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Sports betting consumed him. If he was not watching a game to follow a bet, then he was thinking about past wagers, discussing gambling with friends he made through a Discord channel, or researching the upcoming slate of games. Working primarily from home, he would use a dual monitor setup and keep one screen devoted to gambling. In many ways, his life had two monitors, one for gambling and one for everything else—family, friends, work, hobbies, dating, self-care, and so on. “It was what I enjoyed in life at the time,” he said. Gambling offered an escape from any problem he was facing. The only issue was that his escape was more stress-inducing than whatever he was escaping. Gambling left him “just constantly on edge, never really had peace of mind,” which led him to alcohol to take the edge off. He had fallen into a rabbit hole where gambling took on a logic of its own, where the only rational thing was to keep playing.
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Jonathan D. Cohen (Losing Big: America's Reckless Bet on Sports Gambling)