The Associated Press

LOUISVILLE - Caleb Cooley, a 58-year-old Pikeville accountant, started gambling in 1977.

After one big win in Las Vegas - a $100,000 win - Mr. Cooley began gambling compulsively - betting at the tracks and poker games, and taking more trips to Vegas.

But if he got hot and won, say, $10,000, he'd gamble it all away and wind up in the hole. And when he could no longer get money from family and banks he began dipping into clients' funds. Eventually, his accounting practice went broke, his partners bailed out and so did his wife.

Mr. Cooley is an example of the human toll that gambling can take.

With the Kentucky General Assembly being urged to consider placing slot machines at the state's racetracks, the threat of addiction and financial ruin lurks, according to an investigation by The Courier-Journal.

The act of buying a lottery ticket, playing the slots, betting on horses or filling out a bingo card has swelled to a $3 billion-a-year business in Kentucky and neighboring Indiana.

And with it have come an estimated 204,000 problem gamblers, many of whose lives have intersected with addiction and despair, financial ruin, broken families and - for some - jail.

A study by the Louisville newspaper found that calls to gambling help lines are up sharply in recent years and that Gamblers Anonymous has doubled the number of meetings in the Louisville area.

Attorneys are handling increasing numbers of gambling-related bankruptcy cases, and prosecutors say crimes motivated by gambling debts also are on the rise.

As recently as the mid-1980s, someone who wanted to gamble legally in Kentucky had only two options: to play bingo or bet on a live race at a horse track.

But today there are lotteries - with jackpots that sometimes total hundreds of millions of dollars - and off-track betting parlors. Indiana has 10 riverboat casinos, half of them on the Ohio River across from Kentucky, and two horse tracks.

"When you have more gambling opportunities, you have more gamblers," said Curtis Barrett, a University of Louisville professor emeritus and an adviser to the Kentucky Council on Problem Gambling. "When you have an increase in gamblers, you're going to have more problem gamblers."

Treatment experts worry that Kentucky may be on that path.

Although the research is still in its infancy, a few truths are accepted: At least 15 percent of compulsive gamblers are alcoholics, and people who suffer from depression and low self-esteem appear more vulnerable. Like alcoholics and drug addicts, problem gamblers suffer repeated relapses.

Mr. Cooley, the accountant, is now president of the board of directors for the Kentucky Council on Problem Gambling.

He shares his story in hopes that it will encourage others. "I want people to get the help they need," he said. "They need to know the situation isn't hopeless."