Day 225 - The film Croupier and how it relates to my addiction and recovery
The movie Croupier starring Clive Owen is one of my all time favorite movies. The alias of this blog is Jack Manfred, the name of the character in the movie. I could write many pages on the complexities of this film. At its heart, it is in my opinion a film about writing, yet it is also about gambling, introspection, philosophy, and more. In this article I am going to through several quotes from the film, how they relate to gambling and addiction, and how ultimately they have helped me frame my own recovery.
The film opens with an amazing scene, just watch.
Jack : [self reflection] Now he had become the still center of that spinning wheel of misfortune. The world turned 'round him leaving him miraculously untouched. The croupier had reached his goal. He no longer heard the sound of the ball.
What a line!!! Honestly, this line has become my entire philosophy of life. For me, the ‘sound of the ball’ represents the common anxieties of the world, the pressures people put on you, the negative feelings, the pull of hedonism, the horrible circumstances we can find ourselves in. The world is brutal, for me my goal has been to try and build up a stoic like approach to it. When I was gambling, the world did turn round me leaving me miraculously untouched… yet I was always conscious of the sound of the ball. No matter how much I isolated myself from the world, no matter how little of it mattered to me, I was still an anxious mess. I was still a slave to my anxieties. My goal now, is to become the croupier… the non gambler who sees the world for what it is… and finds a certain peace.
Jack : Gambling's not about money... Gambling's about not facing reality, ignoring the odds.
Marion : I must be a fool - I never think about the odds.
Nothing I have ever heard or read in my life defines gambling addiction so perfectly. It isn’t about odds or money, or winning or losing… it is about running away from reality. I was like Marion, I never thought about the odds, I was just playing a game, yet I never realized what the essence of that game was. The essence of gambling is fantasy, about living in a dream world. From the guy who plays the lottery once a month the guy spending 8 hours at the Casino everyday, it is all just fantasy, about denying reality. For me, in recovery I have found that not gambling is indeed a coming back to reality… and realizing how much reality itself has to offer.
Jack : [voiceover] Chapter 13. It's all numbers, the croupier thought. Spin of the wheel, turn of the card, time of your life, date of your birth, year of your death. In the book of Numbers the Lord said, "Thou shall count thy steps."
Another amazing line that really captures the cultural traditions that engulf our everyday world in numbers, in odds, in gambling. Today, with video games this quote is ten times truer. Video games today overload you with numbers, with points. Every youtube video has a like count. Every social media post tells you how many people saw it. Is it any wonder why gambling has become so alluring to us? We live in a world of “counting” numbers, “counting” money, “counting” happiness. The world has primed us to be vulnerable to gambling.
Jack : Hang on tightly, let go lightly.
This may be my all time favorite quote ever. Jack has to sell his fathers car, a car he loves and cherishes to get some money. He barters with the car dealer and then comes to the conclusion that “Suddenly, he wanted to be rid of it”, and he stopped bartering and accepts the current offer. This is an odd line, yet what a philosophy! I take it to mean that we should hold on to the things we love, have a deep loyalty to them, yet… when the world has spun around enough times and we need to move on from those things… we should do so with grace and do so lightly. I held on to gambling for most of my life… and trying to give it up without grace, trying to give it up by saying “I hate this, I hate my life” DID NOT WORK. I had to quit lightly… I had to quit with kindness, without hate. When we have this philosophy (a very Stoic philosophy) we see that it is EASIER to give something up when we put it down lightly. I apply this philosophy to everything in my life, relationships, feelings, vices. Hold of tightly, let go lightly.
I could easily list about 10 more quotes from this movie, how they defined gambling addiction perfectly, and how the introspective nature of the film can be helpful to those struggling with addiction. However, I wanted to talk a bit about the film itself. In many ways, we can look at Jack as a person who is unhappy in his life, who is trying to find his true purpose. He is not a good person. The Marion character acts as his conscious, and we find that he treats her like shit. Much like an addict, Jack lets the world destroy him. Yet, he gets a job as a Croupier and he becomes less of a character and more of an observer, and in this objective observation of the world he finds the destructive nature of gambling. He finds the destructive nature of his own “ignoring” the world.
Later in the film Jack is given the opportunity to participate in a crime, he is lured in by people he thinks he is “helping”. In truth, he is being exploited, he finds himself losing his own agency in this. The plan works, he gets his cut, he “wins the gamble”. Yet, what he finds at the end is that he never had any control, from day one he was being played.. and he finds humor in this. For me, this is much like my own realization that from day one with gambling, I never really had much agency, I was being played, being scammed. It took many hard years of introspection to be able to find humor in this…yet once I was able to actually look back on my failures with a sense of humor… I was able disconnect from the negative emotions. I was able to “let go lightly”, I was able to “no longer hear the sound of the ball”.
Jack: “I Don’t Gamble”
The best quote in the film, simple and to the point. I Don’t Gamble. This is my mantra these days, what I tell myself everyday. I DON’T GAMBLE.