"I'm a compulsive gambler and I only got one day and I'm ashamed of it."

With those words the evening of April 29, Sam T. announced to the nine other addicts around a bare table in a plain meeting room that he was back, with a single non-gambling day under his belt. He wanted to give Gamblers Anonymous a second try after using it for 68 days of abstinence last fall, before urges overwhelmed him throughout winter and early spring.

He had visited the Meadows Racetrack & Casino, about a half hour from his home, the day before the GA meeting. He arrived at 4:30 p.m. and spent the next 10 hours there. He lied to his wife about where he was headed. He turned off his phone so she couldn't reach him. He was fixated on the machines, which kept swallowing his bills.

By the middle of the night, Sam T. was sick of the casino and sick of himself and sick of this sickness that has plagued him for the past quarter-century of adult years. He knew he was among the 1 percent of the population estimated to be pathological gamblers, risking their money whatever the cost to themselves and their families.

"I'm ashamed of what I done. It's been four months of pure hell" since he first quit GA, he told his peers, who listened with silent attention while waiting to tell their own tales.

"It's like when you go back to it after trying GA, they slam you even worse. It's just lose, lose, lose!"

For a second time in the past year, Sam T. instead set out to win control of himself. He's battling an addiction that has hold of some 21,000 GA members nationally, an estimated 90,000 Pennsylvanians and more than 2 million Americans.

For him, unlike for so many others who can enjoy a casino trip as casual entertainment, this gambling encouraged by government legalization carries none of the fun displayed in advertisements. It's torture.

Sam T. is not his real GA-abbreviated name. It has been changed for this story, because he wanted little hint given of his identity. He's a working man in his 40s whose gambling problem is known to his closest friends and relatives, not the wider circle of co-workers and acquaintances.

But his story was not even the worst one among those at his April 29 GA gathering. One woman told in tears of how her lottery addiction had turned her husband and son against her. One man had racked up $45,000 in credit card debt and contemplated drowning himself in his backyard swimming pool.

For Sam T., there is no massive debt or bankruptcy, no suicidal thoughts, no embezzlement or other crimes to finance his addiction, not even alienation from those who care about him.

Such stories are common in GA or among those in private therapy, but Sam T.'s less dire straits may actually be more representative of the wider swath of problem gamblers.

The money he's lost at machines or playing blackjack or scratching off lottery tickets over the years has consumed entire paychecks and cost him any chance of taking vacations, buying a home or saving for retirement. His friends with the same blue-collar jobs he has had for most of adulthood bought themselves nice pickup trucks, while he acquired stress.

"Instead of buying stuff for myself or taking a vacation, I was blowing it," he says. "You'd drive back home saying, 'Why'd I do that again?' ... But once you get down a certain amount of money, you want to get it back. It's all in the chasing."

He doesn't fit the profile of gamblers with troubled upbringings, their parents suffering from addictions themselves. His parents were stable and religious. Sam T. doesn't drink excessively and doesn't smoke, habits that frequently overlap among gambling addicts.

If not for gambling, he'd be about as ordinary as can be. It was boredom with the rest of his life, in fact, that Sam T. believes drove him to gambling excess. He gravitated from scratch-off tickets in Mon Valley bingo halls in his teens to illegal-payout video poker machines in bars in his 20s.

He began plowing through a paycheck in a single sitting some 20 years ago. "That's when I should have started to go to GA," he says.

Instead, he recalls one occasion playing for 32 straight hours on a restaurant's Cherry Masters machine in the mid-1990s. Bartenders would offer him credit to play more when his funds ran out, piling on debt that ate into his next paycheck. And he became a frequent visitor to the West Virginia racetrack casinos.

It took two decades of losses and an increasingly frayed marriage, strained by his lies, to get him to his first meeting, after his wife insisted he seek help through a gambling hot line.

"I knew it was beyond me," she said in a separate interview. "I told him, 'What's more important to you, your family and what all's in your life, or a slot machine and deck of cards?' I said, 'You've got to choose.' "

There's nothing about Gamblers Anonymous that magically cures anyone of anything.

It is a lifelong, 12-step program modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous, and it maintains no data on the success of its participants.

Members are expected to attend weekly, support one another while respecting confidentiality, acknowledge they are powerless on their own to overcome addiction, and avoid gambling of any kind. About 250 people participate in the Pittsburgh region, a number that has climbed only slightly since the state's introduction of casinos.

GA has no dues, no professional counselors and no penalty for those who stray. And it offers no easy escapes. Participants are discouraged from using bailouts like family loans or bankruptcy filings to rescue them from financial crisis, making it too easy to restart their habit.

Gambling of any kind by members, no matter how small, is deemed wrong. That's contrary to a school of thought among professional therapists that there's value in reducing wagers to more manageable levels, because abstinence can be so difficult in a gambling-saturated society.

Sam T. hasn't tried one-on-one counseling, though it's now covered by the state for those meeting financial criteria. He's more comfortable with the GA setting, which has forced him to talk openly among people he believes understand him. He's been to three different meeting sites among the 27 in the Pittsburgh-based chapter, which covers Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

"There's times where I'm uncomfortable there, but if I get to hear someone else's story before me, it helps me," he explained while downing several cups of coffee in a diner, two weeks into his new goal of reaching a 90-day milestone of abstinence. It was minutes before he was headed to one of his Wednesday night meetings.

