PATHOLOGICAL GAMBLING

As the clinical director of Keystone Treatment Center, I treat over two hundred pathological gamblers a year. I am a nationally certified gambling counselor, and I have written a gambling workbook, The Gambling Addiction Patient Workbook by Sage Publications. This book helps gamblers learn the tools necessary to establish and maintain a program of recovery.

People who need gambling treatment come into treatment financially and emotionally depleted. Most of them put every penny into their addiction. Gamblers are not bad people. Most of them have never been in trouble before. Gambling treatment is needed to bring the gambling under control.

It is difficult for some people to understand problem gambling, but pathological gamblers do not have the choice to gamble, they are addicted. When pathological gamblers gamble, they are in a chemical psychoactive high. The moment the gambling is over, they slip into a chemical psychoactive low, an irritable depression they cannot tolerate. In time, their pleasure hormones become used up, and problem gamblers must gamble to feel normal. Pathological gamblers are not gambling for the money, they are gambling to feel normal. This is difficult for some individuals to understand because gambling, like drinking, seems like a decision of will. But pathological gambling is a brain disease that is chemically and genetically driven, just as addictive as crack cocaine in certain individuals.

Gambling is big business in America earning the gaming industry billions of dollars in net revenue annually. Americans spend more money each year on legal gambling than they do on movie tickets, recorded music, theme parks, spectator sports, and video games combined (Christiansen, 2000). Gambling is very attractive, particularly to people who need money. The Illinois Lottery did a study to see who gambles, and found people who made less than ten thousand dollars a year gamble six times more often than those who earn over fifty thousand dollars a year. People know they can win millions by risking a dollar. A recent program on the Discovery Channel stated that gambling is so attractive, that when the powerball is high, ninety percent of eligible adults buy a ticket. There is no other commodity where the percentages are this high. The real odds of winning a state lottery are approximately fourteen million to one, the same odds as being hit by lightening seven times while waiting in the lottery line.

Seventy years ago it was illegal to gamble anywhere in the United States. Our parents grew up thinking that gambling was morally wrong, but our children are growing up thinking that gambling is as easy as going to McDonald's. Today, all but three states permit gaming, and it's getting bigger all the time. For the first time in history, gambling is available close to home. People can walk to and from work and gamble. State governments actually encourage their citizens to gamble because it seems like an easy way to collect tax free money.

Most people who gamble enjoy gambling as a game; it's exciting and fun. But some citizens are caught up in an addiction as powerful as drug addiction.

According to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual oriental Disorders, Fourth Edition, pathological gambling is a persistent and recurrent maladaptive gambling behavior as indicated by five or more of the following criteria:

1. The individual is preoccupied with gambling (i.e. preoccupied with reliving past gambling experiences, handicapping or planning the next venture, or thinking of ways to get money with which to gamble.

2. The individual needs to gamble with increasing amounts of money in order to achieve the desired excitement.

3. The individual has repeated unsuccessful efforts at stopping.

4. The individual is restless or irritable with attempting to cut down.

5. The individual gambles as a way of escaping from problems or of relieving a dysphoric mood (i.e., feeling of helplessness, guilty, anxiety, and depression).

6. The individual after losing money gambling, often returns another day to get even ("chasing" one's losses).

7. The individual lies to family members, therapist, or others to conceal the extent of involvement with gambling.

8. The individual has committed illegal acts such as forgery, fraud, theft, or embezzlement to finance gambling.

9. The individual has jeopardized or lost a significant relationship, job, education or career opportunity because of gambling.

10.The individual relies on others to provide money or relieve a desperate financial situation caused by gambling.