts of suicide or emotional distress, please dial 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline 24/7.
Joel Soper joins the show to discuss the motivation behind writing a person account of his struggles with gambling. We learn how Joel first got started betting at an early age, what he hopes to accomplish by sharing his story, the uniqueness of sports betting and why he believes it has mass appeal to a wide audience. Joel is candid about his recovery journey and realizes it is a “work in progress” that requires vigilance each day.
Call Gateway Foundation: 855-723-0963
Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER
Transcript:
WAGER DANGER EPISODE 7: NEVER ENOUGH ZEROS – AUTHOR JOEL SOOPER JOINS THE SHOW
Guest: Joel Soper
Hey, Shane.
Host: Shane Cook
Here.
Host: Shane Cook
Before we get into this episode, I just wanted to show a couple of warnings for content that might be triggering. One, we talk extensively about sports betting, the process of betting bad beats, things like that. So if that’s something that is going to cause you some emotional distress, I want you to be careful as you listen through it. The second thing is we do discuss suicide. Suicide is mentioned a couple of times during the episode. If you or anyone you know is experiencing emotional distress, please call nine eight to speak with a counselor. Welcome to Wager Danger, where we discuss gambling and the potential harms that can result when gambling progresses beyond recreation. I’m your host, Shane Cook, gambling disorder program director at Gateway Foundation.
Gateway is a national nonprofit that provides substance use and gambling disorder treatment through its 16 centers located throughout the state of Illinois.
Host: Shane Cook
We’re joined today by Joel Silber, author.
Host: Shane Cook
Of Never Enough Zeros, a personal account of Self-discovery and Joel’s work-in-progress approach to dealing with his gambling addiction. And no, it’s not your headphones, but.
Host: Shane Cook
We do have a bit of background.
Host: Shane Cook
Noise, so join us in the cafe while we chat.
Host: Shane Cook
Welcome to wager danger. Joel.
Guest: Joel Soper
Thank you guys for having me.
Host: Shane Cook
I understand you’ve been busy. You’ve been doing some interviews, some other podcasts. So I appreciate you making some time to be on with us. And I’m just going to jump right in and kind of get towards understanding your motivation behind writing the book Never Enough Zero. So why don’t you walk us through that?
Guest: Joel Soper
Yeah, great question. To start off, so my motivation for writing Never Enough Zero was one of my bad beats, which obviously, as a compulsive gambler, we have them all the time. But this one was just the tip. It was it for me. It drove me absolutely nuts. Now, keep in mind, I’ve lost millions of dollars gambling, and I’ve been doing it pretty much my whole adult life. And it’s taken me to some ridiculous places, such as jail, hospitals, insane asylums, everywhere. But this particular loss was a basketball game that I had a large wager on. That was about 12 seconds left in this particular game. And the home team had the ball and was up by 20 points, and they shot a meaningless three-pointer with 1 second left, which is unheard of because usually they just run out the clock.
So they shoot the meaningless three-pointer, it goes in, makes the game go over the total, and I had the under. So now I’m very upset. I break my laptop, I break my phone, break my hand on the wall. I just can’t believe what transpired. And it was just a huge swing. So I had no communication to the outside world. So I just started writing and writing about my history of gambling from when I was 16, working for a bookmaker in Detroit to the last wager that I had made. And I did that for approximately two days straight. I just had papers and papers, and that was the inspiration for me to write the book.
Host: Shane Cook
All right, so a bad beat led to never enough zeros. We’ll probably get into a little bit more detail as we go through it. But in terms of writing the book, I mean, you got to a point where things had gotten so bad that you felt this need to purge and get your story out and really share with people the ups and downs, the bad, the ugly of gambling addiction. Now, at this point, you’re no stranger to gambling addiction. At this point, if I read the book correctly, it was a series of events that led you to this point where you ended up writing the story, so to speak, and sharing your side of your story and your journey in this book, right?
Guest: Joel Soper
Correct. I gambled every single day from the age of 16 to up to six months ago. Never missed a day. And along that road, it took me to some very dark places in regards to stealing, being in jail, getting beat up from shylocks and bookies because I owe them tons of money, forcing me to sell my business in San Diego that I worked on for 20 years to pay off debts, to almost commit suicide. So, yes, that’s all I know. My whole life was gambling and sales. That was it.
Host: Shane Cook
Yeah. So in terms of sharing your story in this book, I guess one of the things I’d be curious to understand is what it is you hope to accomplish. I think you started out you mentioned there are two things that you wanted to accomplish by doing right.
