The Modern Meeting

After more than 20 years in public health and nearly 16 years working in problem gambling prevention, Jaime Costello has seen the gambling industry and the organizations working to prevent gambling harm change dramatically. The former Director of Programs at the National Council on Problem Gambling joins The Modern Meeting to discuss her recent departure from NCPG, the growing divisions within the...

Rachel C didn't start gambling until her mid-30s, but in less than three years, it took over her life. What began with watching casino influencers on YouTube and discovering online slots quickly turned into dozens of gambling accounts and apps, mounting debt, and a growing web of lies she was hiding from her wife. Rachel shares how gambling on her phone consumed her life, why the money stoppe...

This episode is for the people in our lives who just don't get it. Drawing from my own 20 years of compulsive gambling, I do my best to explain and educate those who struggle to understand gambling addiction. I address common misconceptions, share what was going through my mind during some of my worst moments, and discuss the challenges of recovery for both the gambler and their loved ones. M...

After 17 years in recovery, Jennifer Krimmel is now the Executive Director of the Kentucky Council on Problem Gambling. Jennifer shares how she moved from hidden binge gambling to lasting recovery. She recounts the highs and devastating losses that kept her caught in a cycle of gambling, alcohol, money avoidance, and self-rationalization, and explains what finally led her to her last bet on July 2...

Life has thrown me some unexpected challenges recently, forcing me to confront fear, uncertainty, and some uncomfortable truths about myself. In this episode, I reflect on the importance of self-awareness, boundaries, connection, and the realization that just because I've stopped gambling doesn't mean I've stopped having things to work on. I also talk about the challenges of working...

Four different breaking points. Four different paths back. For this special Recovery Month episode of The Modern Meeting, Adam continues his conversation with Rachel M., Stephen B., Jonathan M., and Mandy S., four people in recovery from four very different forms of gambling. Part 2 begins with the moment each of them knew something had to change. From a phone call made from a moving car, to ninet...

Gambling addiction doesn’t always look the same. Sports betting. Online casinos. Scratch tickets. Casino gambling. The games may be different, but the experiences underneath them can be remarkably similar. In this special Recovery Month episode, Adam is joined by Rachel M., Stephen B., Jonathan M., and Mandy S., four people whose gambling took very different forms. In Part 1 of Different Games, Sh...

Janice Johnson Dowd is in long-term recovery from alcohol. Her daughter Katie Dowd Walker was a teenager watching it happen. Together they host the podcast Recovering Relationships, and they sat down with Adam to talk about the part of addiction most people never hear about: what it does to a family, and how long it takes to come back from. Janice spent her whole career in the addiction field and...

Psychotherapist and gambling specialist Sean Bourgeoise joins The Modern Meeting to break down what effective gambling treatment actually looks like. We talk about why focusing entirely on not gambling can keep gambling at the center of your life, creating space between an urge and a bet, rebuilding trust in yourself, and Sean’s “Fire Your Evil Caddy” approach to responding to mistakes. Later, I t...

Mary Santora is 118 days removed from her last bet, but she isn't pretending the desire disappeared with it. In Part 2, she's brutally honest about what early recovery actually looks like: still romanticizing gambling, still missing it every day, and not ready to say she'll never gamble again. She opens up about the casino session that finally pushed her to self-exclude, choosing a...

Mary Santora is a nationally touring stand-up comedian with two full-length specials that hit number one, and this is the first time she's telling her gambling story anywhere outside a GA room. Mary grew up poor in Cleveland, the daughter of a severe gambling addict, in a house where cards, scratch-offs, and trips to the horse track were just what a childhood looked like. In Part 1 of our con...

For those of you who've been here since the beginning, you've heard a lot of this before, scattered across ninety-something cold opens. For those of you who haven't, here it is: my story, start to finish, in one sitting, for the first time. Uncle Rick and a craps game on my grandmother's carpet when I was nine. A panic attack in college that turned into a year of my life I stil...

