I have been fighting my addiction for many years now. The progress I have had through my many relapses has been to educate myself to the extreme regarding every aspect of this addiction. Why? So that I may own the problem and not my surrounding friends and family. I know what is wrong with me and I have no excuses. I have read Addiction By Design by Natascha Dow Schull a study of slot machine addiction in Las Vegas. She has been working this study for 15 years. Recomend you to get the book and read it. Been looking at the dopamine releases of the brain. If Industry looks at dopamine to make you as a consumer adicted to new products then it should be on you to understand why. It is hard to get in all of the terminology but not impossible to get it. The brains reward system is one of the first building bricks of the brain and it is so importantly connected to your addiction that it should not be discarded. I have some links if anyones intrested to give it a try. Once you have a deep knowledge you start understanding some of the basics.
We get our brain into an imbalance due to overstimulating our dopamine release and that results in addiction.
The maths are simple reg addiction: You need more of the same+ to keep on with the high= Escalation (More time and money)
There is most likely a depression and perhaps eaven earlier trauma that needs to be dealt with during recovery ( Councelling and hypnotherapy if you need a quicker fix)
There are three levels of gambling addicts The first is the easiest to leave second and third demand more help.
The gambling industry uses the skinner model and so called operant conditioning to keep you playing. (It´s about rewards and no rewards to keep you going. Imagine you slots right. It will give you wins and no wins to keep you interested for longer= If you stay longer you get zoned or tranced)
A higher nr than 5% get hooked on this. I dont care what they say officialy . If you look at financial times on fobde machines almost half of the people sitting on them get hooked.
93% of a casinos revenu comes from slots. They are basicy sawing down the blackjack tables for fire wood.
Online gambling grosses more than 700 million pounds a month in europe so it is a big business.
There is lots more beacuse addictions are complicated matters.
We can not win it all back. We MUST have a change of scenery and need the self confidence to face the addiction.
Start beleiving that you can fix this. Learn about it and beat the industry by staying away.
Best of luck in your recovery!
Fair do's but you're still not REALLY addressing the 'why'.
This is understanding addiction at a neurological level, which is quite interesting.
It's education but in a more academic sense. It enables you to sound clever.
You're not delving into, or disclosing, the personal reasons why you personally , as a human being, with thoughts and feelings, are an addict.
I think the latter is particularly worthy of your time.
Louis
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Education is the key always, as online slots nowadays have all the honey pot trappings, it is possible to win 5000 from your 1 pound like a million from a scratchcard or ten million on the lottery. And if you want to see it look on YouTube and see it for yourself. We live in a world where we get convinced that money will bring us great joy and we can have it all quick, and for 0000.1% they may strike it lucky but the rest of us chase it like lemmings to a cliff some of us stop way back some close to the edge and some fall, some of the big companies are reporting turnover in excess of 9bn which is truly insane, just one company, they know they are creating compulsive gamblers, they know people take there own lives because of it, it won't stop. But you can stop and you can help and educate others, I know what gambling does where it takes you and how it makes you think and rationalise, it never took me over but definitely close to the edge so I could see over.
Hi, I have viewed many of natasha's videos and I value them because I was looking for some strong research and exposure of the intentional design of the machines to actually create addicts and get as many people as possible playing until extinction, chasing losses, entranced in the zone, etc. etc. This expose' helps me to have compassion for myself. And then, knowing the facts! I must take responsibility for myself and my choices. I need to keep coming back to the facts of addiction by design. Cold hard facts ( old saying)! And another cold hard fact is that since I know these details , I am responsible to get help and to stay strong. All the psycho-emotional stuff is a life long exploration and being suceptable to a full spectrum of addictions is part of trauma . Still another fact is that I need to be both compassionate and responsible for myself and my health and growth in on the psychoemotional plane. If we skip that piece of the journey it'll be hard to feel happier in this life, even without gambling ( or other addictions). tara2
Hi.
Thank you for your reply. All points valid. We need to do what ever it takes to flip the addiction we have to something we can manage. I read a lot of posts here on this forum and get inspired to be a better me. If I can bring anythig back such as info or knowledge I will do so. After 28 years on this road it is my responsibility to give back what ever I can in knowledge if it helps.
I will close by a pretty good article I found online. http://blog.cleveland.co...dicts_arise_from_mi.html
Have a great weekend!
I read the article c43h. Thanks for posting the link. I am copy pasting a section from that article here:
Brain scans of gambling addicts and C*****e addicts, taken while they watched videos of gambling or C*****e-snorting, showed reduced pre-frontal cortex activity compared to normal people, according to research by Yale University neuroscientist Marc Potenza.
"The frontal lobe literally shuts down," said psychologist Heather Chapman, who directs the Brecksville VA Medical Center's gambling treatment program. The pre-frontal cortex "is like the mom or dad of the brain. It helps us make good decisions -- you've had enough; it's time to go home. That literally has been shown to shut down in the pathological gambler," as it is in C*****e users."
The frontal cortex gets numbed and it's in charge of making decisions that are discriminating what's harmful or or good for us. Well, I surely get that.
I don't think that anyone can pin point and describe the full nature of the world of pathological gamblers and the how and why of this insidious addiction but there is a huge amount of helpful information in this article and others. thx. again.
tara2
Hi Tara
Ty for the post and the good article. If many come together and share their discoveries we may find something everyone can use. I mean if the tools are there and it is up to the person to take and use them. I have been thinking About Potenzas sentence on Morbide and mortality rates sentence. I first started to come around when I decided that I was going to live throgh this addiction come hell or high water. When that decision was made it got easier to step out of bed in the morning. I still get some of these thoughts from time to time (ie get rich or die trying) but I kill them in my mind. No action undertaken by gambling is EVER going to get me to check out earliy. Life is way too precious for that. It comes down to flawed thinking again.One lives in a buble. Think everything will conform to once thoughts and I deas and then gets suprised everytime it does not work out. I have attached a seminar about dopamine release to the brain. This lady is far better to explain things than Dr Schultz who is perhaps the leading mind on the area.
Online casinos are Addiction Factories that play music for you when they steal your money. Retun to player is measured 1/10.000.000 spins . So everything they sell you reg jackpots etc you bear that in mind. A real slot is built up of over a thousand parts with over three hundred people working on it (Addiction by design) They need to get money out of this slots so everyone can get payed. And if we top that up with Dr Luke Clarks discovery that we gamblers get rewired to get excited on the near miss you will see the maths in this gets bloody unberable to fathom.
Change of scenery is a must. Get out of your enviroment and get buissy with something else.
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