A paper delivered by Mr Tim Falkiner, Chairman, Know the Odds Inc at a lunchtime forum at Ross House, 247 Flinders Lane, Melbourne on Tuesday, 28 April 1998
Those who have been wounded by a problem gambler invariably ask a question such as, "How did it happen?", or "Why is he/she doing this?" or, "Why doesn't he/she stop?" Unlike the case of alcoholism or drug abuse, the emotional harm caused by problem gambling is aggravated by the incomprehensibility of the disorder. The victims cannot come to terms with what they do not understand.
Also, if problem gambling itself is to be prevented, we must be able to follow the thought processes of the problem gambler.
I will attempt, today, to describe, in layman's terms, what goes on in the problem gambler's mind, the mental processes that draw the problem gambler deeper and deeper into gambling in the face of devastating economic and emotional distress.
I am not talking here about the reasons why people take up gambling. There are many reasons: desire for gain, desire for attention, alleviation of boredom, intellectual gratification, belief in luck, need for excitement, need for fantasy, and the desire for competition are some of the more common.[1] What we are concerned with here is the core attraction of gambling that becomes harmful for the problem gambler.
In order to understand problem gambling you have to understand gamblers, and to understand gamblers you have to understand gambling. The following explanation is drawn from a wide range of sources and is not limited to works by psychologists but includes the views of gamblers and authors.
"Gaming is an enchanting witchery, gotten betwixt idleness and avarice."[2] This description of gambling, given in the opening words of The Compleat Gamester, published in 1674, is possibly the most apt description of gambling that has ever been compressed into one sentence. Gambling is enchanting, because it casts a spell; it is a witchery because it is regarded by many societies as sinister and it involves the magic of chance. Its excitement, fuelled by greed, dispels the boredom of idleness.
Early writers described the problem gambler as a person seized by an uncontrollable force. An early Indian poem[3] from 1500 BC describes dice in the following terms.
"Downward they roll, and then spring quickly upward and, handless, force
The man with hands to serve them.
Cast on the board, like lumps of magic charcoal, though themselves cold, they burn
The heart to ashes.
And Charles Cotton described it as: An itching Disease, that makes some scratch the head, whilst others, as if they were bitten by a Tarantula, are laughing themselves to death: Or lastly, it is a paralytical distemper, which, seizing the arm, the man cannot choose but shake his elbow.[4]
Last century, gambling was seen, like alcoholism, as a "habit" or "fascination" of a most intransigent kind. A Metropolitan Guardian of the Poor wrote:
"The habit cannot be eradicated even in old age and the seclusion of an infirm ward ... The fascination of drunkenness, which is decreasing, is great: that of betting, which is increasing by leaps and bounds, is greater."[5]
Even today, the terminology used to describe "problem gambling" is not settled. Rev Gordon Moody, who helped establish Gamblers Anonymous in the UK, uses the term "problem gambling" as synonymous with the terms "compulsive gambling", "gambling addiction" and "gambling dependence".[6] Earlier writers use the terms "degenerate" or "habitual".[7]
The term "problem gambling" is used by some experts to describe heavy social gambling where the gambler has personality and coping problems but, like the heavy social drinker, retains a measure of control. These same experts use the term "pathological gambling" to identify problem gamblers who are so advanced in their addiction as to be out of control and classifiable as suffering from a psychiatric disease;[8] in this sense a problem gambler is to a heavy social drinker as a pathological gambler is to an alcoholic.[9]
In this paper the term "problem gambler" is used in the generic sense to include all gamblers whose gambling is causing problems either for themselves or their families. This includes the heavy gambler and the pathological gambler. Note, however, that the more extreme behaviours described would be limited to the problem gamblers at the bottom, "out of control", end of the scale who would be referred to as "pathological gamblers" under the "problem gambler/pathological gambler" definition.
