EmailPrintAMIT'S MOM BARELY recognized her son when she picked him up from college.He had lost roughly 20 pounds since his parents dropped him off nearly two years earlier. He looked disheveled, with unkempt hair and a patchy beard.He came to the University of Cincinnati in the fall of 2023 as an honors student who devoted himself to tennis, schoolwork and a dream of becoming an engineer. His parents gave him the usual warnings about drinking, drugs and wild parties, but they didn't worry too much.Then the unusual activity on their bank accounts started piling up. So did the excuses. He flunked a few classes, dropped out of the rest and blew the rent money his parents gave him. Now it was just three weeks before finals in spring 2025, but he couldn't stay."Mom, I'm glad you got me," Amit told her on the drive home.She didn't know what to say. A pediatrician, she has treated the maladies of other people's children for years.She had no idea how to help the 20-year-old gambling addict sitting next to her.AS GAMBLING BECOMES ever more ingrained in American society, experts say they are seeing more cases like Amit's -- vulnerable young adults who develop addictions and parents who struggle to help them. Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby became one of the biggest stories in sports this spring when he admitted he had bet on sports in high school and college, developed a gambling addiction and entered rehab.The number of college-aged people with gambling addictions is not clear, but studies show young people are finding ways to gamble despite age restrictions, universities are scrambling to keep up and lawmakers are looking at ways to rein in the problem.Children are exposed to gambling years before they turn 18 through video games, social media, TV ads and sometimes their own parents. A 2025 national survey by Common Sense Media found that more than one-third of 11- to 17-year-olds had gambled in some form within the past year; one in eight had bet on sports.Jim Huh, a recovering gambling addict and counselor, said he has had families with kids as young as 11 seek treatment and once saw a 14-year-old who was six figures in debt."These are things that we're now seeing that, years ago, we would probably never have seen," said Huh, who works at GamFin.org, a financial consultancy for people suffering gambling harm.College students who spoke to ESPN said that betting is an accepted part of day-to-day life and that they learned about their school's gambling culture immediately after arriving on campus. A 2023 NCAA survey of 18- to 22-year-olds found that 51% of the women and two-thirds of the men have bet on sports. A senior at SMU estimated that among his fraternity brothers, it was 90-95%. Students who live on campus tend to bet more frequently than those who do not, and most students wager infrequently and in small amounts, the NCAA found.Students found different ways to gamble, despite age limits in many states: sportsbook apps, daily fantasy sites, casinos, racetracks, offshore sportsbooks and bookies, according to the NCAA survey. Prediction markets, which have exploded in popularity in the past two years, are another option.Dr. James Borchers, chief medical officer for the Big Ten, said gambling has risen to the top of the list of concerns for schools, alongside or even above alcohol."Let's not pretend like this is some kind of fringe activity," Borchers told ESPN. "This is something that is happening with regularity amongst peers, amongst lots of people, and I think that's what concerns me ... are the behaviors going to just get worse? Because this just continues to seem to spiral out of control."In Ohio, where the legal betting age is 21, sportsbooks reported 469 instances of underage people using betting accounts in 2024, more than one a day, according to data from the Ohio Casino Control Commission that ESPN obtained via a public records request. Three of the instances involved buy-ins exceeding $80,000, and some accounts were open for over a year before they were reported to the commission and shut down, according to the data.The NCAA survey found that 16% of students bet with bookies, who often offer credit and look the other way at a bettor's age. A veteran of the underground bookmaking world told ESPN that there are bookies in most fraternities. Many of them give referral bonuses for friends who sign up with the book, according to Carter Braun, a University of Georgia senior.Parents are often caught off guard, unable to tell that their children are gambling until they've already racked up debt and damaged their mental health. Kim Freudenberg founded a support group, Parents Standing Together, after her son developed a gambling addiction in college. She said hundreds of moms and dads have joined since it launched in 2025.Borchers said schools need to be more proactive in helping students deal with the problem. "People are doing what they can from a resource standpoint," he said, "Education, we know, is somewhat a deterrent but not 100%."Eric Wood, director of counseling and mental health at TCU, told ESPN his school recently started including general questions about gambling when screening students seeking therapy. New York lawmakers are considering requiring sportsbooks to use geolocation to block bets placed from college campuses, while proposed legislation in Connecticut would require public universities to provide an on-campus problem gambling program at least once in an academic year."Pretty much 80 to 90% of the people that I surround myself with were betting on sports," Braun said. "It's really crazy out there."AMIT ASKED ESPN not to use his real name because he doesn't want the stigma surrounding his addiction to affect his ability to find employment. He and his family also declined to give specific amounts of his gambling losses because they might be triggering for others. His father said they don't want people to compare their amounts to Amit's and think, "Oh, I wasn't as bad."Before college, the closest Amit had