A Shanghai man was sentenced to prison for kidnapping his own granddaughter so he could maintain his gambling addiction with the ransom money.
Gambling addiction is tougher than expected. That's an ugly incident and this have been on the trends in gambling. In the first place, the Shanghai man mean no harm but only interested in accumulating huge money to continue in gambling, I know it's difficult to comply with the current situation but just look at it from another direction, the Shanghai man would have ask countless time but it turns out they've failed to give him money.
Gambling can be pretty addictive and approaching gambling with the wrong technique will be putting yourself in a compromising state or increasing your vulnerability. I think what mostly causes these behaviours in gambling is when people have wrong perspective about gambling. if people could only view gambling as an activity that's meant to provide fun to the gambler, then more people could be saved from the harms that gambling causes. Just imagine the unnecessary pressure and mental stress the man must have put his family through, it's true that he meant no harm but only wanted money to continue gambling or maybe to pay up debts he incurred as a result the gambling.
Mental pressures while the excitement and enjoyment combines, I guess same with what you mentioned it's addictive as there are many mixed emotions that can triggered addictions, if you mishandled those emotions it can leads you to force yourself to keep going back, there are many gamblers who push themselves into this kind of activities and failed to control their participation, leading them to create un-neccessarry reactions to put themselves into trouble.
The fruit that you'll be harvesting is something that you will regret for the rest of your life, gamblers who became addicted most of the time needed help with both professionals and their love ones as they can't carry the loads and made them to do things that unexpected or unusual from their usual bahaviors.