the hardest addiction

Des Moines, Iowa

THE PRAIRIE MEADOWS CASINO IN ALTOONA, IOWA, has more than 1,700 slot machines. The machines are in an 85,000-plus-square-foot gambling hall that looks and sounds like something out of Vegas. The action is 24 hours a day. No matter when you go, you’ll find people hunched in front of screens, punching buttons with a hungry look in their eyes.

I used to be one of those people. The first time I went to Prairie Meadows, I was young and carefree, out for a good time with my husband and some friends. The last time I went, I was a forty-something gambling and methamphetamine addict, who sold drugs to support my addictions. I’d lost jobs and mortgaged my house and my father-in-law’s house to pay gambling and drug debts. I’d been arrested for dealing and had thoughts about killing myself. Now I was on probation and my driver’s license had been suspended.

Late one night, I was running low on meth. I drove to the