come to gambling was filling out a March Madness bracket. One night when he was studying in the common room his freshman year, someone asked if he wanted to play poker. The dormmate brought his own table and chips. Amit had never played before, but the dormmate said he'd teach him.Roughly a dozen underclassmen took a seat at the poker table. There was a game on just about every other floor in his residence hall, Amit said, some with high stakes. He liked the mathematics of poker, and how statistics and strategy helped him win."We thought it was all fun and everything," he said. "Then we just kept doing it."Poker is a common way for young people to start gambling. A 2024 NCAA study found that 46% of male student-athletes gambled for the first time by playing cards for money.The dormmate who introduced him to poker turned out to be a dealer at a local club -- where the legal age is 18 in most states -- and eventually invited Amit and some of his new friends to play in a low-stakes tournament. The club was smoke-free with friendly people, a lounge, a pool table and roughly 10 poker tables. It was open until 4 a.m.And for a beginner, Amit held his own, subsidizing his gambling with money from his part-time data science job.By the 2024 spring semester, he was juggling school, work and late nights at the club. That summer, he traveled to the Bahamas with a group of friends and went to a casino, which opened up a new world of gambling: sports betting. He said his first bet was a three-leg MLB parlay. He won."I just kept winning there," he said. "I made a lot of money that I had to declare to customs."Suddenly, the bookish young man who spent most of his time at the dorm was everywhere, living the life of a high roller. Concerts. Sporting events. Friends.Sophomore year promised to be even better. He'd share an apartment with some friends he had met through poker. He'd win enough money to buy himself a car.Gambling wasn't just a way to become popular. He flunked calculus his first semester, and betting served as a diversion. School could be hard. Gambling seemed easy.Four of the five people in his new apartment were gamblers, Amit said, and they held poker nights that turned into blackjack and parties that bled night into morning. They called themselves "degenerates."Amit was not old enough to gamble legally in Ohio, so he sometimes drove across the border to Kentucky, where the legal betting age was 18 at the time. He took a businesslike approach to his bets. He made spreadsheets breaking down games and players. He paid for online memberships to acquire even more data.In his early days of sports betting, he said, he won on parlays. He started buying things for friends and going on overseas vacations. Amit switched his major but was still flailing in school. It didn't seem to matter. He was going places; just not the stops he thought he would make.His parents knew something was wrong. The location tracking on his phone didn't seem to make sense, and he stopped answering FaceTime calls.By November, when he was frequently losing, his parents noticed unauthorized activity on their credit cards and bank accounts. He started using the rent money they gave him to gamble.His parents waited until winter break in 2024 to address everything -- his behavior, his slipping grades, the missing money.Amit broke down, cried and told them about the betting. He promised never to gamble again. His parents decided to pay his rent directly and closely monitor his finances. They sent him back to school.He took out same-day loans and kept betting. He told his parents of his plans for a new career: professional gambler. His mom was exasperated."That's not a thing!"She figured if they got him home, cooked his dinner and did his laundry -- supported him every way they could -- he'd be OK. He'd ease back into everyday life and things would be normal again. She thought it was a matter of willpower. He could make himself stop if he really wanted to."I had no idea what we were dealing with," she said.They put him in therapy and made him go to Gamblers Anonymous meetings. The GA meetings Amit attended skewed older, and he couldn't seem to connect with the people around him. The therapists they found didn't specialize in gambling addiction, and Amit wasn't honest with them, according to his dad.Every time he relapsed, it resulted in what his dad called a "volcanic eruption inside the house." They'd interrogate him, and he'd lie. They'd address one gambling event and then find out 11 other things that he had done, be it a loan he had taken out or a bet he had placed.They're not proud of how they handled the early days of his return home. "We are broken," Amit's mom told her husband. "He is broken."Amit's dad said one of the biggest challenges was "... realizing that your kid is a liar, a now-professional liar."Amit would say he just wanted to get back the money he had lost the family. The guilt made him want to bet more. In gambling parlance, this is called "chasing losses," and experts say the pursuit is often a sign of addiction.Three months after returning home from college, he snuck out in the middle of the night, took the family minivan and drove more than an hour to the Kentucky border. He stopped at the first exit, tapped his phone and made a large wager on the Oklahoma City Thunder to win the NBA Cup. He returned home early the next morning, with his parents still asleep.ADDICTION SPECIALISTS CALL gambling disorder the hidden addiction because the symptoms aren't necessarily visible. A gambling addict doesn't stumble around or reek of failed parlays. It's harder to detect -- and harder, for some, to accept as a disease rather than a moral failing.According to a 2024 survey by the National Council on Problem Gambling, 8% of American adults -- almost 20 million people -- reported experiencing at least one problematic gambling behavior many times in the past year. The percentage of U.S. adults gambling online increased to 22% from 15% in 2018, according to the survey.Dr. Cynthia