As far as her coworkers were concerned, Mary Durso was a successful career woman, a wife and mother, who juggled a demanding six-figure-salary job with raising her adorable daughter.
They had no idea that every lunchtime the Chicago based data programing executive would drive to a park, throw back her seat and sleep.
Nor could they have had any idea that her exhaustion was the product of the hopeless addiction that kept her up all night.
For Durso’s drug of choice was gambling – as addictive as any opioid and every bit as destructive.
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, Durso, 60, recalls: ‘I was in the midst of a nightmare. I was hypnotized by the colorful lights and the exciting sounds on the floor of the casino.’
Today, she estimates that she squandered more than $1million. Now 14 years ‘clean’, she gambled for as many years as she has been in recovery.
During that time, she cashed in her 401K, drained her accounts, ended her marriage and very nearly lost her child.
Pictured: Mary Durso. ‘I was in the midst of a nightmare. I was hypnotized by the colorful lights and the exciting sounds on the floor of the casino,’ she says of her gambling addiction.
Pictured: Durso with her daughter, Jen, as a teenager. Durso’s ex-husband threatened to take Jen away from her due to her compulsion for gambling.
It all started, like so many things, harmlessly enough.
She was newly married when, in 1997, Durso’s husband (whom the Daily Mail is not naming) suggested a night out on a riverboat casino in Elgin, about 30 minutes from their Illinois home.
Durso, whose father was an alcoholic, didn’t drink. Even if she had it wasn’t an option that night, as she had recently learned she was pregnant with her first child.
The night on the riverboat was not a success. The couple quickly lost the $300 they’d brought and were, Durso says: ‘Stuck on the water for two hours before it came back to the shore.’
It was hardly an encouraging start. But, six months later, a family member told them they might like video poker. It was a game-changer. They hit the jackpot right away, winning $1,000 from a $20 bill.
Durso remembers: ‘I thought, “Wow, this is good.” The staff came out with balloons and made this big production of it. My adrenaline was pumping, and I wanted that feeling again.’
Indeed, she wanted it so much that she spent the next 14 years chasing it.
One visit to the riverboat became two, and then many more. Winnings came but more often went, leaving her down thousands by the end of any given night.
She gave birth to a daughter, Jen, in December 1997 but even that couldn’t keep Durso and, at first, her husband out of the casino.
On Fridays and Saturdays, while her mother babysat their daughter, they would cash checks worth around $300 and funnel the money into the slot machines.
And when that inevitably ran out Durso would cash checks of up to $1,000 behind her husband’s back.
Unsurprisingly, her compulsion took a toll on the marriage.
‘We fought a lot over how much I was spending, often at the casino itself, Durso says. ‘People must have thought we were crazy for yelling at each other.’
Once, she recalls, her husband got so drunk, he collapsed beside the machine she was operating.
‘He was flat on the ground, but I never stopped hitting the button,’ she says.
She signaled for help by switching on an emergency light, without taking her eyes off the screen.
‘He was out cold and somebody called the paramedics,’ she says. ‘They gathered around, trying to figure out what happened, but I was still playing.’
The crew took him off the boat on a stretcher.
One paramedic was so appalled that, when Durso finally got up from her stool, he refused to allow her in the ambulance that was taking her husband to the hospital. ‘You don’t give a damn about him,’ he said.
Little wonder that, from then on, Durso gambled alone. She notes: ‘A casino is one of the few going-out spots where a woman can feel comfortable on her own.
‘It was the only place I could escape and not carry the responsibility on my shoulders for everything and everybody.’
Pictured: Durso on vacation. ‘We fought a lot over how much I was spending, often at the casino itself, Durso says of her arguments with her ex-husband during the height of her addiction.
As for money, Durso emptied the nest egg she’d sat on for years without her husband’s knowledge.
She also used cash from a windfall she’d received from a previous job. The company she worked for had been bought by a bigger enterprise and many employees received a large amount of stock.
The shares climbed, going from $30 to $300 in a matter of months.
But even that wasn’t enough as months turned into years and Durso sank deeper into her addiction.
She withdrew tens of thousands of dollars from her 401K — worth around $500,000 — and ignored the financial penalties.
She lied and she snuck around, waiting until Jen was asleep, before she headed out to the casino at 12.30am.
