I haven’t been to a casino in at least 20 years. Wow, things have changed.

No more old-school slot and poker machines. Everything looks like a video game. Huge flashing monitors over each one and bright lights and cartoon graphics that look like they’re intended for children. Everywhere you look, you are visually and auditorially overwhelmed… your brain is overstimulated and stunned within moments.

No more dropping quarters into the machine. It’s paper money only, and sure, they have “penny machines” technically, but you can’t play real pennies, or even a penny credit at a time, you have to play at least 50. Typically, people put in $20 at a time (which makes me nauseous because, hey, that’s almost a sack of alfalfa pellets!) and lose that in less than a minute, and then put in MORE! I played two $20s and it was gone in two minutes, and I wanted to barf.

Eventually, you run out of credits, and because you will hit a small payoff for a couple bucks and change, you end up with odd change that isn’t enough for a last bet, and get a voucher for that change, for denominations so small, they aren’t worth walking across the casino to cash in. I imagine most people throw them away (and so the casino keeps all that small change from many people, and makes even more money because that adds up!) or they give them to someone else, which is what I did.

All in all, I wasted $60 in the casino, and it was spent in a flash, and wasn’t the least bit enjoyable. I literally did not enjoy one second of it. It will be another 20 years before I try it again, if ever. Unless there’s an old-school machine with real quarters! Better yet, pennies or nickels, so you can sit there and be entertained for a bit. Even old-school, my patience for that is about 30 minutes tops.

You could literally set your money on fire in about the same amount of time it takes to play video slot machines.

Making the experience even more disturbing was the people-watching… sitting numbly in front of those machines, hitting the “spin” button over and over and over, stuffing in more money, cigarettes hanging from their lips as they stare at the flashing lights in a stupor, as if hypnotized. The slot machines were eating their brains! Everywhere you looked… zombies!

NONE of them appeared to be enjoying this experience. They just looked blank and empty, as if lobotomized, and worse yet, most looked like they couldn’t afford to be dumping their money into these scammy slot machines in the first place. Most of these sad, tired empty shells looked like they were about two clicks from being homeless or catatonic in an institution, or shanking you in the dark on your way to your car to steal your money and get back to the brain-eating zombie machines.

And! It wasn’t just slot machines! ALL the games were video based! The keno, craps, and roulette games were also scammy flashing video machines, and even the card table was rigged – you didn’t play the dealer, you play against a little video screen. I kind of liked old-school casinos, once upon a time long ago. At least you could play Keno at $2 a pop and get free drinks and be entertained for quite a long while. That memory is as quaint and antique as using a telephone booth.

And cigarette smoke! My Goddess, I haven’t been exposed to that in years and years, and it stinks like a warthog’s butthole. I felt poisoned within moments of being inside the casino. I forgot how bad that smells, and how it permeates everything, including your clothes after you’ve been inside for even a short while.

All in all – there is nothing about the modern casino experience that appeals to me. Nothing. My inner Cheapacabra was traumatized by wasting $60 on nothing, and the garish, completely man-made atmosphere full of smoke and sadness made my little old Pagan self cringe. A casino is a vortex of everything I loathe about humanity (from the players to the casino owners) minus a shooting. Add in a shooting, and there you have it – a five-cherry jackpot of everything I hate about humanity.

It’s kind of shocking and heartbreaking how people are sucked into casinos this way, and get hooked on it. Who on earth has this much money to waste? Maybe that’s why the vast majority looked flat broke — they’re dumping what little money they have into slot machines, hoping for the big jackpot that is about as like to happen as getting hit by lightning while they’re sitting there staring into the video screens. I’m sure once you hit a big jackpot, you’re hooked, but the math indicates that the house always wins, unless you hit a jackpot quickly and walk away.

I only hit a jackpot once in my life, more than 30 years ago, playing quarters in a poker machine. I won $400 and as soon as I did, I cashed out and walked away. That is the ONLY way to beat the house — just like a bad marriage: walk away!!! That said, over my lifetime, the house still came out way ahead. Thankfully, I’ve not spent a lot of time gambling — horse racing notwithstanding. At least you have a reasonable chance to win something at the track, and for about $25, betting $2 per race, you have hours and hours of entertainment and horses to look at. But casinos? There is nothing there of value. Nothing.

I would much rather sit by a pond and watch wildlife than ever step foot in a casino again. What a sad, empty, soul-crushing experience.