You still gamble? It’s not your fault and it never was

If you're struggling with gambling addiction, this might be the most important concept for you to understand. The age-old battle of willpower vs. environmental design. Free will vs. determinism. Mind vs. matter. Freedom vs. destiny. There are many ways to frame it. However, one thing is certain. One side in this battle is heavily favored against the other. Can you already tell which one it is?

It is the side I prefer to call environmental design.

Look, I love the idea of being completely free just as much as the next person. It’s a beautiful idea. The idea that nothing can control you, not your environment, not your phone, not your computer, not the people around you, and that you can simply decide to do whatever you know is best for you.

If the world really worked like that, life would actually be very simple. All you would need is knowledge. Once you knew what the best actions were, you would simply make yourself take them. You know going to the gym is good for you? Then just go. Eating vegetables is good for your health? Just eat them. Gambling is bad for you? Then simply stop gambling.

But there is one problem with this kind of logic. You are not completely free. You already know this because you have tried to rely on willpower before. You tried to force yourself to do all the right things and avoid all the bad ones. Especially gambling. It might not be your only vice but it’s probably the one that bothers you the most right now.

And what did your willpower attempt to stop gambling look like? I can’t know for sure, but I will take a guess anyway. You tried to reason with yourself. You came up with a long list of ways gambling harms you. You made a promise to yourself that you will never gamble again. You yelled at yourself. Either internally or out loud. Or both. You tried really hard to concentrate. You tried talking yourself into not gambling again. You tried to trick yourself into not gambling. You tried to imagine your life as a movie. You’re the main character standing at a fork in the road, and now is the moment to take the right path and stop gambling for good. It’s you. It’s your life. It’s your future. What could be more important? Nothing is more important, and you know it. So why the hell would you continue to gamble? Why did you even start to gamble? None of it makes any sense. It almost feels as if you were doing this because you didn’t love yourself, but you know you do. So why do you still gamble?

There is only one useful answer to this difficult and also very deep question. You still gamble because of your environment.

“Because of my environment?” You might repeat the answer in a slightly confused manner. “But… that can’t be right. I mean, the fact that I gamble is my fault, isn’t it?” Let me answer this question for you once and for all. The fact that you gamble is not your fault. It’s an environmental design error. A mistake. “But how could that be? I thought that it was all my fault. Everyone keeps telling me that. I keep telling myself that. After all, am I not the one who pulled out my phone and tapped on the casino app? Am I not the one who deposited hundreds of pounds into my account? Am I not the one who placed all those bets until my balance reached a disappointing zero? I am. So how could it not be my fault?”

I will answer this question in more depth in future posts but for now you should know this: it’s not your fault because your environment was set up to betray you.

Is there a way out?

Yes, and it starts with you understanding and redesigning your environment. That’s what I’ll talk about next.