Monday, April 10, 2006

What causes or precipitates gambling addiction While it may appear that addictions are pleasure-seeking behaviors, the roots of any addiction can usually be traced to a wish to suppress or avoid some kind of emotional pain. Getting lost in hours at a casino table, at the horse track, or in the fantasy of how one will spend those millions if winning the lottery may provide relief from an unhappy life. Addiction is a way to escape from reality, from something that is either too full of sadness or too devoid of joy. Emotional trauma in early life may be at the source of many addictions. Gambling provides a chemical rush, a feeling of aliveness and excitement. If a person has numbed out emotions that have been too painful to process, other feelings have become dulled as well. Because the brain craves novelty and the body wants to feel alive, it is not surprising that risky behavior such as gambling creates that emotional charge, and that the rate of adrenaline pumping through the body results in an intense high that becomes more and more desired, addictive as many kinds of drugs. Read further...