Very important advice to compulsive gamblers

Compulsive gamblers face a unique and daunting challenge. They think that the problem is the overwhelming satisfaction they receive from winning money that leads to the addiction, therefore, to them, gambling is the behavioral means to the end to which they become addicted.

If you can realize anything about this baffling and insidious illness, realize this: Even if a genie granted your wish of winning every time you gamble, and thus you had all the money you could ever want, you would still be consumed by gambling.

Think of it as any form of compulsive behaviour, such as obsessive hand washing. If you had such an affliction, and the Dean of the Harvard Medical School told you that washing your hands once with Dove soap was sufficient to clean them, you would still wash your hands endlessly even though you knew logically and rationally they were clean after the first washing.

Thus, even if you found a system to beat black jack, the horses, and poker, you would still be consumed by gambling because of your compulsivity.

For compulsive gamblers the only solution is to stop. There is no in between. For the addicted, gambling even once trips the compulsive switch in the brain and we are off and running -- it doesn't matter if we win or we lose. In the long run it is a no-win situation/activity that will ultimately destroy us, because in any compulsion there is no end-game. Unlike eating and sex, you do not get enough to where the brain signals that your are satisfied.

Compulsive gambling is a trip on a treadmill that ends when you collapse emotionally, psychologically and financially.

It's a terrible but truthful scenario. The compulsion does not play by the rules of the mind, the heart and the soul, that is why addiction is so tragic: good people are destroyed.

So realize that the allure of gambling/excitement/money is only a cruel trick of the compulsive mind, and that in and of themselves they mean nothing to us except they are the vehicles we use to play out the compulsion.

Logically and emotionally, I know that people can play cards for escape and relaxation, much like a person can have one glass of wine. And like the alcoholic, I cannot gamble recreationally just as he or she cannot drink casually; we suffer the same affliction. We are not in control and never will be.

Powerful truth. Beautifully written. Thank you for posting this!

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