Grant, who helps lead an outpatient telehealth program for problem gamblers at Birches Health, said gambling addiction is underreported and often undiagnosed, making it difficult to gauge its prevalence accurately."More people are gambling, and so therefore there's going to be more people who develop problems," Grant said. "So even if it's 1% or 3% of a specific population, there's so many millions of people that are gambling that those numbers keep adding up."For much of 2025, Amit's family felt alone and buried in shame. In September, after the constant back and forth, his parents tapped into a meeting with Gam-Anon, a 12-step recovery fellowship of people who've been affected by the gambling problem of a loved one. His dad said they were desperate."At a certain point you are completely lost and you have nowhere else to turn emotionally," he said. "It was at a rock bottom for us."He used an alias. His wife listened in the background, crying into a pillow. She couldn't imagine pouring out her heart to strangers.Eventually, Amit's mom started reading through Gam-Anon materials, too. She learned that they couldn't do this alone. That gambling addiction was a family disease, and they couldn't help their son until they committed to recovery themselves. After that, she said, they were fully on board, armed with the support of others who had gone through the same things.Amit said his recovery didn't start in earnest until January, when he went to a treatment facility in Richmond, Virginia for 28 days. He went through twice-a-day individual therapy, and twice as much group therapy. He focused on his mental and physical health, eating nutritious meals and enjoying nature.He adhered to possibly the strictest policy for any Gen Zer: no phone. For four weeks, he wasn't peppered with notifications, scores or any other enticements to gamble.Amit also started attending meetings with other young problem gamblers, run by a former attorney and gambling addict, and found a connection and community with them that he didn't feel at GA meetings before.The Gam-Anon strangers his mom was hesitant about became their support system. They're the people she's closest to now, the friends she calls at 2 o'clock in the morning and can "talk off the ledge" during a familiar crisis."It's the club that we say we don't want to belong to," she said. "But here we are."AS STUDENTS RETURN to school, Amit's parents can't help but flash back to three summers ago, when they prepared their son for college. They threw him a Cincinnati Bearcats black-and-red graduation party and spent the summer finding all the necessities for his dorm. It never seemed like a chore. To them, it was the next step to an endlessly bright future.More than a year later, when every instinct told them that he did not belong there anymore, they still hesitated to bring him home."Because even though they're flunking out," his dad said, "it's such a big step to pull because you're really admitting a huge defeat. A failure."When Amit finally got home, they beat themselves up over not pulling him out of school earlier. Would the spiral have been shorter, the recovery quicker? Would he be closer to his dreams?A 2026 National Council on Problem Gambling survey found that 1 in 3 young adults had placed a sports bet before turning 21. Studies show young adults are two to four times more likely to develop gambling disorders than people over 25. The brain's prefrontal cortex -- the region responsible for judgment and risk assessment -- continues developing into the mid-20s."Youth are at a disadvantage because their brains aren't developed in that area yet," said Dr. Allen Miller, a cognitive behavioral therapist and executive director at Beck Institute.During rehab in January, counselors dug into some of the possible underlying reasons Amit became addicted to gambling. His dad said Amit tends to fixate on things and has a hard time letting go due to his neurodivergence, which might have been a factor. He couldn't walk away when he lost. They also thought he might have become more isolated from his community of friends after he and his parents moved across Ohio when he was in junior high."He lost that big circle [in high school]," his dad said. "I think that was an underlying factor because through sports betting, you can become part of a group and also be a winner. You can impress people."Amit and his family are trying to move forward. He is finishing out his degree at a smaller school. He considers the wager he placed on the Thunder to win the NBA Cup, which he lost in December, his last bet. But relapses are common with gambling addiction, so progress can be tenuous.In mid-May, Amit spoke publicly about his experience for the first time at a problem gambling conference. Dressed in a sport jacket, button-down shirt and jeans, he looked like a young tech guru. Like someone he envisioned he'd become when he arrived at Cincinnati three years ago.Amit and his parents hope telling their story will help other families avoid what they've been through."Speaking about my addiction, I think that just helps my recovery, too," Amit said.But Amit had one request: no betting ads in a story about him. Some recovering gambling addicts say they're hesitant to watch sports anymore, worried that a sportsbook ad or a reference to betting odds will trigger a relapse. Last season, NFL games on national TV averaged two betting-related commercials, though some primetime games had up to five, according to iSpot.TV, a company that measures TV and video ads.Amit and his family used to relax in front of the TV and watch the Cleveland Cavaliers, football or tennis. But thinking back, they remember Amit always being on his phone. Now they limit how much Amit watches, but they still see sports betting ads.They hit mute.If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call or text 1-800-MY-RESET (1-800-697-3738). For GA information and meetings near you, check out gamblersanonymous.org.ESPN researcher John Mastroberardino contributed to this story.
