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BILL: Did you see that former Miami Heat star Antoine Walker's just been arrested for running up $822,500 in gambling debts to three Las Vegas casinos? Dave, Yahoo Sports reports the guy made over a hundred million dollars over the course of his basketball career.

DR. DAVE: Why did he bother to gamble for more when he already had so much?

BILL: Exactly what I asked gambling therapist Dr. Suzanne Graupner Pike (www.sandiego-rx4gambling.com).

"Problem and pathological gambling occurs in only 4% of the population," she told me. "Gambling, in and by itself, does not ‘cause' problems. When betting reaches a high-wager level and a player commits a crime to maintain that level of play, gambling is no longer about the money. It's about how the wagering itself makes the player feel. In the end, when people escape into gambling to avoid uncomfortable feelings, resolve pre-existing life problems, or get adrenaline rushes, it is the feeling that becomes addictive."

DR. DAVE: It may be that the former 2008 NBA all-star wants to be "like Mike" - Michael Jordan, with whom he has a history of playing high-stakes hands of blackjack.

BILL: Do you think that these guys were such big winners for most of their lives they developed a sense of what Freud called "infantile omnipotence" - thinking they could not lose?

DR.DAVE: I know you're a novelist, Bill, but don't try to make gambling addiction into something more sexy than it is. Take your own boozing. You had the brain chemistry predisposition and then it was a matter of amount and drinking frequency that did the trick. If you had not drank, or drank infrequently, you wouldn't be authoring this column.

BILL: And just like bars, the temptation to gamble is everywhere.

DR. DAVE: With no one better at marketing that temptation than Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Those towns are synonymous with VIP luxury - or, using another great phrase - "high rollers." Nobody gets more star treatment than the pro sports players ...

BILL: ...with Joe Fan there, too, looking to rub elbows with an Antoine Walker and get the "inside story" on who's going to win tomorrow. At least the average Joe can't afford a regular diet of Vegas, and nobody is offering him a Garden of Eden penthouse suite for free to entice him to the world of all that forbidden fruit.

DR. DAVE: Unfortunately, while adults may be experiencing 4% rates of problem gambling, a Harvard Public Health Task Force of the nation's college campuses reports that problem gambling among students is reaching 11%.

BILL: ESPN and some other networks treat Poker as if it is a new Olympic sport. Of course, Native American-run casinos keep spreading as well.

DR. DAVE: But the major difficulty, Bill, is that our kids live online. The online casinos offer to match the $100 you put in. Your first bet is free. No waiting in line for a space to open at the $5 blackjack table. For the first time, people can gamble alone in the virtual world without anyone watching.

BILL: While parents worry about the porn Web sites their kids might be seeing, the entire gambling network is flying under the radar.

DR. DAVE: Which brings another piece into the addiction puzzle: family denial. In trying to explain away his son's enormous losses, Michael Jordan's father used to say, "My son doesn't have a gambling problem, he has a competition problem." And the college campuses have a huge wall of denial about this problem as well - only 22% have policies and consequences for gambling!

BILL: So where do we start, for both the professional athletes and the college students watching them on dorm room TVs across the country?

DR. DAVE: I like the approach universities and public health organizations adopted this year - they set up Centers of Excellence in Gambling Research. No scare stories. No questionable "addiction facts". With this addiction, some of our leading medical institutions are studying, defining, treating and publishing actual addiction science at the outset to combat denial.

BILL: When do we expect information out of these centers?

DR. DAVE: How about right now? Whether a reader is an educator, a parent or a community member wanting to prevent this disorder from getting a stronger foothold in our youth, they can go to the Web site and focus on learning more about this public health epidemic.

Dr. David Moore is a licensed psychologist and chemical dependency professional who is a graduate school faculty member at Argosy University's Seattle campus. Bill Manville is a Book of the Month novelist; he teaches "Writing to Get Published" at http://www.writers.com/manville.html. His most recent non-fiction work, "Cool, Hip & Sober," is available at online bookstores.