Dead Broke

Theories emerge on why it’s so hard to stop

1. Believe me you can stop, we can all stop. I'm on day 11 after 5 years straight of gambling or thinking of gambling every day. I still think about it non stop but I feel so much better not being trapped in that cycle anymore. My dad also had a gambling problem for 20+ years. Few years ago we discovered 30k of debt he racked up.
2. Like any addiction, compulsive gambling can be difficult to stop. You may find it embarrassing to admit that you have a problem, especially since many people gamble socially without developing an.
3. The financial fallout of a gambling addiction can last long past the time that the addiction stops. These 5 reasons why untreated gambling disorders are just a few of the reasons why you or your loved one should stop gambling and return to a better, healthier way of life.

By Chris Ison
Staff Writer

It seemed to take only minutes for Carole Foley to get hooked on video gambling machines in 1990. Four years later, she had forged $176,000 worth of checks. Said Foley, who has been clean for a year: “It was absorbing right from the get-go. I had no concept how quickly I was involved.”

For some it takes years, but Carole Foley seemed to get addicted to gambling in minutes.

It was 1:30 in the afternoon, Oct. 13, 1990. Foley walked into a bar in Bozeman, Mont., the first state in the country - other than Nevada and New Jersey - to legalize video gambling machines in bars. She stuck in a quarter and pushed the buttons.

How To Stop Gambling

The adrenaline surged.

“It was just instant,” she said. “Within a matter of two or three days, I was playing every day. Within a month, I started flying to Vegas because there was about an $800 cap on winnings” in Montana. She moved to Minnesota later that year, and started going to casinos.

Lesson: Gambling—Why It's Wrong and How to Stop. This lesson addresses two issues—gambling and addiction to gambling. It also relates those issues to your relationships with God and the people you love. A Christian in Arizona tells about her husband's experience.

By last year, Foley, 43, of St. Paul, had forged $176,000 in checks at her job at the E.M. Lohmann Co., a religious-products supplier in St. Paul. Three months ago, she left the Volunteers of America Regional Correction Center in Roseville after serving an eight-month sentence on seven counts of check forgery.

What happened to Carole Foley? And what happens to the estimated 38,000 Minnesotans who run into serious legal, financial or family problems from their betting on blackjack or ballgames or slot machines or horse races or bingo or the lottery?

Foley, who hasn’t gambled in nearly a year, doesn’t make excuses. She knows her problem is her fault. But she also believes that something in her physical makeup caused her to be more vulnerable than some.

And some researchers are beginning to agree. A predisposition

“It really looks like, in addition to the psychological factors, that there is a physiological component,” said Dr. Richard Rosenthal, a psychiatrist and nationally recognized gambling addiction specialist in Beverly Hills, Calif., who is conducting research into the physiological factors of gambling addiction. “More than that, there’s an organic basis, or predisposition.”

Such statements fuel the debate regarding how much control gamblers have over their habits and how to approach prevention and treatment. While there are hundreds of studies, the world is still relatively ignorant about what causes gambling addiction. It is often said that research into problem gambling is 20 years behind research into alcoholism.

Rosenthal and others have been conducting research on pathological gamblers for two years and have found that abnormalities in something called the D2 dopamine receptor may make people more vulnerable to gambling addiction. Dopamine is a chemical in the brain that acts as a neurotransmitter. It is involved in various disorders, such as schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease.

“We found that it was significantly abnormal in compulsive gamblers and that the abnormality could not be accounted for in alcohol or drug addiction or depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder or attention-deficit disorder or any other abnormality,” Rosenthal said. “The second thing we found was that the severity of the gambling problem correlated to the likelihood of the gene being abnormal.”

The study, which has yet to be published, involved 150 gamblers divided into four groups, depending on the intensity of each person’s gambling problem. The research showed that 73 percent of the most severe gamblers had the genetic abnormality. And the defect preceded the gambling, rather than being caused by it, Rosenthal said.

“This is hereditary,” he said. If the results eventually show a correlation between genetic makeup and gambling addiction, “this would be a great breakthrough in gambling research,” he added.

Easy Way To Stop Gambling

Rosenthal is not ready to say that the abnormality causes the gambling problem, and he notes that psychological factors are involved in the addiction as well. But the physiological abnormality may make people more at risk to becoming addicted.

