“If Russian writers did not play cards, then there would be no Russian literature,” wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky, a passionate supporter of the green cloth of the gaming table. For the sake of winning, he extorted the last money from his pregnant wife, dooming her to hunger and cold.
Pushkin and Lermontov, Nekrasov and Mayakovsky suffered from this addiction. In our time, gambling has taken the form of new computer games. They are easily addictive, you only have to go through several levels a couple of times, but it is very difficult to break out of this trap. Gambling addiction is difficult to treat.
Gambling causes: anticipation of happy winning moments
From a medical point of view, gambling belongs to the same group of diseases as alcoholism and drug addiction. But unlike the latter, it is devoid of classic symptoms. It is more social than medical in nature.
Experts say that the only thing worse than gambling is drug addiction. But, if a drug addict needs a strictly defined dose per day and no more, then the player’s desire has no limit.
It is not difficult to explain this from a medical point of view. Any player (even the most unfortunate) has happy moments of winning, during which pleasure hormones — endorphins — are released into the bloodstream. Gradually, the body gets used to the sweet moments of pleasure for him and begins to demand to repeat them, which makes a person take up a new game.
Both men and women play. But most often those who have a daily unrecorded income experience the fate. For example, taxi drivers. The sum of 1—2 dollars — is not that big for the wallet, and the knowledge that it can double or triple makes you trust fate. And it's good if a person was able to stop in time, but more often than not, something else happens: he starts playing daily to win back, and over time, the amount of losses increases.
“The father beat his son not because he played, but because he played back,” says the proverb, and it contains a deep meaning. It is the desire to return everything in full that deprives the sense of reality. The illusion of winning haunts until the poor fellow begins to realize the astronomical amounts and the impossibility of fulfilling debt obligations. Then decisiveness is replaced by despair, which often leads to suicide.
Teenagers are the "legislators" of new computer games
Any game is always a departure from reality. New computer games provide such an opportunity, which, first of all, clings to people who have not been able to realize themselves in society.
In real life, a person is content with a modest managerial rate. And in the game, he is a hero, Batman, saving everyone. And even if the game ends in defeat for him, he can always start a new computer game and, having completed all the levels, emerge victorious.
Teenagers can rightly be called "legislators" of new computer games. They contribute to the promotion of computer games in social networks. There they are picked up by middle-aged people in crisis, which is understandable. Most of life has been lived, there is nothing to hope for, so virtual life becomes the only outlet.
The best prevention of gambling addiction is... a sense of proportion. But getting rid of this addiction is very difficult. There are no special pills, no injections, and it will not be possible to encode. The only thing that helps patients overcome this condition is long conversations with a psychotherapist. The power of the word has healing power. But it is better to hear it in time than to understand it when relationships with loved ones are ruined for the sake of the illusory happiness of winning.
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