Effects of Gambling

Everyone loves money! That’s an understatement at the least, but what people will do for money is the question. Lot’s of people have their careers and live off of that though there are some people who what to risk the money they have and try and make more and they do that by gambling. When you are gambling to make money instead of entertainment that is what definitely starts to cause some problems.

People are crazy about gambling 80 percent of Adults have gambled and approximately 1 percent of them meet the profile of a compulsive gambler and 3 percent have less significant but serious gambling problems. (“Compulsive Gambling” 2007)

Compulsive gambling is a sign of an emotional problem. The emotional factors involved are: inability or unwillingness to accept reality, emotional insecurity, basic immaturity, and lack of self-esteem. The person gambling finds that they are the most comfortable in life when they are gambling. Compulsive gambling brings misery and disgrace into the lives of countless thousands of men, women and children. The compulsive gambler is a person who is under control by an overpowering urge to gamble. Coupled with this is the obsessive idea that a way will be found not only to be in charge of the gambling, but to "make it pay" and enjoy it besides. This disease causes deterioration in almost all areas of the person's life. Gambling results in hundreds of billions of dollars in annual wagers. And for some people, it also results in compulsive gambling, or an urgent need to keep gambling despite the toll it exacts on their lives. (“Gamblers anonymous” 2007)

Compulsive Gambling can be put into two categories action gambling and escape gambling. Action gambling is when the gambler is addicted to the thrill of the risk. An action gambler loves the buzz of winning and will tend to gamble with games that contain other players so there is the adrenaline rush. Escape gambling happens when the gambler seeks to hide some upsetting feelings or emotional life predicament. The action of gambling is less important to the numbing effect of the activity. Escape gamblers prefer more particular outlets such as slot machines, where they can avoid human contact. Men tend more towards action gambling, and women tend to become escape gamblers.

A compulsive gambler likes to think that everything is ok and that there life is great and often tend to imagine there life with friends, new cars, boats, big houses anything someone could want. The bad thing is that a gambler never gets those things because whenever they win any amount of money they are so stuck on going back and trying to win more so they never spend the money it just gets cycled back into the system of gambling.

Compulsive gambling can have a dreadful effect on a person’s family in many ways from little problems to major ones. A compulsive gambler could be constantly bothered by bill collectors, be gone from home and not be able to explain where they were, losing time from work to gamble, can’t trust them with money, when they lose at gambling as soon as they get more money they are right back trying to win to make money to pay the bills that the person didn’t pay, people outside the family might start to notice the problem and hurt the persons and family’s reputation. With a compulsive gambler the worst things that could come out of it is that they could lose there family and friends and worst of all they could end up ending there life. (“Gamblers anonymous” 2007)

“The neurobiology of what happens when somebody is gambling is much the same as what happens when they are taking cocaine,” said gambling addiction expert at the center for addiction and substance abuse at the University of South Florida Linda Chamberlain on MedicineNet.com. (Villavicencio M, 2005)

One of the effects from a compulsive gambler with a family is that if they have kids they might take on the gambling bug. With the influence of family members gambling and the airing of poker on television nearly two-thirds of teens and young adults gamble in some way. There are 44 percent of teens who gamble but have no problem, then there are the 15 percent of teens who are at-risk gamblers and a at risk gambler is someone is on the border of normal gambling and having a addiction to gambling. There are teens who are compulsive gamblers in fact 8 percent of teens are problem gamblers. Starting at such a young age will only cause problems in the lives of those people. (Katers N, 2007)

With the popularity of poker rising from being shown on television and promoted by famous people the younger generations are becoming at risk for gambling problems. Teens today have big dreams of becoming professional gamblers by playing poker. In recent studies it was found that 70 percent of the youth between the ages of 10 and 17 have gambled in the past year and since 1988 that has