You need to surround yourself with other things to do. Don't give yourself time to think about gambling and you'll find yourself in a much better place.
Yes, external help from our family members/friends will definitely help us not to think about gambling in more frequent occurrence. When we are giving some big time gap for our gambling activities, we can be sure that giving up gambling will become easier. Only the gamblers who are frequenting to gambling are getting addiction and finding giving up gambling is not easy.
It will become a hobby into which when a certain time on the clock ticks their feet are taking them into the gambling site.
Like you said it can be stopped once that person breaks that routine even with just for an hour or two.
That will be a big change. Until he gets to the point that he is supposed to be there but not anymore because of other activities that he recently discovered which makes him more happy