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 five-year ban instead of a lifetime one, and sometimes staying in bed just so she doesn't have time to drive to a casino.

But the conversation becomes about something bigger than gambling. When Mary talks about missing the escape, the excitement, the zoning out, the numbing, it turns into a realization about the pattern that's followed her whole life: school, comedy, alcohol, gambling, all different ways of avoiding what she didn't want to feel. What follows is an emotional, unscripted conversation about surrender, discomfort, and learning how to stop running.

If you’re struggling right now, you’re not alone.
Email me anytime at modernmeetingpod@gmail.com

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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 conversation, she talks about a father she could only ever seem to connect with at a casino, a mouth that got her into as much trouble as it got her out of, and how the thing she was raised inside of slowly became her own.

If you’re struggling right now, you’re not alone.
Email me anytime at modernmeetingpod@gmail.com

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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 still can't fully explain. Countless "fresh starts" in countless cities that were never actually about starting fresh. A craps roll that should have been the best night of my gambling life and turned out to be the worst thing that ever happened to me.

Last Bet: February 8, 2022.

If you’re struggling right now, you’re not alone.
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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 gambling, the role alcohol played, and the events that led him back into recovery nearly ten years later. They also discuss what the last year has looked like as Austin works to rebuild his life, his relationships, and the trust that was lost along the way.

If you’re struggling right now, you’re not alone.
Email me anytime at modernmeetingpod@gmail.com

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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 rooms, admitting he had a problem the whole time and still unable to put it down. He got into fights that nearly killed people, did a stretch in county jail, and watched the disease reach into every corner of his life, long after the money stopped being the point.

If you’re struggling right now, you’re not alone.
Email me anytime at modernmeetingpod@gmail.com

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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." All of them valid, and almost all of them proven wrong. And if you've never walked into a room, there's a good chance at least one of these is the exact thing holding you back too.

If you’re struggling right now, you’re not alone.
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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 gambling recovery than I did when I arrived.

If you’re struggling right now, you’re not alone.
Email me anytime at modernmeetingpod@gmail.com

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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 into, the trip to Vegas that hooked him, and the night in a condo alone when he finally called the number on the back of a lottery ticket. He also gets into the harder stuff, why he says his real problem was never gambling, the moment his recovery actually took off, and the thing he believes compulsive gamblers need more than any other addict. And Adam finally gets to say something to Rocky, in person, that he's been carrying for over four years.

If you’re struggling right now, you’re not alone.
Email me anytime at modernmeetingpod@gmail.com

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