Sigmund Freud analysed the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky who was a compulsive gambler. Freud concluded that Dostoevsky's compulsion to gamble was caused by, amongst other things, a need for self-punishment derived from a deep-seated sense of guilt.[10]
Today, it is generally acknowledged that Freud erred in believing that a need for self punishment was a cause of compulsive gambling. Mario Puzo, author of "The Godfather", is a former self-confessed mild degenerate gambler. He wrote in 1976:
Nearly everything I have ever read or been told about why people gamble is just plain bullshit. Some psychiatrists claim gambling is masochistic, that gamblers want to lose to punish themselves. ... It's not that you want to lose what you have won. It's just that you cannot believe its possible to lose.[11]
Paradoxically, the compulsive gamblers themselves, seem incapable of explaining the phenomenon. Rev Gordon Moody, who helped start Gamblers Anonymous in the UK, recalling his 25 years with problem gamblers, made this chilling observation:
"... it is just the nature of that grip [the grip of gambling] which no member of Gamblers Anonymous has explained in my hearing. In the fellowship [of compulsive gamblers], it is taken for granted that everyone understands what it is."[12]
Moody points out that gambling is not a negative activity but that its appeal is positive.[13]
The secret of gambling is that it combines chance with risk. Moody writes:
"Playing with chance is exhilarating and captivating. ... When stakes are added, you play with risk as well as with chance."[14]
One card games expert wrote: "Simple gambling games run as fast as dice, because simple gamblers require only a rapid succession of outcomes to bet on ...".[15] Casino banking games are simple, fast, tightly controlled and involve no discretion on the part of the casino. Their purpose is to generate random events in quick succession upon which stakes can be laid.
Playing without stakes holds no interest for the gambler. Glasgow University carried out an experiment monitoring the heart rates of gamblers. In a simulated game of blackjack the gamblers' heart rates showed a tiny rise. The heart rate of the same subjects playing for money in a casino "shot up" by an average 25 beats per minute. One gambler's heart rate went from 72 to 130.[16]
The great nineteenth-century card expert "Cavendish" (Henry Jones) justified playing a rubber of Whist for small stakes on the ground that the stake served to "define the interest of the players".[17] In other words, even small stakes gave the players a tangible interest in the outcome of the game.
The effect of stakes can be illustrated by the game of Baccarat. The game involves dealing cards to a player and banker respectively to see who gets closest to a count of nine. There is no choice in the drawing out of the cards and thus no skill involved. One cards expert observed:
"To say that the actual play of Baccara is simple is an understatement. Most children's games are infinitely more complicated, and it is doubtful if Baccara played without stakes could hold the attention of any but the most backward child."[18]
A former Solicitor-General of England, Sir Edward Clarke described the game as: "... about the most unintelligent mode of losing your own money, or getting someone else's, I ever heard of."[19]
However, the writer David Spanier played Baccarat in Las Vegas and recorded his experience thus:
I bet $50 on Bank on the first hand and it lost - the price of dinner for two. I switched sides, marking my score card, and won. And then? Then I made the discovery which none of the theoretical accounts of the game had prepared me for. Hoyle had got it right. Baccarat is fantastically exciting! The excitement is not choosing whether Bank or Player is going to win, which is just blind chance. It is that having backed one side or the other, the suspense of waiting for the result, as the cards are turned and counted, is so thrilling. The tension comes from the fact that each hand, as it is played, can see-saw either way in the course of the same deal ...".[20]
One player in a short story by Max Beerbohm explained what he felt when he gambled: "... the proper tremors before a coup, the proper throes during a coup, the proper thrill of joy or anguish after a coup ...".[21] A "coup" is the determination of a gaming event: a turn of the card, a fall of the dice, the falling the ball into a pocket on the roulette wheel. The constant circular repetition of stake, event and outcome can produce a powerful Pavlovian conditioning effect.[22]
This is the "action" in gambling, a term first used by Damon Runyon[23]. The "action" in gambling is so strong for the problem gambler that it induces a natural high comparable to the artificially induced euphoria experienced by users of cocaine or amphetamines.[24] As one youth described it:
"As we played cards and the stakes kept getting higher, I watched my friend get more and more hyper. He'd start bobbing his head up and down, rocking back and forth faster and faster. Then he'd start banging his hands on the table like it was a drum and tapping his feet on the floor. He'd laugh and giggle hysterically, as if he was using speed or something."[25]
Mario Puzo described his feelings this way:
"... in my very worst days I was only a mild degenerate gambler which gives me an understanding, I think, of the syndrome. It's not that you want to lose what you have won. It's just that you cannot believe it's possible to lose. When winning you are convinced God loves you. You are convinced that some inner vision enables you to pick those numbers that were about to appear magically as the red dice came to a stop, as a dealer unlocked a blue-backed card. ... A winning streak inspired a belief in your own infallibility. Why stop then? Also, what non-gamblers do not know is the feeling of virtue (there is no other word to describe it) when the dice roll as one commands."[26]
Moody uses the simile of a ferris wheel to describe action gambling, capturing the idea of the circular, repetitive motion of staking, event and outcome.
