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engage in an exciting activity in a safe environment, give you lunch, call you by your name, and make you feel important?” Our society sees seniors primarily as disposable, and this industry has picked up on that.” Several recent studies confirm that more senior citizens are gambling, and losing control. For instance: • A February University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center (NORC) nationwide study of 2,400 adults comparing data between 1974 and now shows the highest increase among gamblers has been among those sixty-five and older. • Research conducted by Linda Bradley of 235 gambling senior citizens from Westerly, Rhode Island, shows that the third and the fourth are the busiest days of the month at casinos, as retirement checks arrive in the mail.

More than half who gambled had an annual income of less than $20,000; 31 percent gambled with money from pensions, 20 percent from social security. • “We found a disproportionate number of gamblers are elderly,” says J. Terrence Brunner, sixty-one, executive director of the watchdog Chicago-based Better Government Association. “Of that group, women tend to play the slots and veg-out, sometimes for hours.” • Valerie Lorenz, sixty-two, whose Compulsive Gambling Center in Baltimore is connected with the longest-running residential treatment program for pathological gamblers in the country, says more elderly married couples are becoming addicted.

“We’re seeing more husbands and wives addicted, first one and then the other, invariably on slots.” • Technological developments could result in more elderly addicts. Since 1995, Internet users have been able to gamble on interactive Web sites. About 140 unregulated sites exist, based primarily in the Caribbean. In a few years, though it faces legislative challenges from the casino industry fearful of losing business, shut-ins could gamble via their television sets. • Recovering addict Eades says senior centers are unwittingly sending more and more undiagnosed Alzheimer’s patients to gamble.

“You don’t have to function at a high level to play slot machines.”