Quote from: Davidvictorson on February 21, 2023, 06:52:47 AM

In this forum and other forums where gambling is one of the topics of discussion, one of the recurrent topics is people who write about how their gambling addiction has ruined their lives. We usually encounter topics like "Gambling ruined my life," "I lost all my life savings to gambling," "I gambled away my entire salary," etc. Then they go on to tell a sad tale. It makes me wonder: why do gamblers tend to wait until they have suffered a catastrophic loss or a string of losses before quitting or seeking help?

Because you can never realize the repercussions of your poor decisions until it effectively disrupts your way of living to the point of notice, most gamblers at least. They will carry on with gambling and may even spend their life savings away without care because "next win's gonna cover for it", and the moment they lose all of it, that's when reality hits them. I can tell because I've been with a couple of recovering gambling addicts for a good amount of time and they always tell me that "they couldn't notice until it's too late".

Quote from: TheUltraElite on Today at 03:27:29 PM

Quote from: Davidvictorson on February 21, 2023, 06:52:47 AM

why do gamblers tend to wait until they have suffered a catastrophic loss or a string of losses before quitting or seeking help?

I think it is due to the vicious cycle of loss-chasing the loss-worse loss and the denial of the fact that they are having a problem. Indeed accepting the fact that one has a gambling addiction is embarrassing to their therapist and family. This will not improve for those who mindset has the risk taking attitude, but some people understand their problem quickly and seek help quickly too and such people though rare often save themselves from catastrophic effects.

Often it is the family who have to bear the burden, so possible addicted gamblers should keep that in mind and how much of a shock that would be for them.

That plays a part too. The fact that they downplay their addiction as something ordinary affects their perception of things. That ultimately leads them to gamble more and more until the consequences of their actions become irreversible, like a divorce, massive loss of funds, or whatever eye-opening scenario. Sometimes they even see this as the world fucking them over, basically blaming it to someone else.