The Dynamics Of Internet Gambling

• It's cashless.  That's significant because the first advice you'll ever get about not getting into debt in general is to burn your credit cards.

• It gets celebrity endorsement.

• It educates, and starts you off at "no money" or "free" sites.

• It remembers you - your habits and your preferences are recorded in a database.

• It offers perks and incentives to gamble more and longer. (in fairness, not all sites do this)

• It's fast and can be done anywhere, increasingly for many people, from their place of work.

• It's anonymous.  There's no stigma attached to doing it all the time because you're invisible.

• It's a perfect compulsion for college students.  They spend hours sitting in front of a computer anyway, and many think they're smart enough to beat the odds.  Plus mom and dad aren't there looking over their shoulder, and they generally have a lot of money at their disposal.  Even though most of this money is budgeted or ear-marked for room and board, books, food, etc., if someone is a problem gambler, that's not going to matter. 

Getting To Know The Compulsive Gambler

Once they’re in some form of treatment, most compulsive gamblers will admit that they had a poor self-image, felt they were morally weak, and just not very good people.  In the recovery community, we call this type of self-image “feeling less than” other people.  Compulsive gamblers generally seem to be unwilling or incapable of accepting reality.  So since they don’t like reality, or can’t handle it, they prefer to slip in to the fantasy world of gambling where they know the rules of that world, and they know their role in that world.  (Kind of sounds like people addicted to online games doesn’t it?)

Studies have indicated that people who have pathological gambling problems also tend to have concurrent psychiatric symptoms.  These include suicidal ideation (forming ideas about suicide or having thoughts about suicide), a past history of treatment for psychological problems, and anger management problems.  In most cases, they have never sought treatment for these problems in the past.

Problem Gamblers Come In Different "Flavors"

To truly understand the problem gambler, we must recognize that there are differences as to the types of problem gamblers.  These are the three definable types including their characteristics:

The "Normal" Problem Gambler

• Probably had a stable childhood and family history.

• Their gambling and problem gambling occurs later in life, as opposed to starting in their teens or early twenties.

• They have a shorter period of excessive gambling, and their financial problems are less severe.

• They don't have much history of mental illness prior to developing their gambling problem.

• Any depression or anxiety they do have is usually attributable to problems caused by their gambling, versus issues from before they became problem gamblers.  As a result, once their problem gambling is addressed, their depression and anxiety tend to fade as well.

• This type of gambler is particularly well-suited to counseling, cognitive behavioral therapy, and short-term solution-focused therapy.

• Normal problem gamblers tend to do very well in treatment, and are often successful at making changes to their problem gambling behavior in a short period of time, and with minimal treatment intervention.

• They are also more successful at controlled gambling than the other two groups we'll discuss in a moment.

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