Well I’d rather be homeless in Cuba than homeless in the Uk. Have you seen the weather?This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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22-11-2018 08:03 PM #61
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22-11-2018 08:16 PM #62
I'm not here to change anyone's opinion but here's a little insight into the other side of things which may or may not be ofinterest. I am employed by a registered charity as a psychologist, counselling gamblers and their families.
Each and every working day I see broken lives coming through my office, gamblers and their loved ones too who are innocently experiencing the fallout of a family member's addiction, children very much included. Outcomes for many include bankruptcy, loss of relationships and children, homelessness and prison sentences. Suicide is the ultimate tragedy occasionally and I have to say I have counselled many individuals who have attempted to take their own lives. General symptoms can include:
Criminal Activity
Feeling Isolated
Mental Health Problems
Domestic Abuse
Financial Difficulties
School/University Difficulties
Drug Misuse
General Health
Suicidal
Alcohol Misuse
Family/Relationship Difficulties
Housing Problems
Work Difficulties
Anxiety/Stress
These symptoms are not rare but everyday.
Gambling companies not only feed addiction but actively create and enhance them, often surreptitiously in my view, by carefully considered psychological strategies that induce people to gamble and relapse. It is not enough to only say that people are responsible for themselves (which they are). People are often only as 'good' as they can be in difficult circumstances. We may consider here unconditional positive regard for an individual. We have possibly all found ourselves doing inadvisable things in our lives and so judging on that is not appropriate in my view. Perhaps one of the greatest ironies is that a significant section of gamblers bet simply because they don't have enough money to live on - which of course never works and there follows an inevitable slide deeper into addiction and its negative effects on their lives. In what must now be thousands of clients I've treated I have never witnessed one single client bet their way out of trouble permanently. Not one.
What help is available? Well the casinos in the city I live in make huge reported profits and fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs) in betting shops contribute approximately fifty per cent of the gambling industry's profits. Ever wondered incidentally why there are just so many betting shops on the high street these days? It's because the law regulates each shop to a maximum of four FOBT machines only. They therefore open shop after shop with four more machines. In the meantime and by comparison, currently, I am the only individual in the East Midlands of England and parts of Lincolnshire (approx four million people catchment area) offering free funded help. You may imagine that many gamblers, deep into their addiction become unable to afford other professional treatment at around fifty pounds per hour. A classic catch-22 situation.
You can possibly understand what my attitude to the Bet365 owner making such huge profits might be - at the expense of much human suffering and even deaths - most often not just by the gamblers themselves but their innocent families.
Should anybody in Scotland require free help and support they can contact RCA Trust. Your best first port of call generally is the Gamcare Helpine or Netline which can be found at: www.gamcare.org.uk
For those finding things getting out of control with their online gambling I can thorughly recommend self exclusion via a scheme that began in May 2018 called Gamstop. www.gamstop.co.uk The scheme is completely free and takes around ten minutes to register to it online from their website.
As we say, if you should have a problem 'the worst thing to do is nothing'.
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22-11-2018 08:21 PM #63This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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22-11-2018 08:22 PM #64
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Great post. Every part of it makes complete sense and applaud you for trying to help folk who're at their wits end.
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22-11-2018 08:42 PM #66This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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22-11-2018 09:06 PM #67
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Seriously though, you do a excellent work in what sounds like incredibly challenging circumstances. Please keep going.
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22-11-2018 09:50 PM #68This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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22-11-2018 09:59 PM #69This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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22-11-2018 10:34 PM #70
I'm a bit conflicted with how I feel about gambling and it's regulation.
For a long while I was a compulsive gambler, I hesitate to use the word addict. Online gambling never held much appeal for me; I just loved being in the bookies and would happily spend hours reading form, chatting to people and placing bets. When my girlfriend worked weekends I could happily sped whole Saturdays and Sundays in various bookies as well as the odd couple of hours here and there during the week. I was never under the illusion that I could 'beat' the bookies, when a CEO is walking away with £265M you'd have to be a fool to believe that. However I did live for the days I walked away with a few hundred pound in my pocket; I paid for a 2 week holiday from 2 weekends of 'successful' betting although I'm certain if I added things up gambling prevented a few more holidays than it paid for. The FOBTs never really captivated me although I did play them. I always regarded myself as a 'typical gambler' in that I bet on almost anything; on a Saturday I'd jump from horses to dogs to football to boxing and back again. It was actually a post by Stu in the Holy Ground on here that taught me I'm actually quite atypical of the problem gambler and it's far more usual for people to be drawn to one particular area of gambling. I think that's where the dangers lie with FOBTs in particular, they play so quickly that it's easy to lose hundreds in minutes. With a bad day on the horses there's always a few minutes breathing space between races to take stock.
