Addictions Problem Counselling – Gambling Addiction Treatment

Gambling addiction is like any other addiction. As with drug addicts and alcoholics, gambling addicts suffer from a disease – it is incurable and progressive. Yet with treatment and a daily programmed of recovery, it can be arrested and maintained. When a gambling addict engages in gambling and the related behaviors that go with it, they experience an escape from their feelings. Addicts are individuals who very often do not know how to cope with their feelings and emotions. Thus follows behavior to take them away from the present, leaving their emotional capacity hollow. The disease of addiction can be described as a “hole in the soul” – a spiritual void which gambling addicts attempt to fill with destructive behavior and short-term highs.

Surprisingly, many gambling addicts describe the pull of gambling addiction as involving losing at gambling more than winning, although winning does provide an incredible high. The loss of money and possessions fills them with a desperate need for hope of gaining control again, leading them to act out compulsively on gambling behavior over and over again. Unable to control their obsessive and compulsive gambling, addicts are taken to a very dark place, which grows increasingly worse over time. Losing families, jobs, houses, cars and all other possessions, but mostly self respect, the gambling addict is left in a place of total unmanageability where their life has suffered complete destruction. Suicide is common amongst gambling addicts as they see no other solution to their habit and loss of livelihood.

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