Guest: Joel Soper
The two things I want to accomplish is, one, just have it as a safeguard guardrails against people that are getting involved into the new sports gambling, to let them know that if they continue to bet over their means, or as an addiction type of sports gambling that it could lead to a lot of the rock bottoms that it has led to in my life. And then also, it is for myself because the more I talk about it, the more I wrote about it really showed me how my life was just a train wreck from the very beginning of my sports gambling career.
So it’s to help myself and to help the general public of people that are entering into the world of sports gambling or that are already in it, that are experiencing a lot of the same things with the bad beats and losing their businesses or losing their houses or friendships or family because of this gambling. It’s to help everybody.
Host: Shane Cook
Okay. All right. I think that’s fair. That’s part of the process. Part of your process, part of your healing journey was first writing the book and then sharing that story. And I think it was important for people to understand what your motivation is behind the book. So that’s why I wanted to explore that a little bit. So with that in mind, why don’t you take us back a little bit and kind of go back to that moment when you first got started with gambling?
Guest: Joel Soper
Sure, no problem. So I grew up in Lavonia, Michigan, which is a suburb right outside of Detroit. And at an early age, I went to work for a bookie. It was my friend’s dad, actually, and I would write down the bets for the incoming calls to wager on the games. And back then, that’s what you did. There was only a spread and a total. There were no propositions, no live betting, nothing. Okay. So that’s what I did. And he also booked horses. So he would go to the Detroit Race Course a lot, and he would set up in the clubhouse, and he would actually not only would he take the bets from his house with the sports, but people would actually walk up to him at the horse track and bet the horses there, too, instead of actually going to the window.
It was amazing. But anyways, they gave me a horse called Bring on the Rain when I was 16 years old. It was my first bet. My first bet was a horse, not sports. And lo and behold, that day in Detroit, Michigan, it starts raining and my horse breaks for home, and he’s winning by four lengths. And I’ll never forget the announcer saying it’s Bring on the Rain in the Rain, winning by four lengths. He wins easy. It was five to one. I think I had $20 on it. And that was it. I was done.
Host: Shane Cook
Yeah. And that was it. You were hooked at that point?
Guest: Joel Soper
I was hooked 100%. It was the greatest feeling in the world. And the money that I made from that was just unbelievable.
Host: Shane Cook
Yeah. And then you spent some time at Western Michigan University as well.
Guest: Joel Soper
Yes, sir. So fast forward to my college years. Now I’m gambling more. I’m gambling anywhere between 500 to 800 a day. And in order to finance my gambling, I’m selling drugs. So I’m betting, I’m losing, I’m paying with the money that I’m making from selling drugs, and inevitably, I get in trouble. And that’s a reoccurring theme of my whole adult life with gambling, getting in trouble with the law, and losing everything.
Host: Shane Cook
Yeah, well, it’s not uncommon with gambling.
Guest: Joel Soper
Right.
Host: Shane Cook
So after your time at Western Michigan, I’m just curious about what time frame was Western Michigan?
Guest: Joel Soper
So Western Michigan, 89 to 93.
Host: Shane Cook
Okay. All right. So I was curious because I was going for the Derek Jeter connection there, but he was a little bit before your time.
Guest: Joel Soper
Yeah, I graduated in December of 93, and then I landed in Southern California in October of 94, which wasn’t easy to get to because I was on lifetime probation from the trouble that I got in at Western. So luckily, the probation officer that I had, well, the first one, for whatever reason, didn’t like me, so she wasn’t going to let me go. But she got transferred. I got a new one, and as fate would have it, she thought it was a good idea that I relocated and restarted my life.
Host: Shane Cook
Okay.
Guest: Joel Soper
That’s the time frame. I ended up in Southern California, San Diego, in October of 94, and that’s when I started my first business. And at this point, I’m still gambling out of control, and as I’m doing my business, I’m becoming more successful, so I’m making more money each year. So that means I’m gambling more each year.
Host: Shane Cook
Okay. And access to gambling back then in California, was very similar to what was available in Michigan at that time. You’re working through a local bookmaker to place the bets and things like that. Now, reading through your story, sports betting seems to be the type of betting that attracted you the most versus casino, gaming, table games, things like that. And I’m curious to know, from your perspective, what was unique about sports betting that attracted you to it and makes it more compelling to you than other forms of gambling.
Guest: Joel Soper
It’s a great question. The reason why sports gambling was that was it for me was because I had done the casino, the craps, the blackjack, the table game, and I just felt like you were at such a disadvantage from the house that it was very difficult to win. So I thought that the people that did that were at a lot lower chance of winning. And I thought sports gambling was cool because you can do your handicapping on weather conditions, umpires, referees, and you think you’re the smartest guy when you actually win, and it’s a 50 chance. So I just fell in love with it, and that was my reasoning. And at the end of the day, I lost probably just as much or more. I would have been a casino player.
