Making Bets in a Burning House

Join Katie and Melissa in their conversation with Ted Hartwell, former Executive Director, now Director of Storytelling for the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling, and learn more about the importance of speaking our stories to our healing and recovery process.

Trigger Warning: Suicide, Language

We tackle a common question family and friends of compulsive gamblers ask at the start of and throughout their recovery: When does the trust come back? This topic is a big one and Katie and Melissa are here to talk through their experience of it.

Trigger Warning: Language, Abuse

Join Melissa in her conversation with Rick Smith, co-founder of Mental Health Counseling and Consultants. He’ll help us understand the neurobiology of gambling addiction and how loved ones can protect themselves and help their compulsive gamblers in the recovery process.

Trigger Warning: Suicide, Language

Katie and Melissa tackle the frustrations and complications that come with the first directive for friends and families of compulsive gamblers: stop enabling. But, what is enabling, really? What does it look like? And, how can loved one’s support their gambling addicts without doing this?

Trigger Warning: Language

This episode is the second half of Melissa’s conversations with Dr. Malkin about gambling-related harms & gambling-motivated crime and risk of historically oppressed, marginalized, and under-researched populations. 

Trigger Warning: Language

In this episode, Part 1, Melissa is joined by Dr. Michelle Malkin, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology and the Director of the Gambling Research and Policy Initiative (GRPI) at East Carolina University.

Trigger Warning: Language

Katie and Melissa discuss the options presented to loved ones with a compulsive gambler in their life: work through the house fires, or run?

Trigger Warning: Language

Katie and Melissa discuss their initial confrontation with gambling with the hope that their experiences and knowledge can help you navigate your own.

Trigger Warning: Language

Katie and Melissa discuss something that makes living life with gambling addiction more complicated than ever: kiddos. Kat shares her experiences of trying to hold for her then-9 and -11 year olds.

Trigger Warning: Language

Katie and Melissa tackle one of the hardest topics when it comes to living with a compulsive gambler: hope. Each shares how they found hope from within and outside of the flames consuming their lives, and finding peace.

Trigger Warning: Language