For those who are addicted to gambling, winning or losing doesn’t matter. Even if they win, they will continue to bet in order to find another win. Yes, that is compulsive gambling.
Gambling addiction can eventually completely destroy your life, be it financially, physically, emotionally, or socially. Gambling addiction does not only pose a danger to the addict himself.
The National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) in the United States estimates bankruptcy, theft, domestic violence and neglect of children, foreclosure of homes and other investments, and even the suicide of loved ones are also linked to gambling addiction.
However, before you continue with the tips for your help, let’s take a look at symptoms of compulsive in gambling.
The Symptoms of Compulsive Gambling
To find out whether you are really addicted to gambling or not. Let’s take a look at some of the characteristics of people who are addicted to gambling.
1. Can’t Stop Playing
If you only bet occasionally and are just looking for fun from betting, then you are not addicted to gambling. Most of People who are addicted to gambling try to stop. However, in the end they still bet more in the hope of getting more wins.
2. Can’t Manage Budget or Money
Gambling addicts often use money more than they should to sometimes use money for living necessities, children’s education money, or even borrowing from other people.
This is one of negative effects of gambling addiction. You could end up in endless debt.
3. Betting is Not for Fun
If you only bet for fun, such as betting for only $1, then you are not a gambling addict. Gambling addicts bet not for the sake of fun, but to relieve anxiety or forget the problem. Ironically, it ends up with additional problems.
4. Bet Again and Again
If you are addicted to gambling, then every time you lose you will bet again to cover the loss. They will continue to bet larger amounts to cover their previous losses.
5. Increase The Bets
A small bet value will not satisfy a gambling or betting addict. The gambling addict will continue to increase the value of the bet with the hope of getting a higher win.
6. Look for Ways to Earn Money
If you run out of money, gambling addicts will not stop. Instead, they will look for ways to earn more money, even if in an excessive way.
The most extreme ways that can be tried are borrowing money from moneylenders or stealing.
7. Gambling is Priority
If you are more worried with gambling than with your family or with your life, you are probably addicted to gambling. Gambling addicts usually put gambling ahead of their own families.
They will ignore the activities, children’s education, and usually end up breaking the relationship with family.
8. Unstable Emotion
Although at first gambling is fun and gets your adrenaline pumping, in the end gambling can cause problems.
One of them is affecting your emotions caused by frustration, feelings of late regret, decreased ambition, and the desire to gamble to cover life’s problems.
How to Get Away from Compulsive Gambling
Then, the tips on how to stop gambling below can help you or someone close to you who is addicted to gambling begin to eradicate the problem.
1. Admit That You Are Addicted in Gambling
The first step to heal is to be introspective and openly accept the fact that you are really addicted to gambling.
At first, addicts are stuck in the denial stage. Emotional turmoil is very common in these times, one side of your personality can act rationally and admit that gambling is destroying your life, while the dark side of you desires to gamble with even greater intensity.
When it comes to a point where the problem has clearly hijacked gamblers’ lives, they can usually stop trying to resist it.
2. What You Have Lost
Avoid reminiscing about past victories. Those days are gone, if they really exist. Now you just need to concentrate on how your gambling habits are having a negative impact on your life.
The only way to start climbing back from the problems caused by gambling addiction is to reflect on your current situation.
Start by listing all your debts. Include details of payments that are in arrears, the money that you borrowed from family and friends, credit card and cash balances, blank checks you wrote, and debts you owe to the bookie.
If you have lost your home or are in the process of foreclosure, prioritize this high on your list. The same is true if your luxury items, such as a car, jewelry, or land, have been repossessed as a fine in arrears.
Also Read: Emotional Stories From Compulsive Gamblers
3. Your Healthy Life
Also think about how your physical health suffers as a result of your gambling? Have you lost a lot of weight or have you gained weight because of a careless diet and lack of exercise?.
In addition, are you addicted to smoking?, drugs, and/or liquor, as a gambling companion? Are you often depressed, anxious or afraid? Do you engage in self-righteousness or lying to cover up your actions?.
Are you filled with guilt and shame over the downturn in your family life? Have you lost a friend, a spouse, your job, failed to get a promotion or was demoted at work because you were caught gambling?.
Have you ever been nabbed and arrested by the police for gambling, or taken to court for domestic violence or other legal problems as a result of your addiction?
Uhh.. Continue to complete your “sins list.” The goal is not to make you more miserable. This is a great way to start forcing you to realize that gambling has negatively affected your life.
4. Find Out The Real Reason in Gambling
Some of the common reasons people gamble include finding joy and forgetting about problems, looking for self-justification (that you are an excellent person), getting extra money from winning, gambling helps you socialize, overcome depression or boredom, to habits that have been rooted for a long time without knowing. Then, what is your reason?.
In order to recover from a gambling addiction, it is important that you understand the reasons why you gamble. You can’t change for a healthy lifestyle until you know the exact reasons that underlie your need to gamble.
5. Be Honest
The next step to get away from compulsive gambling, You should tell your problem to a trusted friend or family member.
By garnering the right support from those around you, this will help strengthen and emphasize the existence of your rational side and turn off your gambling cravings.
However, opening up to a friend or family member about addiction is often the most difficult and worrying part of the entire recovery process.
Unlike other addictions, such as drugs or alcohol, there are no physical signs or symptoms that indicate a person is addicted to gambling.
This addiction is easy to hide and your close relatives may not have smelled your troubled nature before.
6. Block Access to The Gambling
Block your access to the types of gambling that make you addicted, such as online gambling or soccer gambling, so that you need to come to the casino.
Then, completely shut down all access to any and all forms of gambling. This will put an end to your habit and with the help of your trusted confidants you will be less likely to stay away from gambling sites and apps than if you had tried to quit on your own.
This step will help you discover that gambling is not the best solution for you. Many people gamble as a form of escape, an activity to distract them from the stresses and strains of everyday life.
Eventually, however, you will realize that this is not a solution, and that there will be inevitable downsides welcoming you at the end of the day.
7. Make Financial Control
Ask your close person for help temporarily managing all of your finances, for example within a four-week period.
By giving someone else control over your money, be it a bank account or a credit card, your burden will be lifted slightly. This will make it easier to get on with your life without the gambling.
It is also during this time that you are advised to seek debt management assistance. Unmanaged debt only encourages the cycle of addiction to re-ignite within (gambling to find money to pay debts). The habit of gambling to cover debt is one of the hardest habits to break.
8. Find Healthy Activities
Closing your access to gambling resources will not immediately eliminate your gambling desire.
Therefore, as with trying to beat any other addiction, it’s important to find other, healthier activities to keep your body and mind busy.
For example, by doing sports or taking skill classes. This method is also recommended to reduce the risk of gambling addiction, which tends to worsen in the first weeks after gambling.
9. Call Help from Professional
CBT or known as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. This therapy is a good treatment for compulsive gambling which a therapist and addict talk face-to-face to change destructive behaviors and thoughts.
CBT enhances addicts in developing self-will to cope and cognitive skills to help them resist the urge to gamble, such as “fasting” gambling for a set period of time.
Furthermore, CBT focuses on teaching gamblers how to deal with problems in their personal or financial lives rather than turning to gambling as a way out.
10. Get Treatment
Like drug addicts who have become insensitive to the drugs they are taking, people who are prone to gambling addictions often have a hard time experiencing the same “drunk” sensation that you get when you first gamble to win money.
Ultimately, the chronic gambler will need to repeat more of these behaviors until you get the better condition.Then, if you need some help because you feel the symptoms of gambling addiction.
Those ten tips will help you to get away from compulsive gambling. Do not give up, you can step away from the worst condition.