"If I go to a good meeting, it puts me into a zone," he said, where the urge to gamble becomes more fleeting.

He showed the GA coin in his wallet, stamped with the message: "One day at a time." It was his new mantra, hoping it would help him avoid ever having to repeat his April 29 confession to his peers.

In a subsequent interview, Sam T. admitted before his first cup of coffee was ordered: "I had a relapse -- twice."

He had lasted all of 22 days without gambling. His wife wanted to take an overnight trip. He had a coupon for a free night's lodging at Mountaineer Casino Racetrack & Resort, a perk given for his prior patronage there.

The couple thought they could make it a low-cost getaway without Sam T. indulging. His wife played the slots while he watched. She went to bed. He told her he was leaving their room for a few minutes to use the hotel's Internet service.

"I was on the computer for five minutes and then went straight to the blackjack table," he recalled. "I couldn't think of nothing else."

He was up until 5 a.m., losing at both blackjack and the slots. He told his wife what happened when she awoke. They agreed never to make such a trip again.

But he returned two days later on his own. He lost again. Talking about it four days afterward, preparing to make yet another admission to his GA group, he was once more stricken by what he had done.

"Me and the wife talked about the vicious circle of it. I'm thinking, 'How many times do I have to go through this [expletive] over and over?' " Sam T. explained. "I feel like a horse that's been beat too much. ... Now I feel like I've been punished enough, and it's time to move on."

His wife said in a later interview that she wanted a getaway but didn't think the casino destination was a good idea. She said her husband had assured her "he could handle it. I gave him the benefit of doubt." She now knows it was too tempting for him.

Back at the diner, four days after the stumble, Sam T. sounded more resolved than ever to quit. He walked afterward into his meeting and explained what he'd done.

One surprised man told him, "I thought sure you were on the road to recovery."

Sam T. heard from others that night who had been attending GA meetings for 20 to 30 years.

"Those guys impress me," he said, though it was hard to fathom that long a period for himself. He was back to one day at a time, striving again for his 90-day milestone. He had reverted to day 4.

Sam T. knows he could enter a casino or the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board's Pittsburgh office at any time and place himself on the state's self-exclusion list. He would be subject to mandatory arrest for trespassing if he were detected in a casino.

He's not ready for that step. He wants to retain the option years from now, when he feels his problem is under control, to have a meal or attend a concert at a casino, or go bowling at The Meadows.

One difficulty, he says, is the solicitations every casino he's visited keeps sending him. In the mail come regular offers of free meals, free credits on a slot machine and other perks. His wife tries to catch them in the mailbox and trash them before he sees them, but isn't always successful.

"I've got to blame myself, but you've got to look at all the enticements too," Sam T. says, in addition to the ubiquitous casino advertising.

Worst of all, in his mind, he says he twice requested that the staff of The Meadows take him off the casino's mailing list earlier this year. Both times, it was when he was frustrated at the end of losing sessions, he says. Still, the offers keep coming from The Meadows like everywhere else.

When told of his concerns, Meadows spokesman David LaTorre responded: "While it is difficult to comment on this case without more specifics, our policy has, and always will be, to immediately remove a person from our mailing list upon request. ... We have met with all Players Club employees to reinforce this policy and our strict expectations."

Mr. LaTorre added praise for Sam T.'s "courage in acknowledging he has a problem and for trying to address it. We do believe he should immediately place himself on the state's self-exclusion list," which would bar Pennsylvania casinos from sending him anything.

Sam T. has not been back to The Meadows since April, but he did visit the casino in Wheeling to attend an outdoor rock concert this summer. He even went inside to order a beer with the friend accompanying him. He had his GA coin in his hand. He did not gamble.

Sam T. has spent his summer listening to live music and reconnecting with friends who don't gamble. He's enjoyed trips to the outdoors. He has more money in his pockets. He's listened to co-workers talk about casino trips and turned down suggestions he join them.

But one night, at the end of a late work shift, there was so much talk about a casino "I couldn't escape it." It was Aug. 3, or day 72 for him. He had a big urge. He has a list of GA sponsors he's supposed to use at such times, but he was uncomfortable calling so late.

He dialed 1-800-GAMBLER on his cell phone. It's a national help line to link callers to resources. Its Louisiana-based phone staff normally does not counsel people directly over the phone, but Sam T. told the woman answering that he urgently needed someone to talk him out of gambling.

"She said in her Southern accent, 'If it helps, I'll tell you don't go.' " He didn't go.

He has felt more stable since then. His wife commended him for his strength that night and has grown confident in his whereabouts, now that he regularly checks in with her when gone. He happily attended a regional GA picnic in a park last month with about 75 other addicts.

On Aug. 21, Sam T. hit day 90. He announced it five days later at his GA meeting, drawing congratulations. There were two newcomers that night, and he offered them his own advice from experience: attend the meetings, stay away from gambling sites, take it day by day.

On day 100, he said over the phone, "In the back of my mind, I think I'm gonna make it, but being realistic, I could slip off the bandwagon. Something in life could happen I can't cope with, and I could be weak. I could be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"I'd say I have a good 85 percent chance of making it."

All in all, those are odds he likes, compared to what he's usually faced.