As you stare at the reels spinning, your eyes begin to widen as they begin to line up. You watch as they slowly start to match. A 7 appears and then another one. As you hold your breath, the hopes, and dreams of what if begin to flow in your mind. Finally, the last reel begins to slow and, of course, BAR.
Success was so, and a win must be coming soon! Destiny is calling your name, and you intend to answer. Inserting more bills into the machine, one after another, you continue to get more close calls but unfortunately, no cigar.
You have depleted your funds, and after multiple ATM trips have reached your maximum limit with nothing to show for it. Now you are down thousands while the machine sits there, not changing at all waiting to claim its next victim while you chastise yourself for being so foolish.
Today you will learn about methods to handle gambling addiction and some different strategies you can employ to help you when placing bets. If you are a person involved in the betting world and you think you may have or know someone with a potential problem, advise them to try out some of these ideas.
Methods to Stop Addiction
Once your loved one feels understood, they are more likely to take steps themselves to overcome their gambling addiction with one of these solutions. If you believe that your loved one may be suffering from a gambling addiction, please call Steps to Recovery at 866-488-8684. Find the nearest gambling addiction support group, make an appointment with an addiction therapist, and ask your loved ones for help. Track Your Thoughts. Majority of the gamblers have strong beliefs.
- Gambling is a temptation, but seeing gambling as an addiction is a significant step because it permits you to use skills from addiction recovery and relapse prevention. For someone in recovery, avoiding people, places and activities linked to gambling can help them avoid a setback.
- Whether it be drugs or gambling, addiction can unravel a person’s life if they don’t control themselves. Most methods of handling addiction are mental and require a certain level of willpower to stay committed to handling them. The hardest part of gambling will typically be knowing when to quit whether you are winning or losing.
Addiction is a scary thing that people need to deal with daily and can become crippling to some individuals if not handled appropriately. Whether it be drugs or gambling, addiction can unravel a person’s life if they don’t control themselves.
Most methods of handling addiction are mental and require a certain level of willpower to stay committed to handling them. The hardest part of gambling will typically be knowing when to quit whether you are winning or losing.
Stop Digging
Many people believe when it comes to gambling that just one more hand or push of the button will solve their problems and frankly, that is rarely the case. People think that if they keep digging a deeper hole, they might eventually strike oil.
When it comes to slot machines, it is a possibility because they are based completely on RNG, and you might just get that lucky push. The whole idea of “weathering the storm” until the machine picks back up is just a thought rather than factually based on how slots work.
There is plenty of superstition out there relating to slot machines and the juju surrounding them. Hate to break it to you, but no mystical voodoo surrounds them. They are just machines with randomized chances. Unless you are cheating, there is no magic behind the algorithm.
You have the same odds winning on your first pull as you do on your millionth; the machine doesn’t care whether you spent one dollar or one million dollars. Slots are random every single time the button gets pushed, or lever gets pulled.
When you are playing cards and games that require a bit more skill, you sometimes need just to accept when you have gotten beaten. It hurts our pride when dealing with other people and not just a machine, but at some point, you just must call it, lick your wounds, and prepare to fight another day.
Mentally Understand Gambling
If you want to stop addiction, stay away from the sources that are the cause of it. I am not a fan of just staying away from anything that is a bad habit. If you just happen to find yourself in an unavoidable situation, does that mean you can’t control yourself?
The idea of staying away from all vices is extremely difficult and finding yourself on a slippery slope seems like it would become inevitable. If you are to be a member of standardized society, truly avoiding everything that you might have an issue with is extremely difficult, if not impossible.
It is why the avoidance method is more so about understanding why you shouldn’t do something rather than just staying away from it. Mentally understanding that gambling should get associated in the same manner that you look at an arcade game.
You are playing an arcade game for the entertainment factor, and the goal is to be able to play that game until you are defeated. Most arcade games get designed where you will inevitably lose at some point and need to feed the game money.
The difference with arcade games is that you understand you will not be getting money back in return and are playing them for their entertainment value. You don’t play an arcade game and go to the ATM to clear out your account to beat it, do you?
Of course, you don’t because that would be ridiculous. That is the type of mindset that you should utilize when you are gambling because you need to look at it as entertainment. If you win, awesome, if you lose, ah well. Only play with what you are more than willing to throw into temporary entertainment.
If you believe you will get your money back when you are losing by just throwing more money at it, the chances of you losing further are very likely. Accept that gambling is a form of entertainment and you will have far less of an issue in abstaining from it.