Austin P sits down with Adam just after celebrating one year without a bet and a day away from celebrating one year sober from alcohol. Austin first recognized his gambling problem more than a decade ago, eventually attending GA and going to inpatient treatment in 2015. Austin talks with Adam about his first experience with treatment, why he believes it didn’t stick, the progression of his gamblin...

Jimmy Morris is a compulsive gambler in recovery from Chicago, and the host of the podcast Gambling Recovery: Taking Back Your Life. Jimmy grew up in Little Italy, where everyone gambled and everyone knew everyone. He got introduced to a bookie in high school, and what started as something to kill time with his friends turned into something else entirely. He spent years going in and out of the roo...

Back in 2016, I took another bailout from my Dad, but this time it came up with some serious strings attached. Then it's the full NCPG recap. Four days in Nashville...from my first presentation of Addiction Time Capsule and the conversations that meant the most to me, to karaoke, throwing out my back in the dumbest way imaginable, and why I left feeling more hopeful about the future of gambli...

John B. is a compulsive gambler in recovery from Oxnard, California with over 20 years since his last bet. In 1994, John moved to Las Vegas to get away from drugs and alcohol, only to find gambling waiting for him there. He talks about what those years looked like, how long it took him to admit he was a compulsive gambler, and the turning point that finally got him into the rooms for good.  He tal...

As long as people keep struggling with gambling, and refuse to go to meetings, I will keep talking about them. This week I posed a question to the listeners who are in recovery: tell me a misconception that you had about meetings before you attended them, or a reason why you were hesitant. 18 people answered. They ranged from "fear of speaking" to "thinking they weren't worthy....

You've heard Adam talk about his clean date, February 8th, 2022, and the meeting in Austin, Texas that changed everything. Rocky is the man who chaired that meeting. By a coincidence neither of them planned, this conversation was recorded on July 2nd, the exact day Rocky made his last bet 34 years ago. He takes us back to the beginning: the fraternity, the bookies, the loans he talked his way...

If you grew up in the '90s, Chris Farley was probably the funniest person alive to you. Tom Farley is his older brother, and he's in recovery himself. For years Tom told Chris's story while quietly avoiding his own. In this conversation he gets into both. He talks about the afternoon a sober musician made him want something he didn't have, the friend who tricked him into his fi...

For most of my life I never stuck with anything. Jobs. Relationships. Addresses. And now, thanks to recovery, I actually stick with things. And I'm not doing it alone. We've built a community. A team. People that show up for each other. This week we celebrated one year of the Modern Meeting Meeting. I get into how it started, how it almost didn't make it, and what this past Monday n...

A delayed flight, a karaoke bar in Missouri, and a $248 decision I knew I shouldn't make. What happened next at the gate was the closest I've come to that old feeling in over four years. From there I talk about five hard truths about gambling addiction and recovery. The ones people don't want to hear, the ones I keep repeating because they keep being true, and the one I save for las...

Carmela aka Carmey B — grew up in Omaha's Little Italy, in a loud, proud Italian American family whose whole world revolved around gambling. Her father owned an Italian steakhouse, hosted Sunday card games, and had a past colorful enough that two men with briefcases once showed up looking for him. He was her North Star. He was also a gambler. And for a long time, she didn't believe gambl...

From the outside, Scott Meyer had the picture-perfect life. Married his high school sweetheart, five kids, his own accounting firm, a home in the community he grew up in, and the respect of everyone around him. He was the trusted professional people came to with their money. He was also quietly destroying everything he'd built. In this episode, Scott traces a gambling addiction that started a...

This episode is dedicated to the memory of Sonya — a Marine, an adventurer, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, and a friend, who passed away on May 27th after a nearly twenty-year battle with addiction. In her sister Tracy's words: "I choose to remember my sister, not her addiction." And then we hear a letter Sonya wrote in her own hand. Thank you to Tracy and Dan for trusting me with i...

When we left Paul Buck, the real number had just come into focus, and the obvious question was: how did he get caught? He didn't.  In Part 2, Paul picks up at the night everything came apart, and the unlikely thing that finally made him stop after seventeen years: not a confrontation, not getting found out, but a newspaper article about a complete stranger. He's honest about the hardest...