But there was no talk about the problems created by encouraging gambling through casino atmospherics, neighborhood lottery outlets, slick TV and Internet advertising, and other types of promotion. ?All you need is a dollar and a dream .... Hey, you never know,? goes the jingle in New York.

Casinos thrive on frequent gamblers and they use sophisticated technogy to identify them, tracking transactions in much the same way retail outlets detect shopping preferences. They issue special credit cards and monitor the use of those cards at slot and video poker machines. If you play often and fast, you are considered a high roller, entitled to enticements such as free dining, hotel rooms and other largess.

They also want gamblers to lose track of time and reality. That's why there are no windows or clocks in most casinos, and why drinks are free 24 hours a day from cocktail waitresses who flit about the gaming tables and slot machines.

Bartholomew, the New Hampshire nurse, remembers a time when the excitement of gambling drew her into a dark cycle. She found herself playing keno and buying scratch tickets six days a week, lying to her husband about what she had been doing, and losing too much money. But it wasn't until she dropped $4,000 in one sitting at the slot machines at Connecticut's Foxwoods Casino that she finally realized she had a problem.

"It was so addicting," she said.

Researchers are still studying why people are compelled to gamble to the point that it disrupts their lives, but they see similarities to drug addiction, including the need to increase the risk through larger bets to get high.

Dr. Jon Grant, a psychiatrist at the University of Minnesota who studies addictive behaviors, said brain images of compulsive gamblers revved up to bet have shown activity similar to that of cocaine users - receptors in the brain looking for reward.

?These give us bits of information that this is not simply an issue with people with poor moral character, but that this is an addiction,? said Grant.

The American Psychiatric Association classifies pathological gambling as a ?social impulse disorder,? a category of disease that also includes kleptomania and pyromania. And the impulse is not always about the cash payoff.

?Compulsive gamblers do not gamble for the money. They gamble to get the adrenaline rush - it?s about reaching that high,? said Jim Chesser, a Louisville, Ky., businessman who has spent eight years recovering from the addiction. ?You might as well grind the money up and put it in a syringe and put it in our arm. It has the same effect.?

Realtor Michael Osborne of Baltimore is an example of that rush - and the consequence. He tapped into a client?s escrow account to bet $25,000 that the New York Mets and the Atlanta Braves would score more than seven runs in a National League Championship series game in October 1999, and lost.

Osborne, 34, had no reason to make the bet. He was happily married with three children and earning a decent salary in a legitimate business. But there was something else driving him to gamble - a conviction that he could always win the next bet.

?I went to get help a lot of times. It just was never for me. It was for her and the kids. It was for my grandmother who was dying of cancer,? said Osborne, who estimated he lost more than $3 million in two years of gambling. ?In my mind I couldn?t come to fathom that something was beating me. I had to get it back.?

Osborne said he was arrested 12 times and went through four unsuccessful rehabilitation programs before he got the will to change. Even after a stint in prison, he said, he continued to gamble.

?The gambler is not going to realize or accept or even want to ask others around him for help until every last bit of his resources are tapped out,? said Osborne, now executive director of the Habour Pointe Center for Compulsive Gambling in Baltimore. ?As long as a gambler has a dollar in his pocket, there is a flicker of hope he can either hit the big lottery, hit the 16 parlay that will pay $1,200 or some other fantasy illusion.?

After hitting bottom and working his way back, Osborne has been pushing to change the way people perceive the disorder.

?I?m not against gambling. I?m here to say society, unfortunately, ignores the other side of the coin: prevention and treatment,? Osborne said. ?When you live in a society where most states are balancing their budgets off legalized gambling revenue, they?re not addressing this adequately because they?d look like hypocrites.?

Instead, states are spending liberally to promote gambling and grow state revenue. Gambling addicts are not deliberate targets, but they are the class of gamblers most seduced by the message, addiction experts report.

New York state is a good example. It spent nearly $71 million on advertising state lottery games in the fiscal year ended June 30, 2005. That yielded $6.27 billion in lottery sales, the highest in the nation. Addictive gambling, which is rising exponentially with revenue, got only $3 million for prevention and treatment.

Credit counselor Thomas Coates of Des Moines, Iowa, said an often overlooked aspect of problem gambling is the easy availability of money at gambling outlets. In addition to issuing special credit cards, casinos and race tracks install ATM machines and often provide check-cashing services. Some extend generous lines of credit to regular customers.

Coates said gamblers who seek help from his company, Consumer Credit of Des Moines, have 50 percent more unsecured debt than the average customer. He said they also have higher rates of bankruptcy - a problem he says will only get worse without more dollars going to prevention and treatment.

Coates said Iowa takes in $1 billion a year in gambling revenue and "we give back five-tenths of 1 percent for a problem that we created. We're going to make ourselves feel better by giving a pittance back?"

In testimony before the national gambling commission, Coates shared an insightful suicide note from a gambler who ran up $60,000 in credit card debt at a local casino. The note read:

"I never thought of gambling prior to two or three years ago. I really can't blame anyone but myself but I sincerely hope that restrictions are placed upon credit card cash availability at casinos. The money is too easy to access and goes in no time. My situation is now one of complete despair, isolation and constant anxiety."