"Action gambling has a circular motion like a ferris wheel. It moves rapidly from staking to suspense (when the wheel or the card turns). From the showdown to the payment of winnings, to staking again, round and round without pause. The peak and point of the experience is not the winning but the arousal and excitement that is enjoyed as the moments of suspense follow one another rapidly. Problem gamblers are caught on that wheel in a way that others are not, and until either all their money is gone or the action ceases they cannot stop."[27]
Moody points out that the problem gambler also gets on a merry-go-round of risk-taking in order to beg, borrow and steal money to gamble with and to keep his family pacified. This risk-taking augments the thrill of gambling. Problem gamblers at Pentonville Prison told Moody the closest thing to gambling was the act of committing a crime to get the money to gamble with.[28]
But why is it that not all gamblers become problem gamblers? The latest survey on gambling in Victoria shows that over three-quarters of the adult population engage in some sort of gambling.[29] However, the same survey shows that only 5% of Victorian adults expend more than 25% of their gross income on gambling.[30]
Problem gambling is an addiction. In order to understand why all gamblers do not become problem gamblers we need to have an understanding of addictions generally.
Just as with casual gamblers, large numbers of people indulge in the occasional use of illicit drugs such as marijuana, heroin and cocaine without becoming addicted.[31] In 1971, the Nixon administration, apprehensive about the return of USA servicemen addicted to the readily-available drugs in Vietnam, commissioned a survey. Of 898 servicemen interviewed, 1% had taken heroin before leaving for Vietnam and 20% had become regular heroin users whilst stationed in Vietnam. Ten months later, a follow-up survey in the USA showed that the percentage of heroin users had fallen back to the starting point - 1%.[32]
Recently, Durand Jacobs, one of the foremost researchers into gambling addiction has formulated a general theory of addictions which seeks to cover all types of addictive behaviour.[33] Jacobs argues that addictive patterns of behaviour may involve substances such as food, alcohol, other licit and illicit drugs as well as activities such as, but not limited to, gambling, overeating, sex, fire setting, overspending, and overwork.[34]
But not everyone is vulnerable to developing addictive behaviour. Jacobs argues that in order to be vulnerable, a person must have two predisposing factors. One, which is generally recognised, is a "childhood and adolescence marked by deep feelings of inadequacy, inferiority and low self esteem, and a pervading sense of rejection by parents and significant others."[35] As far as this second point goes, Freud got it right.
However, Jacobs has identified a second co-existing and interacting pre-disposing factor: "a physiological arousal level that is perceived as chronically hypotensive or hypertensive."[36] To use a television analogy, imagine that each person perceives the world through his or her senses which are like a television set. Normally, a person's television set is adjusted to a comfortable brightness and sound. However, some peoples' television sets have dim pictures with muddy colours and faint sound; others have screens that are too bright with garish colours and blaring sound.