She went up to five nights a week, feeding the slot machines from 1am to 6am.
Few would have blamed her husband for calling his wife out on her reckless behavior but instead, Durso says, he rarely paid attention to what was going on.
She reflects: ‘He must have known… but he chose not to notice.’
At her lowest point she was gambling almost every night, throwing away thousands and risking even more. Durso admits: ‘I hated everything about my life, except my daughter.’
She worked the machines like a zombie. ‘I didn’t get up, no matter how much I needed the bathroom. There were times when I nearly wet myself.’
She tore herself away an hour before Jen woke up so she could be home to make her daughter breakfast and pack her lunch for school.
Next, she commuted to the office where she drank black coffee to stave off exhaustion at her desk.
Then, around 1pm, she drove her Toyota to the park five minutes away, before pushing back the seat and sleeping for over an hour.
She says: ‘It was quiet, but there were a lot of walking trails. People must have seen me napping.’
She’d either return to the office or inform her manager that she was going home to work.
She describes herself as a model employee who led a team of die-hard professionals. ‘Nobody questioned me because I got everything done and never missed a deadline,’ she says.
She realizes now that she probably looked ‘a wreck’ in front of her staff. But with no alcohol on her breath or drugs in her veins, gambling was the easiest of addictions to hide.
Meanwhile what was once a desire to be at the slot machines had slid into a physical need as she began suffering debilitating anxiety attacks when she couldn’t get to the casino.
In 2010, her daughter Jen turned 13. Durso had been addicted to gambling all of her child’s life.
‘It was my be-all and end-all,’ she says, noting that Jen had reached the age when she thought something was ‘off’ with her mother.
On Wednesday June 29, 2011, Durso broke a promise to herself that she would never use money from the joint account she held with her husband.
They used it to pay the mortgage on their three-bedroom home and other household bills.
Durso withdrew a total of $5,000 across two days. Her husband, who happened to be checking the account on his computer at home, watched as she took out the second sum on June 30.
Durso and her second husband, Bob, who live in Chicago, Illinois, pictured on their wedding day in 2017. The couple had met at Gamblers’ Anonymous four years earlier.
Pictured: Durso with her daughter, Jen, now 27. Durso says that, during the time she was addicted to gambling when the girl was young, she suspected something was ‘off’ with her mom.
She returned home to find him furious. He issued an ultimatum: quit gambling or I’ll leave and take our daughter with me.
It was the inflection point Durso desperately needed. ‘She was my only reason for living,’ Durso says, admitting that she had even thought about killing herself.
‘I felt so worthless that I imagined driving really fast and not stopping until I crashed into a wall.’
She called the hotline for Gamblers’ Anonymous (GA) and attended her first meeting on July 1, 2011.
At first, her husband accompanied her as she followed the famous 12 steps program.
But, while Durso knew her GA meetings would be a lifelong necessity, she says her husband wanted her to stop attending once they had started to work.
She says: ‘I told him that it was a forever thing because you can never be fully cured from a gambling addiction. GA had become my medicine.
‘If I got really sick and the doctor said. “Take this pill,’ I’d follow their advice. I felt the same about going to each meeting.’
The marriage that had limped through the lifespan of her addiction fell apart in her recovery and Durso and her husband split in December 2012.
The divorce was finalized in March 2013, and she obtained primary custody of Jen.
Twelve years on, Durso says, she and her daughter often talk about what happened.
She says: ‘She understands how lost I’d become. It makes her even prouder of me.’
Durso married her second husband, Bob, also 60, in 2017. They met at a Gamblers’ Anonymous event in Chicago.
‘Only another gambler can understand the pull of that machine,’ she says. ‘Few people realize that, when your addiction is so strong, you can’t get up and just leave.’
Today she is a trustee of the non-profit and says that recovery has given her a new purpose.
These days she and Bob spend their money on necessities, occasionally splashing out on vacations overseas.
‘I dread to think where I would be today if I’d kept on gambling,’ Durso says.
If she weren’t dead she would, in all likeliness, be penniless, homeless and estranged from her family.
It took her almost losing everything but, Durso reflects: ‘Now I’ve learned what life is truly about.’
If you think you may have a gambling problem, please visit Gamblers’ Anonymous to find your local hotline number and nearest meeting.
