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?
Simple, it's because most gambling addicts doesn't even know that they are already addicted to it and doesn't even know as well that they are already swimming in deep scary waters which makes them quite hard to help even if they already realized that they needed it, as by that time, it's a bit too late for them as they are too far from anyone's reach.
What they know was that they are just having fun and all until the day that they realize that they are too far away from the intended U-Turn slot and the only remaining way is to face the consequence that they got themselves. But eventually, they will recover but they learned it the hard way.