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Gambling? an Addiction? you decide?
The average Psychotherapist, Psychologist, "doctor" will define Gambling as an addiction based on incidents of people who are stealing, pathologically lieing, cheating, and out of control. Now they will always show you the obvious worst case scenarios, probably a late-teen started betting her allowance than in a few years found herself stealing $500,000 from her parents just to feed her addiction, not wanting to show her face because she is so ashamed. Now of course this is a problem, but lets be real here, lets call a spade a spade. All these "professional doctors" are doing is calling one probelm another problem and offering one solution for another solution. The true root of the problem is in the persons value system and moral discipline, all vegas and oddsmakers are doing are offering you a product, an excercise for your brain, a math problem, an arithmetic problem, and if you are any person with half a brain you know the odds, you know what your up against. Of course, vegas/oddsmakers are going to fudge some numbers and put some favor on the house to turn a profit, but who doesnt in this world, heck whos profiting most from the anti-gambling associations? the same people telling you that gambling is an addiction. I see it as the people who are selling you a recovery for a problem that isnt really a problem unless you make it problem is just as guilty/if not worse then the people who are creating the "so-called" potential for the problem. I look at it as Vegas/Oddsmakers create this box, and a large percentage of new players, compulsive-minded people, rich people, and people with nothing to lose fall into the box. And thats where they profit from, a large amount of these people, But those with a brain and can think outside the box can beat the odds and turn a profit without negatively effecting their life. At the same time their's these "doctors" who see all these people losing money in this box, living unhealthy lives, and they say, "Hey! we got a solution for your unhappyness!, spend your time and money with me instead!" They'll tell you consequences are what define an addiction, either financial, relationships, physical health, isolation etc. I agree but, the consequences are a result of your choices, direct choices, not-indirect choices like they want you to believe. They say that because of your direct choices of gambling, it will lead to in-direct choices of you eventually lieing,stealing, or cheating, to get your "high". Well I dont believe in that crap at all. I call bullshit. If I am going to place a wager on an odd and place my hard earned money on a probability, Im going to make sure Im getting the best probability of return, if not Im not going to do so. Its a matter of values.
Then they'll tell you stories of people who "started gambling for fun, small wagers, and then gained a tolerance and it was never enough" Well quite frankly then those people are morons and deserve to be poor and broke because they have the ability to make right and wrong decisions just like anyone else, they are accountable as anyone else should be and just because someone offers a potential for loss/or gain doesnt make them morrally wrong or make the so-called "victim" any less accountable.
Then they'll tell you about all these different types of people who are starting to gamble, at first they say "it used to be middle-aged men" but now "were finding more and more women doing it, and even kids" well how many types of people are left out of that category. Then they'll go a little more indepth, thos who "love attention, love the rush, drug addicts switching to gambling to escape-seeking behavior" "self-medicating, numbing" "isolation and depression" Well these "doctors" are just using what I like to call "their own odds" of how people "tend to feel" against themselves. Who doesnt sometimes feel the love of attention, the rush of adrenaline, who sometimes feels like they wanna get away or depressed. Everyone does one time or another in their life its called peaks and valleys we all go thru and what we choose to do during those moments are what makes up our time, our choices everyday.
In conclusion, I believe those telling you "gambling is wrong" "gambling is an addiction" are mostly mis-informed, they are buying into a format, a format of "recovery" that long ago was created as a direct response of someone profiting off anothers weaknesses, when at the same time, those offering you this new format for "recovery" are playing on more cunning and deceptive odds(whether they like to believe it or not) and weaknesses everyday people have and are profiting from it as well [Im not even sure whos profiting more at this point]. So who's in the wrong? you decide. but don't tell me Im wrong when I can live and manage a healthy lifestyle of crunching numbers in sabermetrics and be happy. Just because your unhappy, or it makes you happy to think your helping other people when your giving them information fed to you from "questionable source" doesnt make you right. You can't tell me where it will lead me, you can only assume, and assumptions are crap. bullshit. call a spade a spade. Id rather put my credit on someone being up front about their odds and what we know to be the odds, then someone deceiving(or mis-informed) playing odds of what could be or what might become from probabilities.
PS - I laughed so friggin hard when I heard DrDrew compare internet gambling as a "crack-pipe" So he says that If you have a PC/internet and availability of all these gambling sites (un-monitored and un-reliable odds) then you virtually have a "crack-pipe" sitting in your living room. Your friggin computer, the internet? Sorry but last time I checked the internet was a massive source of information/network, what you choose to do with it, healthy or unhealthy, is up to you, but you can virtually twist anything on the internet into something unhealthy, just by saying the amount of time you put into it. Oh and guess what there solution to this "problem"? An internet site called "eHealth" program where you can spend all your time using the internet to connect with other addicts and find the next "healthy" meeting or GA meeting....Hell I been forced to be in one for over a year and that shit was time consuming, depressing and unhealthy, I gained nothing besides what I learned in first month, after that it was same old stories, and if your not learning something new then what the hells the point.
Anyone else wanting to chime in on this, I would really like a anti-gambling percpective on this....give it your best angle
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Originally Posted by gryfyn1
