Gambling became one of the main problems of the modern society. Old people and adolescents, rich and poor, all of them may become the prisoners of this addiction and the only way out may be the treatment, serious psychological treatment, as gambling addiction is the disease and disaster of the modern society. I strongly believe that addiction to gambling is difficult to avoid and more and more people become the prisoners of this habit because of different reasons.
There are a lot of definitions of gambling, and it is difficult to find one which cover all aspects and explain the whole specifics of the notion. Peter Collins (2003) gives three aspects according to which the notion of ‘gambling’ was covered from different sides. First of all, gambling is and activity, where ‘two or more parties place at risk something of value (the stakes) in hope of winning something of greater value (the prize), where who wins and who loses depends on the outcome of events that are known to the participants at the time of the bet (the result)’ (p. 15).
Legalization is the main reason why people become gambling addicted, as a trick on people’s subconsciousness is played, especially on those who cannot control themselves. Turning to psychological factor in the gambling legalization, people think that if the activities are allowed, it is not harmful, and it may bring some profit. This is mostly self-deception, and the owners of the gambling business became to use it to make up profit, as the legal gambling has really increased lately. Lottery and casinos are legal in most of the states, except Hawaii and Utah (Vatz & Weinberg, 2003).
Another argument in favor of quick addiction to the gambling are the emotions, which people imagine for themselves and follow it. It is not a secret that different generations have absolutely different psychological vision of different things and they influenced absolutely differently, but gambling may become the addiction in spite of person’s age. Talking about gambling participants of older age, the 66 – 87 ages are taken into consideration. The main motives for the playing gambling were boredom and escape from routine everyday life (Clarke & Clarkson, 2008), while young people are interested in gambling because of sensory acuity and the adrenaline which is felt while waiting for the victory in the game.
One of the strongest arguments to support the idea of easy addiction is money. The problem of people who take part in gambling and want to win is that it is impossible to win more that the person has already lost, but this desire makes people addicted. This addiction is like the drug addiction, as people cannot imagine their life without games, they hope for easy money which they would win and for the life full of impressions.
These addicted people do not understand that it is the addiction and insist that they can quite every minute, but they do not want to. In realty, they have just used to play and they are unable to stop. Despite the fact that gambling is the addiction which easy to get but difficult to release from, it should be mentioned that people are different and all arguments cannot be applied on all people.
Some people claim that legalization of the gambling is one of the reasons why people become addicted. However, this view is mistaken, as gambling is legalized in almost all countries but it depends on the government and its laws the level of people’s possible addiction. British culture secretary Tessa Jowell said that British laws about gambling are the most protective in the world and that the British government makes all possible in order to make the gambling a special type of entertainment but not the addiction, which is very difficult to get rid of (Britain’s Gambling Laws, 2006).
Opponents of the claim that emotions are the moving power of addiction are also not so right. Taking into consideration fruit machine, and adolescents are interested in it more that other games as there is no need to think, you just have to wait for a chance to win. Emotions are not the reason here as people are interested in the process, than in the win itself (GAMBLING WITH A GENERATION, 2006).
The assurance that money is the main motivation is also wrong, as people in the modern world of computerization know that it is possible to program the machine in such a way that it will be impossible to win a huge sum of money.
In sum, playing gambling, person should be asked, ‘Have you more than once tried to quit or cut down on your gambling WITHOUT (sic) being able to?’ (Vatz & Weinberg, 2003). The positive answer is one of the first preconditions for the gambling addiction. British investigations show that gambling addiction in the British society is much higher than heroine addiction (Hickley, 2007), and such problem frightens. It becomes visible that psychological addiction is one of the most serious problems of the modern world and this is a disease which should be treated like alcoholism or drug addiction.
References
“Britain’s Gambling Laws ‘Most Protective in the World’” 2006, The Birmingham Post (England), p. 4.
Clarke, D, & Clarkson, 2008, “Gambling Behavior and Motivation in an Urban Sample of Older Adult Gamblers”, New Zealand Journal of Psychology, vol. 37, no.1.
Collins, P 2003, Gambling and the Public Interest, Praeger, Westport, CT.
“GAMBLING WITH A GENERATION; Children Will Be Turned into Addicts, Warns Professor the Government Employs to Advise on Casino Plan” 2006, The Daily Mail (London, England), p. 1.
Hickley, 2007, “284, 000 Are Gambling Addicts – ‘And It’ll Get Worse’”, The Daily Mail, vol. 20, pp 24.
Vatz, RE, & Weinberg, LS 2003, “Gambling, Psychology and State Politics”, USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), vol. 131.