the addiction to losing

After reading a post by my friend Pauly, I feel that I needed to go further into depth about this subject. In his blog, he stated that during his trip to vegas, he started uttering the phrase, "I gotta get unstuck, I gotta get unstuck." This was after he went down something liek 1k in his first hour in Vegas. He concluded with a passage that I'd like to start my post with, and that is a line that Al Pacino's character gives in the movie Two For the Money:

"You're a lemon. Like a bad car. There is something... there is something inherently defective in you, and you, and you, and me, and all of us. We're all lemons. We look like everyone else, but what makes us different is our defect. See, most gamblers, when they go to gamble, they go to win. When we go to gamble, we go to lose. Subconsciously. Me, I never feel better than when they're raking the chips away; not bringing them in. And everyone here knows what I'm talking about. Hell, even when we win it's just a matter of time before we give it all back. But when we lose, that's another story. When we lose, and I'm talking about the kind of loss that makes your asshole pucker to the size of a decimal point - you know what I mean - You've just recreated the worst possible nightmare this side of malignant cancer, for the twentieth goddamn time; and you're standing there and you suddenly realize, Hey, I'm still... here. I'm still breathing. I'm still alive. Us lemons, we fuck shit up all the time on purpose. Because we constantly need to remind ourselves we're alive. Gambling's not your problem. It's this fucked up need to feel something. To convince yourself you exist. That's the problem.You know, the best part of the best drug in the world isn't the high. It's the moment just before you take it. The dice are dancing on the table. Between now and the time they stop, that's the greatest high in the world."

I would like to begin by saying that sometimes I feel like the person that Al Pacino is describing here in his soliloqy. I think that at one point or another, all of us feel like perpetual losers. We all know that day that we dream about when absolutely everything goes wrong and you either just want to be shot repeatedly or curl up into a little ball until the end of your seemingly useless existence on this earth. The problem with this type of losing is that it leads to future losses, even when the circumstances have improved. Gambling is a perfect way to illustrate this. If you go into a poker session and everything goes wrong(take a few beats, run into a few tough situations) and you begin to approach your worst loss of all time, your mindset changes quickly. It is true that when it's all over and done with and you've blown every dollar and coin you own, you realize something: I'm still alive. I can't remember how many times I'd be walking home from a poker game(where'd I had gotten busted) thinking "Well, you lost all your money, but you still have yourself. You're still a smart kid and that's not gonna change no matter if you win a thousand or spend a thousand minutes losing it all." This "fucked up need to feel something" couldn't be worded any better because we have to prove to ourselves that in one way or another we still exist on this little planet. I'd say that another good example is the people from the movie Saw. Jigsaw(the main evil/good, depending on how you interpret it character in Saw) always makes videos to show his victims who haven't been living their lives to the fullest. In these videos, he often refers to the fact that "it takes the prospect of death for most of us to truly begin to live." Not only this, but the fact of the matter is that losing is very multi-dimensional. I mean, losing can happen in so many different ways but in the long run, winning only happens by staying a consistent course.

I always wondered why those teams who were perpetual losers couldn't turn it around eventually. I mean, they practiced just as much as the other teams, but their mindset was always "We are probably going to lose this game. We have accepted that we are a losing team and don't give a shit if we turn it around or not. Hell, losing is fun because it makes us feel good inside." I've ran into more than a few people who have this "losing curse" hanging over their heads. These people are so convinced that they are going to fuck everything up once they meet a new romantic interest, start a new job, or enter a new stage in their life, that they begin to think too much and eventually do fuck it up. I'm kind of going off on a tangent, but the crux of this post revolves around losing and how we can become addicted to it.

I've made it a goal of mine to work on this in 2007, but I'm convinced it's going to be a struggle that's going to take me a long time. I want to become more addicted to success and less so to failure. That's one reason I believe that I'm attracted to school and gambling so much. In school, I was always a consistent winner. I worked hard at it, but I always had a talent for school. If there's one thing that I know how to do, it's how to do well in schoool. Of course, that brings us to gambling. I don't bet horses(minus once), sports, or any other game that I dont' think I have an advantage in. However, poker is different. I've had myriads of success and failure in the game, and most of both wins and losses came in streaks. In 2007, part of my goal is to have more success at gambling, which doesn't necessarily mean making more money doing it. To do well in gambling, you have to make correct decisions, and that's something that I hope I'll be able to do in the New Year.

Until next time,

mh