When discussing addiction, there is always one fundamental mistake. People take a position on the object of the behavior—for example, drug use, alcohol consumption, or gambling. These positions either condemn or declare that the use of the addictive instrument should be tolerated within certain limits, but they miss the point. The issue is addiction itself (to drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc.), as opposed to the normal relationship people may have with these kinds of stimuli or behaviors. Addiction is not an extreme vice; it is a breakdown in the ability to manage the vice. Whether the vice itself is judged neutrally, positively, or negatively is a separate matter.
For this reason, concern about a growing addiction, such as gambling addiction, is not the same as the usual debate about gambling. The endemic presence of alcoholism, and policies aimed at preventing an increase in new cases, are not the same thing as a cultural policy promoting “responsible drinking.” Indeed, inevitably, any campaign that promotes a behavior (while tolerating it) can only influence, even if only slightly, an increase in new cases. The mechanism of social alarm, in which use and abuse are confused, applies when discussing narcotic drugs, that is, substances capable of inducing addiction very frequently and rapidly. It does not work in the same way when discussing behaviors that also have a normal form, such as drinking alcohol or gambling.
The problem for people with an addiction is that, for them, this behavior is no longer manageable. Therefore, the real distinction is not between someone who gambles small or large amounts, but between the normal gambler and the pathological gambler. If prohibiting gambling would mean reducing the number of new pathological gamblers, treating a pathological gambler does not mean teaching them to gamble responsibly, nor does it mean increasing their awareness of how gambling can be harmful.
This also applies when trying to determine whether a pathological gambler is recovering or not. The issue is not whether they remember gambling with pleasure, but whether they still believe they can gamble successfully. The first aspect is simply the memory of a behavior that was initially exciting and often involved a win. The second, however, reflects an altered relationship with their own functioning as a gambler: the win is placed where the loss actually occurred, through the paradoxical mechanism of considering a win likely despite a history of financial disaster. The physiological gambler does not believe they will win; they try their luck and thereby have fun, or bet money on games involving at least some degree of skill. The pathological gambler believes winning is genuinely possible, and invents or attributes skill to themselves in an attempt to get closer to that win, even where there is no room for skill at all.
I once read an article in a weekly current-affairs magazine about a clinic specializing in gambling addiction. Some patients described their stories: there was the video-poker player, the horse-racing gambler, and then a compulsive “system player,” that is, someone who gambles on the stock market or lotteries by developing mathematical systems intended to increase the probability of winning. The article said that this person had squandered his entire fortune on this activity, and that now, while undergoing treatment, he maintained that after years of studying the matter, his systems actually worked. According to him, however, because gambling had become an obsession, he had been unable to apply them with the necessary clarity and patience, and this was why he had ruined himself.
The argument would make sense, were it not for the fact that it contains a paradox: the solution to pathological gambling lies… in physiological gambling! The gambler reveals his altered mental position toward the behavior precisely by planning a return to responsible, systematic gambling. His conviction that his systems are scientific becomes, in this case, an excuse for being able to gamble again.
The occasional gambler believes in systems, or at least enjoys believing in them. The pathological gambler believes in systems because he believes in winning; the systems are an excuse that allows him to believe in it more convincingly.
The pathological gambler, unable to continue because he temporarily has no money, plans a return as a successful gambler. He always plans a future win; he always imagines a future in which he will be a gambler. As long as this continues, the risk of relapse remains active, and it is often triggered by renewed access to money.
In other words, the thought, “If I weren’t addicted to gambling, I would be a successful gambler using my tricks,” is a diagnostic confirmation of pathological gambling and a cognitive distortion indicating that the brain is still oriented toward gambling.
Whereas this occurs harmlessly in the physiological gambler every time—someone who fantasizes about it but does not actually believe in it—in the pathological gambler this mental position coincides with relapse: they believe it, and therefore fantasize about supposedly infallible tricks.