Is gambling addiction a serious mental illness?
Any addiction can be a serious mental illness according to me. It is not going to let us chase our dream and root us in a place or position which we really don't want to be. Gambling addiction can really be a serious mental illness if we take it very serious and drop all our hard earned money into it. It creates unnecessary stress in our life and our normal life will be affected greatly. We will not be able to act normal with out parents, family or kids if we have the stress in our mind all the time. Gambling addiction arises because of two main outcomes while playing.
Continuous winning
When a person is gambling there is a 50 percent possibility that a person can win continuously. Of course it is purely dependent on the luck of a person but it is definitely going to create a great impact psychologically. When a person is winning continuously, they just start trusting their luck and want to win more and more. There comes greed and they end up betting lots of money, time and energy into gambling. That is when it starts affecting mentally. They will not feel like coming out of it because it is giving them good winning opportunities. When continuous winning happens, people start to think that their probability to win is now 100 % and they completely take away the losing part from their mind. They break if they lose even once. That is the effect of continuous winning and that directly creates a serious mental illness.
Continuous Loosing
Most probably a person who is losing money at the first instance will not have a great interest towards gambling. They get inspired by watching others win. If failure is hitting someone at the very first instance, there is a good hope for a person to completely come out of gambling. The problem happens only if they win continuously and failures hit them after continuous winning. People apply "Never give up" strategy over here and continue to play even if they are losing really bad. There have been so many great millionaires in the history who came to streets because of gambling. It creates a serious mental illness making them gamble more and more in spite of losing again and again.
Getting out from gambling is something like all other addictions only. Initially it can be really hard. Just because we saw a great opportunity to win lots of money there, our mind will push us really hard towards gambling. We keep thinking more and more about this all the time and that is what creates serious mental illness. People who gamble and lose lots of money frequently will not be able to come out of that habit and at the same time they are exposed to lots of stress and strain. They try to divert their mind on different things but they end up using drugs a lot to forget the stress. This can create both mental illness as well as physical illness.
To come out of all these things, it requires a big mental tolerance. People will have to think really hard and take tough decisions. At first it is going to be really difficult. Gradually when they start quitting and make their mind clear that they should never again go back to it, I guess it is definitely doable. I would say another perspective as well. Gamble only the money that you are ready to burn. If you don't have enough money to burn, then don't gamble. If you go with that mind set, even if you lose, it will not create any big impact on your mental strength. You will be able to take failures very light. And if you plan an allocated money for gambling purpose, you will also know where you have to stop your loss.
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Wow that's a great answer. :) More people should think like you too.