NORFOLK, Va. — Thomas Dozier remembers realizing he might have a gambling problem.
“I was sick and tired of being sick and tired,” Dozier told News 3 recently.
For Dozier, it was the thrill of horse racing, but since 2015 he’s been in recovery.
“I started analyzing my life. I started looking in the mirror and said, ‘Well, what could I change in my life to not feel like this?’ I said, ‘Oh I got it. I need to take this gambling part out of my life,” he said.
As News 3 has reported on extensively, since gambling became legal in Virginia more and more people are experiencing gambling addiction.
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A report made to state lawmakers earlier this summer says between 2019, before gambling was legal, and 2023, the number of calls to the Virginia Problem Gambling Helpline is up 973% with nearly 11,000 calls last year.
“With more opportunities to gamble, more people are going to gamble and so with that, there’s going to be more people who develop problems,” said Carolyn Hawley, the president of the Virginia Council on Problem Gambling.
“It’s much easier for us to prevent the problems from developing in the first place and than coming in and trying to repair people’s lives and family’s lives after so much devastation happened,” said Hawley.
Hawley says online sports betting and casinos have led to the most instances of problem gambling and says young men are increasingly facing the problems.
She outlined the signs people may show.
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“You’re recognizing that you’re spending more time gambling than you had planned, that you’re spending more money than you had planned, that you’re starting think about gambling a lot, that you’re not doing other activities or spending time with loved ones because your focus is now gambling,” said Hawley.
She says treatment can help. Their figures show of the people they were able to reach 96-percent of people who got treatment reported gambling less or not at all after six months.
People can also voluntarily exclude themselves from being able to participate in certain forms of gambling.
“What we want is more information out there from the get-go,” said Hawley.
Dozier, who is now a board member on the Virginia Council on Problem Gambling, says he never hit absolute rock bottom but says attending Gamblers Anonymous meetings helped him out of the rutt.
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He says he experienced “peace, serenity, being able to listen, being present in the moment.”
Dozier says the numbers show more resources are needed to help people suffering from problem gambling.
The state collects 2.5% of the taxes collected from problem gambling to go towards the Problem Gambling Treatment and Support fund.
In June, that totaled about $155,000.
“Funding needs to go along with it because there are going to be problem gamblers and that’s the way to help is to somehow get them into recovery, get them the help that they need,” said Dozier.