Published December 12, 2025 | By Alyx E, Founder of Collectors MD

Over the past year, I’ve sat in dozens of calls and meetings with councils, coalitions, recovery organizations, treatment centers, technology platforms, and national helplines—1-800-GAMBLER, Gamblers Anonymous, PGCC, NCPG, Right Choice Recovery, Birches Health, OpenRecovery, Evive, Gamban, GamFin, and many more. Across all of them, one pattern keeps surfacing with increasing urgency. More and more people are reaching out for help because of gambling-related harm—but not from traditional casinos or sports betting alone.

The stories sound familiar. Loss of control. Escalating spending. Secrecy. Shame. Emotional volatility. Financial stress. Relationship damage. The difference is where these behaviors are showing up. High-velocity digital marketplaces. Gamified purchasing systems. Live selling. Loot-style mechanics. Collectibles. Apps and environments that don’t call themselves gambling—but functionally behave like it. The harm doesn’t care what we label the activity. The nervous system responds the same.

What’s become impossible to ignore is that the recovery and addiction-support ecosystem is being asked to respond to something new, fast-moving, and undefined. Hotlines are fielding calls that don’t fit neatly into old scripts. Counselors are hearing stories that don’t match the traditional frameworks they were trained on. This isn’t a failure of the people seeking help—it’s a signal that the landscape has changed.

This is about building infrastructure, not just awareness. Collectors MD is working toward becoming a one-stop ecosystem for gambling-related harm across every vertical—combining peer support, education, resources, referrals, and training into a model that actually reflects how harm shows up today.

That’s where the work ahead matters. We can’t just tell people to “stop” without understanding what they’re trying to stop, why it pulled them in, and how the systems around them were designed to accelerate harm. Over the coming weeks and months, you’ll begin to see tangible changes across these industries—driven in large part by the consulting, education, training, and collaborative initiatives Collectors MD is actively leading to equip professionals with better tools, clearer language, and modern resources. So they can help us help the people who are already asking for support.

This is not something any one organization can solve alone. It never was. As we say often: this is a team effort. It takes a village. It takes recovery professionals willing to evolve, platforms willing to listen, advocates willing to speak up, and communities willing to show up for one another without judgment. Progress doesn’t come from pointing fingers—it comes from shared responsibility.

If this movement has taught me anything, it’s this: people are not broken. Systems are outdated. And when we update the systems—with intention, humility, and collaboration—we give people a real chance to heal.

#CollectorsMD
When the problem evolves, so must the way we respond—together, not in silos.

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