[acb-hsp] Gambling Vs. Other Addictions

[peter altschul]

How Gambling Can Kill You Faster Than Drug Abuse or Alcoholism
  September 13, 2012
  Of all the destructive habits in the world, gambling would seem 
to be one of the more benign.  It doesn't blow out your liver.  
It won't make your nose cave in.  Even after the most appalling 
run of bad luck, you can be reasonably sure that you won't be 
carted away, having expired with a mouth full of vomit.  No harm 
done.  It's only money.  You can keep telling yourself this until 
the moment you kick the chair out from under you.
  For the majority of addictions, how much you spend is regulated 
by how much the body can endure.  There is only so much heroin, 
cocaine or vodka you can consume before you end up in a hospital 
or a morgue.  Gambling is subject to no such constraints.  "The 
amount of financial devastation you can wreak plays a big role in 
this," says Keith Whyte, the NCPG Executive Director.  "You can 
bet $50,000 in a single hand, every minute."
  Suicide rates among gambling addicts are staggeringly high.  
The National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) has estimated 
that one in five problem gamblers attempt to kill themselves, 
about twice the rate of other addictions.  The reasons for this 
fact are both blindingly simple and impossibly complicated.  And 
the central befuddling fact is this: Gambling kills you because 
it doesn't kill you.
  Scholars of addiction point out that problem gamblers are 
subject to a slew of messy contributing factors and associative 
disorders.  "We've known for along time that problem gambling is 
not a standalone issueea"b says Dr.  Rachel Volberg, President of 
Gemini Research, which conducts gambling-related studies.  
"Problem gamblers are likely to have other substance abuse 
issues, usually alcohol and tobacco.  Depression and anxiety are 
also prevalent among problem gamblers."
  In terms of the gambler's tendency toward suicide, however, 
these factors serve only to cloud the issue.  The most reliable 
killer of people with gambling problems can be summed up in a 
single word: debt.  Because once negative equity enters the 
picture, gambling addiction moves into a category of its own.
  A study undertaken in Hong Kong in 2010 found that of the 233 
gambling suicides in the city over the course of a year, 110 of 
the victims had significant debts related to their problem.  The 
majority of these were male, middle-aged, married and employed.  
Few showed evidence of prior psychiatric problems.  They appeared 
normal in every way except that they had gambled their way into a 
bottomless pit.
  It's tough to put a number on how much debt Americans incur due 
to gambling: people lie about the problem; the landscape shifts 
too quickly to keep track.  We do know that callers to a 
Wisconsin helpline a couple of years back claimed an average of 
$43,800 in gambling-related debts-up from $36,000 the previous 
year.  One study estimated that US problem gamblers owe, on 
average, between $55,000 and $90,000.  Another reported that 90 
percent of problem gamblers use their credit cards to play.
  None of these figures, though, get to the heart of the issue 
like the following passage, which was posted on the NCPG website: 
st"I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to tell my husband 
that once again we have a major credit card bill on the way.  I 
swore to him that it would never happen again.  I believed my 
vow, especially when I saw how hard he had to work to pay off the 
last debt I ran up.  How can I tell him I've done it ag""st
  This is where, in terms of suicidal tendencies, gambling 
addiction leaves the pack.  "If you stop drinking, you can still 
go get a job," says Whyte.  "But once you've got a gambling debt 
twice your annual income, it's hard to come back from that.  In 
our society, living without money is a lot harder than living 
without alcohol."
  Gamblers who have landed themselves in debt, then, are no 
longer simply chasing a high, they are trying to evade 
catastrophe-z Whyte puts it, "You're always one bet away from 
winning everything back." And, again, there is no limit to the 
amount of money that can be devoted to this pursuit.  Unless the 
gambler just stops, which is unlikely without outside 
intervention, the problem becomes compounded with every attempt 
at a solution.  It is the cruelest catch-22.
  There was a story in the paper a few weeks ago about a 
Vietnamese gambling addict who, having been hounded by creditors, 
dug a hole beneath his kitchen and hid there for two months.  
There's a certain symbolic resonance to this story.  For people 
with this addiction, there is an overwhelming urge to vanish, to 
remove yourself from the world.
  "There's a sense of stigma and shame," Whyte says.  "A lot of 
people still don't understand that you can be addicted to a 
behavior.  People tend to view gambling as a moral failure." So 
adept are gambling addicts at hiding this failure, the people 
around them are often blind to it until the bailiffs come 
knocking on the door.
  As the problem progresses, pathological gamblers become 
insufferable, riddled with anxiety, anger and paranoia.  They 
tend to be deceitful, manipulative and preoccupied, and always 
seem to have forgotten to bring their ATM card when they go out.  
People get fed up with it; it wears them down.  And so the 
gambler eventually finds himself alone-which becomes especially 
true after the explosive revelation of his debts.
  The gambler's sense of isolation, says Whyte, is compounded by 
the "vast disparity of resources" devoted to treating the various 
forms of addiction.  "A problem gambler can find it much harder 
to get help," he says.  "Some people don't even know it's 
treatable."
  According to Volberg, fewer than 5% of problem gamblers enter 
into treatment.  Left unchecked, feelings of helplessness and 
hopelessness proliferate.  Very often, gamblers will come to the 
conclusion that there is only one way out.  About 80% at least 
stthinkst about killing themselves.
  We have no real way of knowing how many people follow through.  
Gamblers are, by nature, impulsive and secretive-the ones who 
leap from a multi-story parking deck after a bad night generally 
don't leave suicide notes, while those who do tend to gloss over 
the reasons for their self-annihilation.  Certainly, it's 
unlikely that there has ever been an autopsy report that cited 
bgamblingb as a cause of death.  Which is not to say, of course, 
that it wasn't.