~ Emotional problem will arise as the main provider will have a big problem with his finances, gambling addiction affects the lives of everyone that surrounds that person, especially if he's already have an obligation to provide the needs of his family, I guess all are depends from how the person carry the load, addiction might not be possible if the person is busy taking care of his life and the obligation that he needed to take care.
That is certainly true. To avoid gambling addiction it's important to keep yourself busy with other things. Don't think it's boring in the first place. It's not. Life is also gambling in a way, and if you look at it like that, you'll find all those attractions of gambling in your life too. Gambling also can take part in all that, but only a small part, not the main one.
Yes, instead of gambling, find another means of earning. If that person really aims to earn money and does gambling thinking that he or she could profit from it and doesn't do well, then I suggest finding another hustle like investment or trading. In that way, they could divert their attention to other things. I personally once experienced being a gambling addict and experienced a great loss, but when I realised that I divert my attention to trading, which is also hard but worthy, right now even if I do gambling just a little or a few times, I still have a decent way of earning. It is risky, yes, but it's more fine than wasting too much money on gambling. I only treat gambling as my hobby and make sure I don't go overboard with my gambling boundaries. So I agree to divert attention to other things instead of getting stuck in gambling and suffering more.
If there's money that he can use to divert that attention instead of consuming more time with gambling, you can use that time to learn business or investment, not easy but there's also a good chance that you'll be able to read and understand the flow and you will be able to follow good patterns to make a successful journey both from investment and business.
All you have to do is to focus and use whatever resources that you have to make things as potential venue for earning profits.