Excerpt
INTRODUCTION
Gambling is very popular in the United States as well as worldwide and is a very lucrative business for those corporations involved in the gambling business. As a result the gambling industry has given birth to millions of sick addicted compulsive or pathological gamblers who are caught up in the fantasy of the gambling addiction disease epidemic worldwide. This disease of the mind has reached epidemic proportions and is growing at a fast rate.
Gambling is accepted as normal behavior by many world governments and is a part of their socioeconomic societies. There is a lot of intentional denial about gambling addiction by governmental politicians and the gambling industry leaders. Addicted gamblers provide the majority of financial revenue for the gambling industry. This powerful addiction to gambling has been hushed for years and has been hidden and kept quiet in the mass media.
The gambling disease is a hidden disease because the illness is an addiction of the mind that is a mental, psychological, and a behavioral addiction. Powerful gambling addiction is a clinical disease that is progressive in nature. Gambling addiction can start out as recreational gambling and then turn into problem gambling and then to compulsive gambling and finally into a full blown pathological gambling disorder.
This gambling disease can also be influenced genetically regarding an addicted gambler’s personality, temperament, behaviors, and sociability. Many addicted gamblers can be dressed in nice clothes and be well groomed but can be a very sick person within their mind. A powerful gambling addiction is a thinking man’s disease and many intellectual thinkers succumb to a gambling addiction.
The disease can be arrested but is not totally curable. An addicted gambler with the gambling disease cannot gamble anymore or else they will continue in a path of self-destructive behavior. Many people can gamble in moderation and not become addicted. This book is about gambling addiction and the different manifestations of this progressive disease. Also included in the book are various observations about the gambling industry and the gambling world.
Las Vegas, Nevada, Atlantic City, and now Macau, China are the top three most popular areas for gamblers who want to spend their hard earned money gambling in the mega casinos or in the smaller casinos or corner bars. Macau, China is going to be bigger than Las Vegas and millions of Chinese citizens are becoming gambling addicts.
Gambling is everywhere. In Las Vegas there are even gambling machines in the corner grocery stores and in laundries. Today gambling can also be found on the internet, Indian reservations, riverboats, cruise ships, churches, and the stock exchanges. Many countries worldwide have some form of a gambling industry.
Gambling is also sensationalized on primetime television shows with the many celebrity poker craze tournaments, which are portrayed as a sport and is drawing in a younger audience into the gambling world.
There are also gambling game shows where the contestants are making gambling deals to win thousands of dollars or possibly a million dollars. These gambling shows on television are also showing kids that gambling is normal behavior.
Today there is some type of gambling in probably every state in the United States with the expansion of casinos being built on Indian reservations.
Gambling is a multi-billion dollar created industry that was designed to take your hard earned money. Even churches are involved in gambling with their bingo nights and raffles. Besides the corporations who are in control of the gambling industry; our local, state, and federal governments are involved with gambling.
Gambling for many people starts out by playing a gambling machine or a table game just for fun. The fun can turn into more than just fun and turn into a powerful mental gambling addiction. Some people will get addicted and others can gamble in moderation and not become compulsive gamblers.
My mind got addicted to gambling and I am a gambler that cannot play in moderation. As a result, my life took a detour through the various stages of a compulsive gambling addiction cycle. Today I have snapped out of my powerful addiction and am back on the right path toward living a normal life as a recovering gambler and I have stopped gambling.
This book is written from my personal experience with my gambling addiction and also my observations and knowledge about the various aspects of the gambling world and its environment. This book is also written in an easy to read format so that active gamblers, non-gamblers, and their friends and families can be able to understand better about gambling addiction and the consequences of this insidious addiction of the mind.
My personal hope is for addicted gamblers to wake up from their addiction before their life is totally destroyed. Many addicted gamblers have lost their families, homes, jobs, and have ended up homeless. Many will hit bottom and at the lowest point of their misery and depression will commit suicide. Others will become in financial debt for life and will spend the rest of their life restoring themselves back to some form of financial health. The fortunate gamblers who snap out of their gambling addiction will spend the rest of their lives recovering from their addiction and being restored to mental health and start living and enjoying life.
The book is titled “The Free Drink” because the free drink is the trick or gimmick that is used to lure people into gambling. Many gamblers will spend hundreds of dollars gambling and will give the cocktail waitress or bartender a good monetary tip. The gambler will go home and suffer from gamblers remorse once they realize how much money that they threw away gambling. They did get “free” drinks.
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