I’m not saying it doesn’t work. Perhaps in some locals and for some folks it works but for my boyfriend and I, well, not so much. Several years ago, we both self excluded from our favorite casino which was the closest. It is aprox. 40 miles away and is a small casino where they actually know most of us by name… So yes, we did stay away from there for an entire year. The problem though, was we ended up going to other casinos that were aprox. 60 miles away. We started to self exclude ourselves from those, but after talking to staff and security, decided it would be futile as we were told that they have no way of keeping up with who and who is not self excluded and that what usually happend was if someone who is self excluded goes in and plays and happens to win a jackpot that requires ID, that if they are on the exclusion list, the jackpot is forfeited and they are asked to leave. No jail, no hassles. Just hope you don’t hit it big if you are going to break the self exclusion. The only time they had people arrested for trespassing was when they got out of hand after being asked to leave when found as winners of forfeited jackpot. I realize that each of us has our own threshold of addiction and for some, self exclusion may be all it will take, but for others, it may not work, but still, I believe there is hope for each and every one of us. We just have to never give up trying. Needless to say, we both are still struggling with our addiction and struggle daily to stay out of the casinos.. sometimes we do. Sometimes we don’t. I just hope and pray that someday we all find the strength to take back our lives and embrace all that we have been missing.
