"What's wrong with you, Daddy?"

That was 32 years ago. Talley hasn't placed a dime on a bet since. But his life is still consumed with gambling.

These days, he wagers everything on trying to rescue other addicted gamblers.

Talley, who became Florida's first nationally certified gambling addiction counselor in 1990, has his work cut out for him. Gambling is one of the fastest growing addictions in the United States. According to the National Council on Problem Gambling (www.ncpgambling.org), 1 percent of American adults - nearly 3 million people - are pathological gamblers.

Psychiatrists see parallels in compulsive gambling and alcohol and drug addictions. Compulsive gamblers get a high from the irrational behavior, lying, cheating and stealing that feeds their addiction.

"It's like cocaine," Talley says. "Gambling can be addictive the first time you do it."

And it's an addiction that tempts at every turn. Internet gambling, even though much of it is illegal, remains a billion-dollar industry. Television shows like "Celebrity Poker Showdown" and "Las Vegas" have popularized gambling. Lines on professional and college sports are common office amusement. And the glitz of Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and other gambling hot spots has blinded many.

Talley spent the early part of his life seduced by all of it. Now, when he counsels other addicts, he speaks from experience.

"Compulsive gambling is magical thinking to solve real life's problems," he says. "You always think you're going to make the big score, the big hit. It's an illusion. It's a lie."

***

The lie started for Talley when he was a 12-year-old shooting marbles for money. It grew as he pooled bets on football games in seventh grade, and blossomed at thoroughbred and trotter races when he was a senior in high school. All of it whet his craving for a gambler's "big score."

But he thought he was in control. He had the discipline to get into college, interrupting his education to enlist in the Marine Reserves. After living the life of an active duty Marine for six months, Talley returned to his native Youngstown, Ohio.

He resumed college, and gambling.

"Where I am from, gambling was very acceptable," Talley says. "It escalated into other things."

He started dealing with a bookie. Gambling haunted his every move, and he soon blew the savings he had worked so hard for: a couple of thousand dollars to buy a new mobile home so he could marry his high school sweetheart and start a family.

Still, he thought he could handle it. Then, there were always gaps between racing or sports seasons, a down time when there was nothing to bet on and Talley could recuperate.

"Back then when the track was closed, I was done," he says. "They didn't have all of the TV and Internet betting like they have now."

Talley quit gambling long enough to get married and build up another savings account. His family of two, he and his wife Joan, grew into a family of eight. He felt the pressure of providing for six children. He soon was back to gambling � betting at the race tracks and football games, playing poker, any way he could place a bet � to try to stretch the income he made selling insurance.

"There was pressure on the family, pressure in my marriage. I had pressure all of the time looking for money," Talley says. "I started lying. It makes a liar out of you because you don't want to get caught."

It didn't take long for Talley to lose all the money he had, and then lose money he didn't have. The solution: more gambling. All his time went to his obsession, time he admits he should have been spending with his children.

"I was winning and all of a sudden I was chasing losses," Talley says. "I kept going back. ...That's when I knew I had a problem."

He gambled for almost 12 more years.

***

In 1973, Talley's wife needed a routine surgery. Joan Talley had always managed the household budget and bills. Now she gave Talley some cash, and asked him to pay the electric and gas bills while she was hospitalized.

He left the hospital with the cash and left the children home with a babysitter. He drove straight to the track, confident he could double the money his wife had given him.

Ninety minutes later, the money was gone. An uneasy Talley sped home, only to find the house dark and empty. In a panic, his thoughts went to the worst scenario: something had happened to his children. Then a neighbor told him that the babysitter had brought the children over when the power went out, cut off for failure to pay the bill. Talley's sisters had picked the children up and taken them home with them.

Talley spent a sleepless night, drinking. One minute he was plotting his escape from his disapproving siblings - he had to get the children in the car and get out of there as quickly as possible. The next he was praying that God wouldn't let him wake up the next morning.

But when he went to pick up the kids the next day, his siblings sat him down and told him what they thought of him. Even his children were urged to speak to their father. His youngest son jolted Talley back to reality with his plaintive question: "Daddy, what's wrong with you?"

"I was in a haze for so many years," Talley says now. "It (gambling) consumes your whole mind. You don't realize what you're doing. You're always thinking you're going to get out of it. You're always thinking you're going to make the big score."

Talley began his struggle to freedom.

***

Talley enrolled in a program for treatment of alcohol and gambling. He started running and swimming, anything to keep his mind off of gambling. Over the next year, he slipped a few times, but his son's question haunted him, and always brought him back.

He kept working his program,12-step meetings almost every day, and after 10 years without gambling, Talley turned his experience into a career. It took him 15 years to pay off some $65,000 in gambling debts, at 22 percent interest � not an insignificant sum in the mid 1970s. He felt he had taken responsibility for his past, and had a story that might help others.

Now 65, Talley lives a life still defined by gambling. He works as a staff counselor at Windmoor Healthcare in Clearwater, Fla., leads Gamblers Anonymous meetings, runs the Gambling Crisis Center hotline with his wife from home, serves as vice president of the Florida Council on Compulsive Gambling (www.gamblinghelp.org), and works as an intervention specialist, confronting other problem gamblers. He has intervened in more than 3,000 families in 25 years.

"He likes helping people who have gambling problems because he understands it," Joan Talley says.

The treatment program at Windmoor Healthcare includes 48 days of psychiatric assessment, medical care, and food and lodging. It costs $8,550 and is not covered by insurance.

Gambling addiction is colorblind and is not gender-specific. Talley says his clients come from all ethnic backgrounds, from wealth and poverty, and range in age from college students to the retired. Under his counsel, gamblers begin to control their impulses.

A group of nine recently assembled in a circle for a Gamblers Anonymous meeting introduced themselves by first name and began to share their problems over the purr of the air-conditioner.

My problem is I've got too much credit. ...I am financially stable. I have lines of credit at most of the casinos. If I walked into any casino in Vegas, I could walk out with thousands.

My marriage is messed up. ...When I stayed drunk and at the casino, I didn't have to deal with it.

I thought about suicide, but because I am Catholic, I just prayed not to wake up. It's taken me seven years: a lot of legal, emotional, and physical problems along the way.

I have lived all over the world. I was kicked out of my house at 16. ...I've never really had a home life, other than the life I had at boarding school. My last bet was yesterday.

Talley has lived it all.

"If I can make it, they can make it," Talley says. "Yesterday's a canceled check for me. Tomorrow's a promissory note. All I can deal with is cash - what's right in front of me."