Poisoned

4. Humidifier & Sprays

When I broke my shoulder I realized that my entire dream of playing professional sports was gone. I was the picture in my schools baseball team since freshman year and I'd gotten a full ride to Florida State University for my sports records.

It was one of those drunken nights that I punched glass blacked out drunk, and even though the bar owner let me pay him with my graduation money, the injury required me to have three surgeries so far and it has given me a massive limitation of my shoulder.

Depressed in bed holding up my chest, so that my arm wouldn't hurt, I started to see all these ads for gambling: Jack pot, 21, poker, and other casino-type rewards that advertise testimonials of people that actually won. They had a disclaimer at the bottom in white that read, "payments or winnings vary per contestant. Not an actor."

From the first time that I downloaded the first gambling casino app from the App Store I was hooked. I could get the notifications on my watch. The upgrade options were cheap, and right away, the very first after I played somebody 21, I had the perfect hand, and won $17.

My total at the top right $37 because signing up was $20 including the $20 you could use to gamble but putting in my credit cards made it seem more legit. It had over 110,000 reviews of 4.99999 star average, and I was done mistrusting apps. I knew that apps were legit.

What I didn't know is that soon I would have to upgrade if I didn't want to commercials or ads. The truth is the ads within the app were actually relevant to my interest because they offered to play memory, which is the game where you see a picture or an icon and then you see another card and if they don't match it goes to the next person, but if they match, you won that round and get to play again. That one, with money! I was great at this game. I clicked on it and I signed up and I put $25 to begin.

I actually was in the middle of a game in the first app, so I went back, and I saw that I lost $12.00. Then I put everything I had into that app, played the hand and left it on autopilot. Going back to the other app, I started a cool memory game with somebody online, and I lost $2, I was just testing out the features.

When I try it again, I put in $30 and I didn't hit submit. I actually checked the first app, and I had won the first app. It felt good watching money was going up obviously, and reaching $100 and thinking, "how does everybody in the Internet not know about this?"

This is ******* great, so I put it on my Snapchat, but just my childhood church friends clicked on it, and then I saw that in my memory game I lost, so it's like I was making money in one app, but losing in the other app, so I was like OK... maybe memory is not for me. Let me just play it with $2, and with $2 ,I won. Then I played with $5 ,with $5 I won, so obviously....OK, let me do $17.00, which is where I wanted the other one, and i lost and i lost and i lost and I kept losing until I had no more money. The memory game sucked, so I was like, "no...what is this? and that app also had one of the ads saying that you could play the local Lotto numbers online, fully legit, with a debit card only. And you could then just get the receipt of your numbers and wait until the numbers are drawn online or on TV.

I open the browser window, and started to make sure that the research, and the reviews, and everything sounded or seemed like it was legit, and everybody was raving about it. People were like, "I don't even have to go to the gas station and ask for number #7, #43, shouting 'cause nobody hears you. and just having the option to actually just buy the number, but online!" It had to be a debit card, that was the only thing, but that was perfect because that's exactly how I would go about it, if I could drive right now and go and get my Lotto tickets, then sit back and wait for your number to be called. Now I had arrived. Now, I could play

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I would often check my phone for winnings during red lights as I commuted 30 minutes to my job. My early arrivals at my work would always start with a superficial greeting by Ras, Elley's uncle, who also worked with me.

His office was on the way to my cubicle, which was next to Elley's.

Elley had a space heater, that I wasn't exactly sure worked, so it always oozed away in the mornings, and since Ras was kind enough to turn it on so that when she arrived, it would be warm around our desks.

"Ever since I had kids, I get super cold. Super, super cold" she would explain.

Ras never quite let me feel at ease. Something about him gave me mistrust, but I felt it might be my personal lack of encouters or conversations with him, and I really didn't know him as a person.

Being the early bird, it meant Ras and I came in to the morning without supervision, so I got more time to finish my work fast and gamble away. 

I read a lot of discussions online about gambling apps, which helped me know what to avoid and how to stay affluent. 

When I lost my entire next paycheck in gambling I told myself to stop.