Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Ai-jen Poo

Quote by Ai-jen Poo

“Right now, fewer than one third of adults over age 50 have started saving for long-term care, one in three employed adults aged 55-64 has no savings for retirement, and another one third have less than one year's salary in savings. It used to be easier to save in a more stable market when more jobs were full-time with reliable benefit programs, when the cost of college wasn't so astronomical.”

Quote by Ai-jen Poo

Book:The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America
Create image

Work

The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Ai-jen Poo
Ai-jen Poo

Ai-jen Poo is a prominent advocate for labor rights and social justice. Born in 1974, she has dedicated her career to fighting for the rights of domestic workers and low-wage workers in the United States. Poo is the co-founder of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and has been instrumental in advocating for the recognition and protection of domestic workers' rights. more

You May Also Like

“Here is your four-step plan to stay alive: 1. Accept the fact that you might consider suicide after a bad relapse. Do that now. 2. In the minutes and hours after a relapse, give yourself permission to ignore the consequences of your relapse. Don't think about the lost money, or the consequences for family, work, or your own self-worth. 3. Wait four days before taking any direct action to address your gambling issues. Do not gamble during this time. Do not chase your losses. Do not "confess" to a significant other during this time. Do not rob a bank to cover your losses. Wait four days to make plans for recovery. Wait until your brain both is willing and able to help you make good decisions. 4. After four days, start to restore hope. Call the state helpline, get a recommendation for a therapist. In most cases the state will pay for therapy. Then go see the therapist. Find a GA meeting and start attending. Make thoughtful, careful plans about how to go about discussing your addiction with loved ones and how to deal with your financial problems. But most of all, understand that there is hope for you to live a life free of gambling. Thousands upon thousands have recovered. You can too.”

AddictionGamblingGamblerGambling AddictGambling AddictionProblem GamblingSlot MachinesCasino
Book:Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
Create image

“The first step in that preparation begins now, well ahead of the relapse. Get out a three by six index card and write these thoughts on it: - 1-800-273-8255 (National Suicide Prevention Hotline) - This will pass - My brain can’t be trusted right now - I won’t kill myself today (I can always do it tomorrow) - For now, I will IGNORE, IGNORE, IGNORE, IGNORE - 1-800-273-8255”

AddictionGamblingGamblerGambling AddictGambling AddictionProblem GamblingSlot MachinesCasino
Book:Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
Create image

“Put these steering wheel cards and things somewhere in your car. Put your radio station of choice on one of your preset buttons. Do this now. Don’t wait. Then, if you relapse and when you get to the casino before you go in, take them out and put them on your seat or steering wheel. Set your radio to the station you have chosen, so that all you need to do is turn it on. Please don’t avoid doing this because you might be embarrassed or think it’s stupid. So what if it’s stupid? You are at the casino. You are already being stupid. Not to mention, these simple stupid actions just might save your life.”

AddictionGamblingGamblerGambling AddictGambling AddictionProblem GamblingSlot MachinesCasino
Book:Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
Create image

“Immediately after you step through the exit of the casino and find yourself outside, stop. Then look at your hands for ten seconds. Examine them, turn them over, look at the lines, the freckles, the dirt under your fingernails or your chipped nail polish. Really focus, really study them, for ten full seconds. This is a surprisingly powerful mindfulness technique. It forces you to jump back into the present, thereby interrupting your thoughts about what just happened.”

AddictionGamblingGamblerGambling AddictGambling AddictionProblem GamblingSlot MachinesCasino
Book:Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
Create image

“Several years ago, I knew a man, a friend of a friend who I would occasionally run into at the casino. He was clearly a heavy-duty compulsive slot machine player – maximum bets, completely focused, playing fast. He was also a family man, hardworking, very organized, a successful businessman. One night after losing a great deal of money, he came home and immediately (and impulsively) blurted out a confession to his wife (who did not know that he had a gambling problem). He confessed that he had lost all their savings and maxed out their credit cards – they were now completely broke. His wife reacted as expected. She was upset in the extreme. She packed her bag and left him to go spend some time with a relative. So then…after she had abruptly left him, at that point he knew he had lost all their money and perhaps lost his wife as well, and that his children and his family would now find out his dirty little secret. He was alone with his darkest thoughts. It was simply too much to bear. When he didn’t show up for work the next day a business associate found him in the garage, in his truck, with a hose from the exhaust stuck in a window. He was dead. It is clear to me that he didn’t kill himself because of that day’s gambling experience – the bad beat, the big losses. After all that had happened to him many, many times before. He killed himself as a result of his completely impulsive decision to confess to his wife!”

AddictionGamblingGamblerGambling AddictGambling AddictionProblem GamblingSlot MachinesCasino
Book:Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
Create image

“Figuring out how you can face your gambling problem is a complex issue. There are many choices. Recovery is not something you can will yourself to do in a day or two.”

AddictionGamblingGamblerGambling AddictGambling AddictionProblem GamblingSlot MachinesCasino
Book:Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
Create image

“Most literature about suicide proposes the encouraging idea that if you can survive the first five minutes (or the first few hours, or the first twenty-four hours) of that moment when suicide seems like the only solution to your situation, then you probably will not kill yourself (at least for a while).”

AddictionGamblingGamblerGambling AddictGambling AddictionProblem GamblingSlot MachinesCasino
Book:Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
Create image

“Drug and alcohol withdrawal symptoms and treatment are well understood, but very little is discussed about gambling withdrawal. Here is a commonly quoted list of the symptoms of drug and alcohol withdrawal: nervousness or anxiety, insomnia, nausea, body discomfort, mood swings, poor sleep, lethargy, difficulty concentrating. Do these symptoms look familiar to you? After sitting hunched-over, eyes glued to that screen only inches away, pushing that button every three seconds and watching those complex configurations of colorful images flashing rhythmically, hypnotically, continuously, as fast as your mind can process, for hour upon hour upon hour, do you experience any of those symptoms the next day and the next several days? I know I do.”

AddictionGamblingGamblerGambling AddictGambling AddictionProblem GamblingSlot MachinesCasino
Book:Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
Create image

“There are approximately twenty thousand detox facilities for drug and alcohol abusers nationwide. I understand that withdrawal from all forms of chemical dependency is a more dangerous and difficult process than gambling withdrawal and that it often requires medical assistance. But still – twenty thousand to zero? I believe this: The weeks following a major slot machine relapse episode are dangerous for the compulsive gambler. I'm certain that a significant number of suicides have happened to compulsive gamblers who faced this withdrawal period without any help, or without even any awareness of what was happening to them.”

AddictionGamblingGamblerGambling AddictGambling AddictionProblem GamblingSlot MachinesCasino
Book:Gambling Addiction: The complete guide to survival, treatment, and recovery from gambling addiction.
Create image