In the crazy haze of job openings and playoff preparations, some things don’t get noticed when they’re published. Here’s one from two weeks ago that merits a mention.
Patriots receiver Kayshon Boutte, who’ll play in Sunday’s AFC Championship, is only three years removed from a serious gambling addiction.
Boutte shared his story in an item posted on ThePlayersTribune.com.
“I’d wake up early in the morning, and the first thing I’d do was bet,” Boutte wrote. “I’d stay up late and bet. All day. All night. I had insomnia, so if I woke up in the middle of the night, phone next to the bed, I’d bet. Any little money I had, it was going straight to FanDuel.”
At the time, he was a 20-year-old athlete at LSU.
“I knew I was addicted,” Boutte wrote. “When you lose, and you’re an addict, there’s this voice in the back of your mind like, No, no, no…… I gotta get my money back. I GOTTA get it back.”
He kept going due to the unrealistic fantasy, sold by ubiquitous advertising, that a big payday is there to be had.
“[E]ven when you win, it’s never enough — you aren’t satisfied just winning $1,000,” Boutte wrote. “Don’t get me wrong, a bag is nice. But nobody gambles for that kind of money. Gambling is about the dream. Everybody’s dream is to go to the casino and hit for $100K … $300K … $500K. And a lot of gamblers think that if they quit, it would end up being right before their biggest hit, before they would have tripled up on some parlay. 10x, 20x. Why not? That could be me. That’s the mindset that always kept me hanging on. What if I do quit, but one day, I would’ve hit this, and we’da been on a boat somewhere, living off it?”
As Boutte explained it, the same thing that drove him to strive for a pro football career kept him going with gambling.
“It’s sad when I think about how, as a kid, my ability to dream was an asset,” he wrote. “That’s what got me to LSU, and later, all the way to the NFL. But as a gambling addict, my dreaming was my biggest liability. It was like my own mind was working against me. Nobody was forcing me, I wasn’t being hustled. I didn’t even have nobody to be mad at but myself. I was digging my own grave. Then one day, I shoveled that last little bit of dirt over my head — I had nothing left. I gambled until I was completely broke. When it was all said and done, I put in around $90,000 of my own money, and lost it all.”
Boutte said he started gambling as a way to replace the sense of competition he lost after suffering an injury at LSU.
Boutte was eventually arrested for underage gambling. (The charges were later dropped.)
“I know there’s more stories like mine out there,” he wrote. “Betting is just gonna keep getting bigger and bigger. Gambling is what it is. I’m not here to preach. It’s going to exist. But people who are in a dark place, they’re gonna use it to escape. Athletes, especially. I’m telling you, because I lived it.”
He has a final message for those who’ll see the inevitable stories about players getting in trouble for gambling.
“Just remember that there’s a person behind that headline. When you ask yourself, ‘How could they do something like that? How could they risk it all? What were they thinking?’ . . . The sad part is, they weren’t thinking. They were going through something. Don’t give up on them. . . . Maybe they just need some help.”
He’s right. Gone are the days of having to go find a bookie in order to place a bet. Gambling is everywhere. It’s quick and it’s easy to get started. For many, it’s hard to stop.
Especially for those who thrive on competition and who suddenly have lost that ability to try to get the rush that comes from a win. When it comes to gambling, the more likely outcome for most who do it is that they’ll eventually lose. And many will lose big.