The Insidious Thief

I have explored the reasons I have gambled psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, as well as through the lens of family history. All of them have yielded insights, but the immutable fact is none have offered a lifeline to stop. When you are alone in the room with the vexing, alluring gambling whore, no amount of analyses of your relationship with your mother, father, yourself and God is going to prevent you from slipping into bed with her; her appeal is too powerful. Her husband may be outside with a shotgun, or your wife may be waiting at home with your child needing to go to the doctor, but the attraction overwhelms any reasonable protest rendering you defenseless.

But I have learned that succumbing to the gambing whore is not a moral failure any more than an alcoholic relenting to a drink. It may be more a case of a spiritual deficit, the failure to accept that we are powerless and imperfect as humans. In the complex neural circuitry of the brain, our willpower is as useless as using a wrench on a circuitboard.

Researchers in this field will tell you gambling is not about the money any more than bungee jumping is about rope and freefalling. Gambling is a state of mind where money is the medium to the adrenaline. Money is the subsitute for risk; risk leads to adrenaline rushes. And therein lies the real payoff. I know people who can afford to lose money or have "disposable" income. For them money is still associated with the risk, but because they have so much it appears they are not exposed to the greater risk of jeopardizing relationships with family, friends, and work because the pecuniary loss doesn't create a financial crisis.

But I argue that even in this cirmumstance, there is a hidden toll to gambling. It is as insidious and debilitating as the child who plays video games hours at a time. The "feedback loop" that is created in the brain is the end game. As I heard it said one time, the compulsion is fed by the "doing and the undoing--I'm up, I'm down, I'm even, I'm up, I'm down.

Another way to say this is that gambling is not meaningful solely because it leaves gamblers winners or losers, flush or broke, but rather it is the action, the excitement, the escape. We all know the skilled card player who may win at poker just to move to the black jack table and lose it all back.

Framed in this way, I ask what is the real loss of gambling? Is it the money or the time and the wasted spirit that could be spent on real passionate pursuits?

I would like to escape to a tropical island, unplugged from the demands of life. For about a week. Any longer and I would wither away. How is this not the same with a gambling addiction?