I still enjoy a bet from time to time and being totally honest I wouldn't like to see gambling banned although I accept tighter regulation is definitely required. I couldn't tell you when I last had a bet (a 4 team acca at some point this season rings a bell) but with the NH season upon us I'll have 1 or 2 punts over the winter and Cheltenham is still a highlight of my year. I can't think of any particular reason why my gambling slowed down to almost nothing. I didn't lose a house, my family or whatever and the ads and temptations are still there. If I took a guess it's probably because I like being in control; there was an element of wanting to feel like I was in control when I started gambling and when it started to become a problem trying to wrestle back control was probably the buzz. I suppose I'm just lucky I was able to do that before I reached a stage where I had a real problem on my hands.PM Awards General Poster of The Year 2015, 2016, 2017. Probably robbed in other years
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22-11-2018 11:09 PM #71
Interesting comments PB, many thanks. One thing I am reminded of by what you say (and I really don't personally enjoy labels or find them helpful) is a comment by a prominent Professor in addiction I have been acquainted with. He attempted to define the difference between 'addiction' and 'habit'. In his view, addiction always takes away from one's life whilst habit does not necessarily do that, (think of drinking, say, five cups of tea/coffee a day for example as a habit).
Gambling can be that way too of course, unfortunately it's a very unpredictable outcome where it might lead. I tend to attempt to add a little perspective in these things and consider the potential gains (i.e. winning some cash) as against the potential losses (feeding and encouraging a potentially life-long and life-wrecking addiction.) Interestingly, I find that many gamblers have lost sight of this perspective and balance.
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23-11-2018 12:04 AM #72
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A part of me lives for gambling to be honest and the thought of stopping frightens the **** out of me. I don’t gamble as nearly as much as I used to because I have children and they’re provided for but after that I’m raging when I can’t put a bet on over a weekend or at night. Take just now, I’m up at 6.30 for work but I’m still up contemplating more bets on the next NFL game. Bet365 is the best out there also to be honest. I even use their app to check scores when no bets are on, which usually leads to a cheeky wee bet.
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23-11-2018 08:27 AM #73This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
I would restrict the advertising but banning gambling would be a disaster.
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23-11-2018 10:05 AM #74This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
People who gamble can be quite frightened of their urges and cravings, they can feel threatened by them and that the urges will always be in control of them. This is far from the truth in actually it though. To begin with, for the majority of people the cravings last a relatively short period of time - maybe 1-5 minutes or even just seconds. People sometimes feel it's longer because they tend to arrive in waves throughout a period of time, especially during inactivity.
Here's the good news though.
I often ask clients what do they feel creates gambling urges and seldom do they understand why. Basically though, urges and cravings are simply caused by reinforced gambling behaviour - it's the gambling itself that creates further urges to gamble and therefor a person becomes trapped in a vicious cycle of gambling-urges-gambling.
An intervention is usually necessary intitially that takes of the following away:
Money - (say by having your cash looked after for a period
The Means - (your phone/ betting shop/casino etc.)
Time - (Distracting yourself and keeping busy with other activities can help hugely.)
When the cycle becomes broken by behavioural changes such as the above the urges begin to decrease, you are not doing the very thing that creates the urges. Statistically this might be a decreasing pattern for say, a few months, people often tell me that the urges decrease quite drastically after a bout four weeks though. It becomes easier and easier, there's just a need to agree to that intervention and life quickly changes for the better.
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23-11-2018 01:00 PM #75
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Fair play to her, she’s worked hard and is now reaping the rewards.
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23-11-2018 01:11 PM #76This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
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23-11-2018 01:28 PM #77This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote
TABs in the pub are a bit mental and don't help anyone. But (and I'm going back a couple years here) they remain a bit old school in that it's football, dogs and horses as well as being rather complicated with the 3 totes. It's far less enticing.
Not sure where you live now but UK is a considerably worse environment for betting.Last edited by KWJ; 23-11-2018 at 01:36 PM.
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23-11-2018 01:34 PM #78
I'm glad this thread has returned to the major problem and issue that I took from the OP. Gambling in this country is mental and completely out of control.
EA sports and other games I'm less aware of can build up gambling appetites and give kids and adults that "one more pack" mentality. Nowhere I've been in the world (I've not been to Vegas!) Pushes you more into gambling and provides that platform than the UK. It is inescapable here.
Even the latest sky bet ad which is showing you ways you can control your gambling is done in a see how good we are, lose your money to us way.
"When the fun stops, stop." Too late for that when you're addicted eh.
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