Gambling addiction is spreading quietly. Our answer is community, out loud.
A smartphone turned every home in Massachusetts into a casino. We connect the people treating gambling addiction, the families living with it, and the data no one is publishing — so real help reaches people before the damage does.
Find what actually works, then get it to the people who need it.
Serious About Solutions, Inc. works with the whole community — including the gaming industry itself — to find real, working approaches to gambling addiction for Massachusetts residents who are addicted or becoming addicted.
Online gaming has turned into a public health risk with real financial and mental-health consequences, hitting younger residents hardest as sports betting becomes as ordinary as checking the weather. We aim to be the dependable resource that community groups, families, and individuals turn to.
It took decades to properly educate the public about tobacco and alcohol as harmful, addictive substances — but the shift in attitudes was one of the great public health accomplishments in history. Gambling deserves the same honest treatment.
A booming industry, and an addiction that stays hidden.
Unlike alcohol or tobacco, a gambling addiction rarely shows on someone's face. It shows up in drained bank accounts, missed mortgage payments, and silence — until the loss is already done.
Sports betting turned every phone in Massachusetts into a betting venue. Nearly $2 billion was spent last year on sports-betting advertising alone — much of it aimed at an age group whose brains haven't yet finished developing the capacity to assess risk.
Five ways we're building the response Massachusetts doesn't have yet.
No single program fixes gambling addiction. We work as a conduit — connecting research, funding, medical care, and public voice into one coordinated push.
Education
Research & AccessWe collect and translate existing research — including the UMass-Amherst ten-year gambling study — into plain language, and maintain a comprehensive, public list of every community resource available for gambling addiction, free or paid.
Treatment Fund
Direct Financial SupportA fund, structured within IRS and state guidelines, that pays for treatment for people with no insurance coverage and no other financial resources — including free access to contracted counseling and supplemental grants for individualized care.
Podcast, Social & Speaker's Bureau
Public VoiceA regular podcast featuring New Englanders who've lived through severe gambling addiction, a youth-built social campaign across TikTok, Bluesky, and Facebook, and a funded speaker's bureau reaching middle and high schools.
Medical Treatment Access
Clinical PartnershipWe work with medical professionals to connect severely addicted patients to emerging treatments — including GLP-1 medications now showing promise in reducing compulsive behaviors — under proper medical supervision, and help close the affordability gap.
Follow-Up & Relapse Prevention
Long-Term CareCase workers monitor recovery with patient consent, recovered addicts are recruited as peer volunteers, and family members can participate directly in tracking progress — paired with a push for clearer, more visible gambling-risk warnings industry-wide.
The data exists. It's just not public.
Massachusetts casinos are required by the Expanded Gaming Act to report patron losses by zip code — data that would show exactly which neighborhoods are hit hardest. Much of it stays behind non-disclosure agreements instead.
We work with neighborhood leaders, academic partners, and — where they're willing — the casinos themselves to push that information into the open, without stigmatizing the people it describes.
"Individual win/loss information is not purported to be accurate and is only provided as a courtesy."
— Standard disclosure language across all three Massachusetts casino sitesYou can spot a person who's had too much to drink. You can't spot a gambling addiction.
That's the core problem with treating this like other addictions — there's no slurred speech, no smell, no obvious sign. So we tell the stories that make the invisible visible.