He answered 18 of 20 gambling questions yes at age 18

Sal walked into his first Gamblers Anonymous meeting at eighteen years old in 1986 and answered eighteen of the twenty questions yes. He had already fought a serious cocaine addiction at sixteen.

He still spent decades in and out of the rooms before placing his last bet on the twenty-ninth of August, 2018.

The most valuable part of this conversation is the relapse. Four solid years of recovery, and then the dimmer switch effect where everything in his life went dark the moment he picked up a bet again.