Imagine that there is such a rehabilitation clinic for people who are addicted to gambling. Now imagine what they treat there without the use of pharmacology.
The main doctors there are gambling specialists, whose task is to convince you that you do not need to gamble. Your task, for example, is to prove that the patient most likely has a disordered game. In order to have long-term income, you need to have a gaming system. And not just a system, but a fairly innovative system of forecasting and risk management. Most likely the patient does not have it and never had it; otherwise he would have been successful and would not have ended up in rehab.
It is also necessary to find something for the patient to do instead of playing, so that he can occupy himself.
Now imagine that this gambling expert is you. What arguments will you give? What will you tell the patient about?
Please note that the patient will resist to the last. He will give counterarguments. For example, that he will get rich in the future, he’s just not lucky yet.
What other arguments do you think the patient will give? How do you respond to these arguments of his?
Luckily for gambling it's way easy for you to really get rid of it, especially if you haven't ruined yourself that much just yet. So therapy or rehabilitation are nothing but last ditch effort given to people who are so far gone that the conventional quit cold turkey's just not gonna cut it. And once again, luckily for them the current systems of treatment provided for people with gambling addiction work just as fine, and they don't need any revision or whatever.Plus in my opinion, giving the people who want to change their lives the very thing that ruined it is fucking stupid. There's a reason why people who were once alcoholics swear off alcohol and would never even let a single drop of it fall into their lips. Drug addicts do not get "micro-doses" so they can slowly feel better or whatever. They quit cold turkey.
Gambling's pretty much the same and you shouldn't think of addiction recovery as a gradual process that they shouldn't be shocked with. Matter of fact it's what they should experience first and foremost.