A lucky online sports bettor from Connecticut recently made national news by turning a $20 bet into $579,000 after guessing the exact final scores of the NFL Championship games.

Key word: Lucky.

Betting on sports is nothing new, but legalized online sports betting is new to Connecticut and we’re being bombarded with ads tempting us with all sorts of winning scenarios. These once-in-a-lifetime wins are fun to dream about, online bettors have more than money at stake — their odds of developing an unhealthy habit are pretty good.

Listen to the Full Podcast

In this episode of Hartford HealthCare’s More Life podcast series, Dr. J. Craig Allen, Vice President of Addiction Services at Hartford HealthCare’s Behavioral Health Network, and Laura Zappieri, an addiction and substance abuse counselor in Glastonbury, discuss some of the pitfalls of online sports betting and how the normalization of gambling, especially for young minds, could be putting us at real risk.

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