Host: Shane Cook
Right. Well, I think it’s interesting in the people I’ve talked to, you and you as well, you’ve been pretty vocal about sports. Betters believing that there’s an upper hand in betting on sports is because you’re familiar with sports, you know the teams, you follow them, you do the research, so on and so forth. So it gives you this false sense that you have some sort of control over what’s going to happen. But having watched enough sports myself and participated, there’s always that variable that’s unforeseen that can occur in any event. I mean, sports is that one thing that you’re probably going to see something that you’ve never seen before, and it’s going to blow your mind. Right.
Guest: Joel Soper
It happened to me daily because of the fact that I would bet 50, 60 games a day when live betting and all this proposition came into the fold, that was it that was like for me, crack cocaine. It was different than just betting a full game where you have to wait 3 hours to see if you win or lose. And now with the live and the props, it’s all day every day, which it increases the number of bad beats that you get. I could tell you stories that would blow your mind on a daily basis. So how I didn’t end up jumping off the local bridge, I have no idea even though I tried.
Host: Shane Cook
Yeah. So you have been pretty vocal about the dangers of sports gambling and I recall that’s one of the things that were sitting in one of the same breakout sessions during the NCPG conference and you were pretty vocal about sports gambling and its legalization in many states. And some of the concerns that you have what are the biggest concerns that you have about the current position that a lot of states are taking in legalizing sports gambling?
Guest: Joel Soper
Well, I think it’s going to be a really big problem for a percentage of people because they’re going to end up going down the same road that I did because they have addictive personalities. And once they get a taste of winning in that rush, the dopamine rush that comes along with sports gambling, then they are going to be in action pretty much all day, every day. And they’re going to go down a slippery slope, which includes losing their money and then borrowing from friends and family and then eventually stealing if they can’t catch a break, which most of us can’t. When it comes to gambling.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Host: Shane Cook
And I think the unique aspect of sports betting is centered around micro-betting or in-game betting is probably a more universal term that people know. And just as you mentioned the constant action that it presents for the gambler.
Guest: Joel Soper
Correct? Yeah, all day, every day. It was hard for me to go to bed because I just wanted to be in action. Whether it was Chinese tennis at midnight, international soccer, international women’s basketball, whatever it is, they offer everything now. So I was bending on Russian ping pong. You name it, I was doing it. And yeah, the live play, it changed the whole dynamic of sports gambling.
Host: Shane Cook
Yeah. And as you mentioned it’s 24/7, anything could be found. So I know California is on the cusp of proposing legalization, I believe it’s Prop 27 and I believe that’s coming up for vote here in the next election cycle. So a couple of months from now, do you have any opinion on which way you think it’ll go? Are you for it? Are you against it? And maybe why?
Guest: Joel Soper
At the end of the day, I think it’s going to pass. It’s all about greed. It’s all about the money that’s involved in it. They don’t want the money continuing to go to illegal bookmakers or offshore like Costa Rica or European countries. They want it in-house so they can get their hands on it. Now, it’s something that I feel is a slippery slope as I’ve said. Yes. Now you’re going to have all of these new sports campers, primarily young kids, probably guys between 16 and 25, a lot of college kids, and it’s just going to present a whole bunch of dangers. It just puts so many people at risk. Now where when I was a kid and you were a kid, we’d have to go find that backdoor bookie. We’d have to search for it.
You don’t have to search for it now. It’s on every d*** commercial. It’s everywhere. So to answer your question, yes, I think it’s going to pass because they want the money, because there’s so much of it, and B, I don’t think it’s a good idea. But that’s what’s going to happen, I think. And I think a lot of people are going to get affected negatively by it.
Host: Shane Cook
Yeah, I think it’s definitely interesting. Here in Illinois, sports gambling has been legal now for about two and a half years, I say two and a half years, it’s been legal. It’s been about two and a half years since the first bet was placed. It became legal six to eight months before that, but it took a little bit of time. There was lag before the online sports books were up and running in the state. Just took some time. Then COVID hit. But it’s been interesting to watch the handle on sports betting grow within the state, month over month, year over year since it’s been legalized. Whereas in the previous year 2020 to 2021, the handle was relatively small. Now total for the last year and a half to two years is 13 billion. That has been wagered in just a very short period of time.
And we’re starting to see billion-dollar months that are popping up with the handle. So it can be a slippery slope for people.