Further, the research has found that gambling addiction seems to be in a group with a number of other disorders, including attention-deficit disorder, Tourette’s syndrome and possibly obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“The impression is that these are hereditary conditions, that there’s some organic basis for them, and that they seem to run together,” Rosenthal said. Attention-deficit disorder

A number of studies has found correlations between attention-deficit disorder and problem gambling.

Loreen Rugle of the Brecksville Veterans Medical Center near Cleveland, the first gambling treatment program in the country, found significant signs of attention-deficit disorder in pathological gamblers in a 1990 study.

She followed up by talking with people who knew the gamblers during childhood, and many provided evidence that the gamblers may, indeed, have had the disorder as children and were never diagnosed.

Dr. Sheila Specker of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Minnesota found that pathological gamblers have higher rates of other impulse control disorders, such as compulsive buying and compulsive sexual behavior.

Rugle is also working on research involving brain imaging scans - using a dye to take a picture of brain activity - to see whether differences in brain functions are revealed in problem gamblers.

Such studies, Rugle and others say, are not intended to suggest that pathological gamblers have no control over their habits. They note that gambling addiction is a learned problem as well and that addicts are not helpless to control themselves.

Henry Lesieur, editor of the Journal on Gambling Studies, is skeptical of many studies on the physiological aspects of problem gambling, including, so far, the dopamine study. He said the dopamine abnormality is present in 25 percent of the general population anyway.

“We don’t know very much about the physiology,” said Lesieur, of Illinois State University in Normal. “The physiological research, almost all of it is done on males; it’s done with very small groups.”

Some facts about gamblers are more clear. Many studies, as well as simple observations by gambling therapists, show that a significant number of gamblers are recovered alcoholics or drug abusers. Specker also found significant histories of substance abuse, depression and sexual and physical abuse in pathological gamblers.

To some, such findings support theories that problem gambling is mostly symptomatic of bigger problems and is something people use as an escape.

“Escape-seekers really gamble for time away from their problems,” Lesieur said. “They have a workaholic husband, for example, and they gamble, and they don’t have to worry about their workaholic husband. Unfortunately, that is an expensive way to spend your time. And they get involved in all sorts of financial problems because of it. So the irony is that . . . they haven’t solved their original problem; they’ve just escaped from it, and they’ve generated another problem. So they’ve got two problems.” From drinking to gambling

Alcoholism, too, is often used as an escape, which may explain the high numbers of gamblers - as many as 50 percent, according to some studies - who are recovered alcoholics. Alcoholics may kick their drinking habits, but later, unknowingly, substitute gambling as their means of escape.

Action-seekers, Lesieur’s other category of gamblers, are looking for excitement. Some studies have found that high numbers of problem gamblers are prone to boredom. They tend to be risk-takers. And since many have short attention spans, as Rugle found, staying focused requires fast, risky action - just the kind of activity involved in slot machines and blackjack.

Once the gambling is underway, many problem gamblers lose some of their ability to think rationally, which allows them to keep gambling despite negative consequences. They think they can win their money back, even though, were they to step away from the action, they would realize the odds are against them. Many have a false sense of their gambling expertise.

Recent studies in Canada and Australia found that slot machine and video poker players tended to make erroneous and irrational statements while playing.

“They believe if their luck is bad, it’s about to turn good, which is pure horse manure,” Lesieur said. “Playing a slot machine and thinking you’re going to win your way out of debt is not rational thinking.”

Whatever the cause of problem gambling, the effects clearly can be physical. Gamblers, researchers and therapists agree that withdrawal symptoms are common among recovering gamblers. “The first week that most gamblers are with us, it’s very common to get all sorts of physical complaints,” Rugle said. “Stomach problems, headaches, back problems, a lot of sleeplessness, a lot of agitation.”

Carole Foley still goes through some of those withdrawals, despite being clean for 11 months.

When To Stop Gambling

“I had physical withdrawals,” she said. “Extreme insomnia. Nausea. . . . Real on edge for about the first 45 days. . . . I know even today, if I get an urge, I get extremely anxious. My heart starts racing. Even sweaty palms. I can also get nauseous.”

Gambling Addiction

- Staff librarians Joan Freeman and Roberta Hovde contributed research for this story.