Gambling is a process addiction, where instead of a person becoming intoxicated through consuming a substance, they become intoxicated through a behaviour or ritual. The behaviour itself simply stimulates the nervous system to release adrenaline and dopamine which lead to a build up of tension in the body and then a release or 'reward' once the bet has been won or the roulette wheel has spun.
Human beings appear to have ev
olved to have a particular relationship to risk and reward, being stimulated by their own nervous systems to take seemingly small risks in order to gain big rewards. The proposition that the gambling industry ostensibly puts forward illustrates this. For a small bet of £1, tens or hundreds of pounds are available. If we were to assume this as a basic truth (which of course, it is not), then any rational homo economicus would choose to gamble.
On one level, most people and most problem gamblers are aware that a fruit machine or a Fixed Odds Betting Terminal isn't simply a magic money machine. Most people understand that there is risk involved and that there might well be losses incurred. However, this thought, in the mind of problem gamblers is distant and superficial. Instead, the part of the mind that is fixated not so much on the utility value of money that can be obtained, but on the dopamine reward that is on offer will intensely over focus on reward and downplay risk.
This suggests that at least in terms of gambling (and perhaps in many other areas of human life from the economy to the environment), that human beings are normally poor assessors of risk. This fact is no doubt understood by the gambling industry and factored into its business models. It is therefore an important approach in a counselling session to help the addict understand the gulf between the fantasy of gambling they retain in their imagination and the reality of risk.
Simply understanding that they aren't and never have been engaged in a game of chance when using gaming machines is a very effective way of advancing this. When clients realise they have been wrestling with a computer programme that has been designed to calculate their choices, part of gambling's spell begins to fade.
None of this should be delivered as a lecture or a sermon of course (this is the antithesis of counselling); instead it should be explored with the client through their own experience. I will focus on approaches to this in the next post.