Guest: Joel Soper
100%, and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. California, I think, is going to be the Holy Grail, too, because so much money out here and so many people out here, they get this state, they’re going to probably double what they’re already doing.
Host: Shane Cook
It’s crazy. So I want to kind of focus a little bit and really only have a couple of more questions here that I had outlined to start. But reading the book, I get the sense in your recovery journey, you talk about your own recovery journey as a work in progress, and I’d like for you to kind of dig into that a little bit and help the listener understand what you mean by that.
Guest: Joel Soper
It is it’s a work in progress. I’ve been doing this my whole life, from 16 to 51. That’s all I knew. That’s my life. I love gambling. I love sports betting. It was the biggest high that I got. It was better than chocolate cake, better than sex, anything. It was just amazing. So even though it was ruining me and taking me to these awful places, I still did it. I just hope that by the grace of God and helping people and writing this book and doing these podcasts and television, that I can keep updating from it. But it’s a struggle every day, especially during football season. I love football. It’s a work in progress, and I’m never going to sit here and sugarcoat anything and say that I’m never going to make a bet. I hope I never make a bet again, but you never know.
Host: Shane Cook
Yeah, I think that’s a fair way to put it. I think anytime someone is in recovery and recovering from an addiction, it’s a continuous work in progress and it takes effort. But you touched on something that I’ve also heard you talk about in other forums is you used to be a huge Detroit Red Wings fan, Lions fan, the Pistons fan. You were all about it. They’re living in Livonia off the Seven Mile. Right. And we’ve talked about this before on wager danger with other guests, how sports betting can really impact your loyalty, your fanboy status against your home teams. How did that affect you?
Guest: Joel Soper
Oh, man, great question. I used to love the Detroit teams. I mean, in basketball, we had the Bad Boys, we won back-to-back championships. The Red Wings when I was there, were on fire with the Russian Five and the Tigers 84. They won the World Series. They were pretty good. The Lions were always the Lions, but I still loved them. And then obviously, the sports gambling made me just despise, especially the Lions. They would screw me every time I would bet on or against them. Same with all the Detroit teams. Eventually, you lose on betting them, so you start getting upset, and then all of a sudden, you have no loyalty to any team. Your loyalty is to the team that you bet on and if they win or lose. So it takes away your whole fandom.
It takes away your loyalty, your love of the players or your love of the team. I mean, I loved Isaiah Thomas. I love the Detroit Pistons. That was my team. And sports gambling has taken all of that away from me. I got season tickets out here now to the Rams, and I just stopped six months ago. But I would root for whoever I had money on. It didn’t matter. It could be the Rams one week, it could be the Kansas City Chiefs the next week. It doesn’t matter. There’s no loyalty. There are no favorite teams anymore. It’s pretty sad.
Host: Shane Cook
Yeah, I can imagine that has a profound impact, especially in an area where I know Detroit fans are just fiercely loyal. It’s like most cities where you have very passionate fans. They’re generally very passionate about their and that’s a drawback that we don’t really discuss a whole lot when it comes to sports gambling. How it can impact your love of the game, your love of your home team, so to speak. So interesting to hear your perspective on that. So as we get to kind of a closing end here for our chat, I just wanted to ask you if you’ve got any additional thoughts, anything that you want to make sure that the listeners that are listening to this podcast take away from our discussion.
Guest: Joel Soper
Yeah, I guess my final thoughts on this matter would be just be very careful, know what you’re getting into. I’m not telling you not to gamble. That’s not what I’m doing. I just want you to be aware of the potential dangers and pitfalls that can transpire if it becomes an addiction. So that’s what I’m trying to do. That’s my message. So hopefully it helps with anybody that needs that type of wisdom.
Host: Shane Cook
All right, Joel, I appreciate it. Joel Soper, the co-author of Never Enough Zeros, or I should say the main author of Never Enough Zeros, along with some assistance from Philip Wyatt. Joel, I appreciate you joining Wager Danger today. Appreciate you sharing your story, a very personal story on your behalf. So thank you very much.
Guest: Joel Soper
You’re welcome. Thank you guys for having me.
Host: Shane Cook
We love hearing from you.
Host: Shane Cook
So please take a moment to, like.
Speaker 1:
Share and comment on our podcast. You can find us on Facebook and Twitter at Recovergateway, on LinkedIn at gatewayfoundation or through our website@gatewayfoundation.org. Wager Danger is supported through funding whole or in part through a grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Division of Substance Use Prevention and Recovery. Recovery is a lifelong process. If you or a family member is struggling with a gambling problem, call Gateway at 844-975-3663 and speak with one of our counselors for a confidential assessment.