Find Another Vice
When we are dealing with any addiction, it can become overwhelming where when we think of ourselves we think of that activity as a part of us. When we have a gambling addiction, we look at ourselves as professionals when we might just have a problem.
Sometimes it is best to step away from the whole situation so that we can develop some clarity in how we are truly behaving.
That does not mean it is necessarily easy to do that, especially with gambling because it is something we surely enjoy doing and we will continuously think about it.
That is why you need to fill your time with something else to keep your mind off gambling, and therefore you are not as focused on that addiction. The main thing to keep in mind is a balance when doing anything in life so that it does n’t consume you.
When people find something enjoyable, they tend to go overboard on it in most cases, and the word addiction can get associated with anything. If you end trading one addiction for another, you should ensure that whatever you are distracting yourself with provides value to your life.
Support Group
When it comes to any form of addiction, just being able to say it out loud to a group of non-judging individuals can be what is necessary to start dealing with the problem.
Many times, we often ignore that which we don’t want to admit is a negative in our lives.
It cannot get denied how useful it is to just talk with other people who understand what you are personally experiencing. Just being able to express the difficulties you are facing to others can help immensely.
Aside from just having people to talk to, support groups can provide the extra strength necessary when dealing with a hard situation. Often, people will have “sponsors” or others within the group that they can call when they are facing a situation.
A lot of the time when people are facing addictions of any sort, it is difficult to talk about the issues they are experiencing. Simply having someone that will listen to their concerns can provide them with significant help in dealing with their problems.
Develop a “System”
Personally, developing a system is the best method, in my opinion, to handle addiction because it is like you are going in with a game plan rather than just winging it. A system is not about a surefire way to succeed at gambling because there is none.
The only surefire thing that you can guarantee when it comes to gambling is how you intend to control yourself. Often it is about developing a sort of mental discipline with yourself and understanding how you act in situations.
An idea of that type of system getting applied would be to only carry a set amount of actual cash on you that you are willing to gamble.
I Need To Stop Gambling
The concept behind that gets based around when you are going to a casino and if you have a set amount of cash on you, then when you run out you need to go to an ATM.
![Gambling Gambling](https://www.cardcow.com/images/set369/card00008_fr.jpg)
How To Beat A Gambling Addiction
The hardest part about gambling, especially when at a table or slot machine, is getting up and walking away. Having to go to the ATM forces people to do just that and during this time, they will assess the situation. It is far easier to stop at that point than just reaching into your pocket and trying one more.
Another scenario is to set a stopping point for yourself that you can abide by such as when you double your winnings. For example, if you put $100.00 into a machine if at any point you go above $200.00 you would walk away or cash out.
If you want to go for another try, you would rinse and repeat with the $100.00. In that scenario, no matter if you won or lost on the second run, you would not be losing any money because you already cashed out the $100.00.
The whole concept is just giving you set parameters knowing when to walk away because chances are, you will eventually lose if you keep playing. That is the concept that casinos are built on after all because their goal is to keep you playing if possible because eventually, the odds are in their favor.
One final idea is to utilize a “gambling” fund that is strictly for placing wagers, and once it is out, no more bets for a period. The idea behind using this style of strategy is to keep people from continuously delving into their pockets to get more money to play.
If they receive winnings, they can place them into their fund, but if the fund reaches zero, they need to step back and take a break for a period. The goal here is to ration funds and not just go overboard to encourage intelligent wagers. This method is especially useful when applied to sports betting.
Often, you don’t realize how much money you might spend if you play twenty here, one hundred there, and so on. That money adds up to a lot more then you might realize. Having a specific amount set away for gambling will make sure that you don’t go over the balance point that you are willing to lose.
There are plenty of other different ways to set up systems and what is important is that you figure out what will work for you. Remember, it is smart to have a stopping point, walk away point, and a funding method specifically for gambling that doesn’t overlap with other finances.
Wrap Up
When it comes to gambling addictions, the goal is to find a way to utilize mental willpower in dealing with the whole “games of chance” concept. People always believe they know something greater or are so skilled they cannot get beaten.
The factor of luck will always be a part of gambling, and sometimes things just happen that are out of our control. The one thing that we as people do have control of is ourselves and how we choose to handle the issues of gambling addiction.
If betting is how you make your livelihood, sometimes it is in our best interest to step back and assess the situation instead of continuing to charge head-on. That does not mean necessarily walking away but rather just giving a moment of reprisal to clear our head.
It is in our best interests to be smart when placing down any wagers, and although the excitement may be overwhelming, it is vital that we don’t get caught up in the moment.
Remember, you want to give yourself every advantage when gambling and a rational mind is one of them.