When Steve Corder, the assistant athletic director at the University of Detroit Mercy, thinks about the sort of guest talks that are typically delivered to student-athletes, he thinks of “data-driven” presentations with messages that don't always stick.
But when a member of EPIC Global Solutions' group of lived experience facilitators makes the trip to Michigan, it's a different story. These speakers have all overcome gambling addiction, and their tales of woe – how they hit rock bottom before embarking upon the painstaking climb back – are hard to forget.
“To have an actual story that shows if you don’t take this seriously, this is the result,” Corder says during a short documentary that EPIC released on Friday, the first day of Problem Gambling Awareness Month.
This year's Problem Gambling Awareness Month theme is “Every Story Matters,” which, as EPIC noted in a press release Thursday, “aligns perfectly” with their approach of reaching various groups of people – athletes foremost among them – with personal stories of wreckage and redemption. EPIC will release media content throughout March, a month that will find the organization visiting North Carolina State University prior to the March 11 launch of mobile sports betting apps in North Carolina.
A walk on the dark side
EPIC was founded over a decade ago by a former gambling addict, Paul Buck. Its facilitators not only work with college and pro athletes, but also companies like FanDuel, which “continues to embed lived experience” into its training and internal programming, says Ashley Cahill, the company's director of responsible gambling and community impact, in the newly released mini-documentary.
The clip, which is nearly six minutes long, features several EPIC staffers, some of whose stories have been chronicled by Sports Handle and its sister site, US Bets. One is Ryan Tatusko, a former pro baseball player who says in the doc, “If we can stop a person from getting to where I was, not just the monetary aspect but the emotional wreckage I caused, it gives me a sense of purpose.”
Greg Weber, another former gambling addict who became an EPIC program facilitator, feels his work is part of his ongoing therapy.
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“It's just not enough for me to go to meetings,” he says in the video. “I need to do what I do now, which is tell my story, use my lived experience, and talk to a vulnerable population, which is student-athletes across the U.S.”
“The lived experience stories we have can bring them over to the dark side and make them pause and think, maybe there really is a downside to this if they’re not careful,” adds Patrick Chester. “In these betting ads, they don’t talk about the mother who’s sitting at the casino for 15 hours while her 2-year-old is in the car. The more we can bring them over to that side and see what can happen, I think the better prepared they’ll be.”