The person with the dull television set (hypotensive) sees the world as a dull and boring place. To compensate, this person craves action in order to gain the necessary sensory input to bring him up to a comfortable arousal level. The classic example of this type of person was the screen character played by WC Fields. When WC Fields walked into a room he sucked as much action out of his surroundings as possible. He drank straight whisky. He fronted up to people. He spoke loudly. He womanised with larger-than-life women of the Mae West variety - voluptuous, loud and brazen. And he gambled.[37]
Although WC Fields took active steps to generate action in his environment, it may be that many hypotensive people are only raised into a comfortable level of arousal through chance of circumstances. Such is the WWI Sergeant Gort described in CE Montague's short story "The First Blood Sweep":
"The Germans were doing it well. All round us, above, the level ground was jumping and splashing up everywhere, just as a puddle does in a rainstorm. ... But Gort's face took me most. It had changed more than his voice. It had always seemed to me to be screwed up a bit, as if he were holding it tight in some shape that he thought was the best. It had gone easy now. He was like someone well rid of all sorts of anxiety. ... For now I had found out the kind he was. ... I had seen a man like him before, when I was a boy - one that was always glum and sticky and not at his ease till a sailing-boat had sunk with three of us on her in winter, a good mile from shore. He was a wit and a happy man for an hour, until we got through. And then he had gone dull again."[38]
How do addictive mechanisms work on vulnerable people? According to Durand Jacobs, addictive mechanisms have three qualities. They blur reality testing, lower self-criticism and self-consciousness and permit complimentary daydreams.[39] Addictive mechanisms enable vulnerable persons to "self treat" themselves to bring themselves up or down to a comfortable arousal level and avoid self-criticism.
Addictive mechanisms enable the addict to escape reality by entering into a dissociative state, a state of altered identity. Addicts differ from casual users of addictive mechanisms by entering into a dissociative state. Addicts tend to experience trances, take on another identity, feel outside themselves and experience memory blackouts.[40] This accords with the observations of Moody, who had no background in psychology but who sat through hundreds of Gamblers Anonymous meetings. Moody noted that problem gamblers had "an unusually active and vivid imagination (the dream world) and excessive impatience ..."[41]
Problem gamblers are typically hypotensive people, people who see the world as a dull and boring place and who use the excitement, the action of gambling to raise their level of arousal to comfortable levels. The hypertensive person would tend to use a substance such as alcohol, marijuana or heroin to dull his senses to lower his level of psychological arousal to an acceptable level. The excitement of gambling for the hypertensive person is exactly the opposite of what he wants.[42] As the Rev Gordon Moody points out:
"... gambling, especially "action" gambling, is not for everyone any more than any other form of risk taking is for everyone. Indeed, most people do no more than dabble in it - what appears to be the peak of life for one leads to fear in the pit of the stomach for another."[43]
Problem gamblers do not just happen overnight. Problem gambling has a progressive development.[44] Problem gamblers can be seen as going through three phases: the winning phase, the losing phase and the desperation phase.[45]
Gamblers describe the first phase, the winning phase, as exhilarating. Some compare their early gambling to having a wonderful love affair, others as a magic experience.[46] Mario Puzo describes his feeling as close to a religious experience[47] and Moody describes it as "a door to a magical new world", "the magic of Dr Who's Tardis" and "like the whole universe, bright with stars and full of wonder".[48]
In this phase, gambling is innocent and enjoyable. One gambler observed:
"Gambling in this winning phase was not painful or guilt-ridden or shameful. In fact, it was just the opposite, full of innocence, respectability, and happiness. Any pain I experienced was covered over by excitement and attention. I felt so good when gambling that I saw no harm in it , and I wanted my life to be like that always."[49[
