WASHINGTON – Ever since he was very young, Sean G. used to drive the 275 miles between Los Angeles and Las Vegas to gamble. But when he started to gamble online, his bets – and losses – went out of control.

His initial $10 and $50 bets moved to $100 bets, and he ended up betting between $1,000 and $2,000 a week, said the Los Angeles resident, who was interviewed on the condition that he would not to be publicly identified.

“I started winning and I thought I could do that all the time,” said 39-year-old Sean. “When I lost, I didn’t get scared because I thought I could still beat it, …but it didn’t take long to take out of control.”

Sean, a middle school teacher, said the worst part of Internet gambling is that he could do it 24 hours a day and nobody would know about it.

“It’s too easy. You don’t have to get in your car and go somewhere,” said Sean. “You can do it in your bathrobe. … I was always alone.”

Sean started going to a Web site that allows users to place bets on sports events with a credit card.

Then he moved on to Internet blackjack. “That was what really got me into trouble.” The level and frequency of his bets jumped significantly. Sean became a compulsive online gambler.

“My wife would catch me playing Internet blackjack at 4 a.m. and asked me why I was doing that,” Sean recalled. “I just told her it was for fun.”

Sean said he could not pay his credit card bill, and when he had used all his credit limits “I started to steal money from my own wife. … We are not married anymore.”

“When we separated …I thought nobody is going to bother me. I can go gamble like I wanna go gamble, so I gambled more than what I did when I was married,” Sean said.

Sean said he became so obsessed with online gambling that when he lost a bet he thought something was wrong with his computer. He started to go back to real casinos more often.

“I was convinced that the Web site was cheating me, and I started going out and playing for real so that I could at least look at the cards.”

After a few years of online gambling, Sean said he was completely isolated. He said he felt like he were the only one on earth with that problem, and he wanted “to get [my] story out.”

He had heard of Gamblock, a program that costs $74.95 and prevents users from logging in on any gambling Web site. But he did not want to try it.

Sean said he had also heard of specialized addiction centers, but he had too many gambling losses to afford them.

“You’re broke, you’ve borrowed money from your family and friends, [and] you’ve stolen money,” said Sean. “I owed about $50,000…to various people.”

So he ended up going to Gamblers Anonymous, a nonprofit organization that helps people recover from gambling addiction, and he entered a recovery program where participants usually give $1 to $10 donations a meeting to support the group.

Sean said he hasn’t gambled for more than two years now.

“It feels very good. I still have financial debt to pay back, but my life is a lot better,” Sean said.

“I can concentrate on work, and my recovery and building up my relationships with my friends and family because they were destroyed when I gambled.”

Sean goes to meetings organized by Gamblers Anonymous three times a week, and he has a sponsor, a person who keeps track of his progress and gives personal advice to him.

Ara H., Sean’s sponsor, was a gambler for many years, but stopped 12 years ago. He emphasized that the recovery takes an entire life and even he still goes to meetings for himself.

"This is like medication. If I don't take my medication, I'll get sick and I'll go back to gambling,” said Ara. “A lot of people stop going to meetings after a few months or years and they end up going back to gambling."

Sean is aware of the risks.

He stopped using his computer for about six months. He also canceled all his accounts with gambling Web sites.

“I don’t want to risk losing the life I have now without gambling. If I were to place a bet, I cannot stop placing bets … and I have to make sure I don’t place one bet,” he said.