Just how a gambler moves from the winning phase to the next phase, the losing phase, is disputed. Some experts hold that a big win is the major trigger. It is argued that the major win causes the gambler to become over-optimistic and to increase the size and frequency of his bets.[50] At least one other expert sees the "bad beat" as the catalyst for problem gambling, arguing that this puts the gambler "on tilt" and "chasing" losses.[51] Or, both theories could be correct and the transition could occur either way. As Charles Cotton wrote in "The Compleat Gamester" over 300 years ago: "Restless I call him [the gambler], because (such is the itch of play) either winning or losing he can never rest satisfied, if he wins he thinks to win more, if he loses he hopes to recover ..." .[52]
It is certainly beyond dispute that when problem gamblers enter the losing phase they "chase" losses.[53] This involves continuing to bet in order to win so as to recoup earlier losses. Pathological gamblers can continue to gamble in the face of the most distressing anxiety. This is because they learn to associate the distress of losing with the anticipation of the subsequent powerful reward of winning.[54] As one writer explains:
"A partial and random reinforcement schedule ... is the most powerful behavioural conditioner. A typical casino-gambling game is just that - a partial - and random-reinforcement game where rewards occur with irregular frequency."[55]
Put simply, when they are losing, gamblers keep going, lured ever onwards by the expectation that their luck has to change. Not only that, the losing gambler has dedicated himself to the task of winning the lost money back; as Moody explains:
"He is absolutely committed now. Like Macbeth he is in so far that to go back would be as far as to go right over - indeed further. To get right over he needs only that final debt-clearing, fortune-making win or succession of wins. To go back, he would have to settle all those debts one by one ... In any case there is his family. They despise him; some of them hate him. He must convince them by that big win that he was right all the time."[56]
Where the gambler has a family, in his own mind, and in his outward actions, he becomes like a hero out of a film about men engaged on secret war-time missions. He is taking great risks and undergoing great suffering for his family. At the same time he is unable to explain his increasing absences and is continually exhorting his increasingly dubious family to trust him.[57]
The third and final stage in the descent into pathological gambling is the desperation stage. What distinguishes this phase from the losing phase is that there is a frenzied acceleration in the rate of gambling.
One explanation for the desperation stage is that it is triggered by a growing sense of apprehension, a sense that even the most extreme exercise of addictive behaviour may not prevent the anticipated catastrophe that the gambler dreads will happen - when gambling is unavailable, or, worse, when gambling fails to produce its previous positive effects.[58] This generates a profound anxiety state in the gambler.
Moody points out that finally the gambler's whole life becomes a gamble:
"A problem gambler is one who is so obsessed with gambling that he interprets life in that way. He gambles at the tables, on the races, at the machines and he gambles when he sets out to get the money for what we call gambling in the ordinary sense of the word. When he does that he stakes everything: his home, his family, his job, his serenity, his self-respect and his life."[59] 60
1 A useful list is contained in Peter Arnold "The Book of Gambling" Hamlyn 1974 at pages 8 and 9
2 Charles Cotton "The Compleat Gamester" published in 1674 - Introduction
3 Vedic poem or hymn on dice 1500 BC from L J Ludovici "The Itch for Play - Gamblers and Gambling in High Life and Low Life" Jarrolds 1962 at page 28
4 Charles Cotton "The Compleat Gamester" published in 1674 - Introduction
5 Canon Horsley "Crime and Gambling" from "Betting and Gambling - A National Evil" Macmillan & Co Ltd 1906 at page 48
6 Rev Gordon Moody "Quit Compulsive Gambling" Thorsons 1990 at page 31
7 See for example John Scarne "Scarne's New Complete Guide to Gambling" Simon & Schuster 1986 at pages 9, 10 and 12 and Mario Puzo "Inside Las Vegas" Grossett & Dunlap 1977 at page 84
8 Pursuant to the American Psychiatric Association definition of "pathological gambling" as set out in the Diagnostic and Statistical manual DSM-III - see for example Review of Electronic Gaming Machines in Victoria April 1994 Volume 2 at page 107 - see also Richard J Rosenthal MD "Pathological Gambling and Problem Gambling: Problems of Definitions and Diagnosis" Paper No 5 in Shaffer & Ors "Compulsive Gambling - Theory Research and Practice" Lexington Books 1989 A pathological gambler is a person who is psychiatrically ill as falling within the American Psychiatric Association criteria for pathological gambling known as "DSM-IIIR". Effectively this means that: (i)The individual is chronically and progressively unable to resist impulses to gamble; and (ii)The gambling very seriously damages the gambler's life or that of his family.
9 To summarise, the term "problem gambling" can have three meanings. (i)It can mean all gamblers who experience problems with their gambling. (ii)It can mean gamblers experiencing problems short of pathological gambling. (iii)It can mean pathological gamblers. Meaning (i) embraces meanings (ii) and (iii). The reader should always be clear what meaning is being used.
10 Walter Wagner "To Gamble or Not to Gamble" World Publishing 1972 at page 217
11 Mario Puzo "Inside Las Vegas" Grossett & Dunlap 1976 at page 110
12 Moody at page 31
13 Moody at page 31
14 Moody at page 21
15 David Parlett "The Oxford Guide to Card Games", Oxford University Press, 1990 at page 23
16 Spanier "Easy Money - Inside the Gambler's Mind" Penguin 1987 at page 144
17 Parlett at page 12
18 Barry Hughes in The Educated Gambler quoted at page 82 of David Parlett "The Oxford Guide to Card Games" Oxford University Press, 1990.
19 David Spanier "Welcome to the Pleasuredome - Inside Las Vegas") University of Nevada Press 1992 at page 169
20 David Spanier (Pleasuredome) at page 176
21 Max Beerbohm "James Pethell" published in "Best Gambling Stories" edited by John Welcome, Faber & Faber 1961
22 Spanier (Easy Money) at page 144
23 Spanier (Easy Money) at pages 160 and 161
24 Haubrich-Casperson "Coping With Teen Gambling" Rosen 1993 at page 81
25 Haubrich-Casperson at page 82
26 Puzo at page 110
27 Walter Wagner "To Gamble or Not to Gamble" World Publishing Company 1972 at page 69
28 Moody at page 34
29 DBM Consultants Pty Ltd "Report on the Findings of Survey of Community Gambling Patterns Vol 1 (Victorian Casino and Gaming Authority) Information Victoria 1995 page 9
30 DBM Consultants Pty Ltd "Report on the Findings of Survey of Community Gambling Patterns Vol 3 page 25
31 Arlene Levison "An Addict in the Family" Penguin Books 1986 at page 15
32 Levison at page 14
33 Durand Jacobs PhD "A General Theory of Addictions" Paper No 2 in Shaffer & Ors "Compulsive Gambling - Theory Research and Practice" Lexington Books 1989
34 Durand Jacobs at page 41
35 Durand Jacobs at page 45
36 Durand Jacobs at page 42
37 The opposite type of person, the person with his personal television set turned up too high (hypotensive) finds the world too bright, vivid and loud and overwhelming. An example of this type of person was Henry Lawson, the Australian poet. Alcohol can act to reduce the amount of input. Henry Lawson died an alcoholic.
38 CE Montague "The First Blood Sweep" published in "Best Gambling Stories" edited by John Welcome, Faber & Faber 1961
39 Durand Jacobs at page 46
40 Durand Jacobs at pages 39 and 46/47
41 Moody at pages 12 and 13
42 Durand Jacobs at page 45
43 Moody at page 21
44 Moody at page 32
45 McGurrin at pages 47 and 48
46 Haubrich-Casperson at pages 102 and 103
47 Puzo at page 111
48 Moody at page 21
49 Haubrich-Casperson at page 103
50 Haubrich-Casperson at page 106, Henry R Lesieur PhD "Current Research into Pathological Gambling and Gaps in the Literature" Paper 13 published in "Compulsive Gambling, Theory, Research and Practice" edited by Shaffer, Lexington Books 1989 at page 233
51 Lesieur at page 233
52 Charles Cotton "The Compleat Gamester" (1674) reprinted by Cornmarket Reprints in association with Magdalene College, Cambridge 1972 at page 3
53 Romney at page 42, Haubrich-Casperson at page 106
54 Lesieur at page 232 quoting study of Anderson and Brown
55 Jerome K Skolnick "House of Cards - Legalisation and Control of Casino Gambling" Little Brown & Co 1978
56 Moody at page 27
57 Moody suggests the "secret agent" analogy at page 16
58 Applying general theory of Durand Jacobs at page 42
59 Moody at page 34
60
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