In some cases gamblers choose to gamble as part of their entertainment to escape and forget their problems. In fact it is not right to consider it as a solution as one can forget for a while but it can cause long term problems. Socially or state-wise, a gambler is out of frustration at being deprived of living the life he wants because of their wrong decisions. Attempts to escape from life backfires severely and he drives himself to madness and loses at every step. You should understand the meaning of life and reduce the tendency to gamble for correction. The society or the state abdicates your responsibility if you do not present your efforts positively. As you agreed that the choice to go on vacation during the problem I agree with you but besides the effort to find the right idea in the spare time.
Using gambling as a possible escape from reality and trying to feel better isn't a better way if handling such as you are going to be giving temporary solutions to a permanent problem, facing the reality of the problem and getting it solved at onec is the only and best way to getting such off your shoulders and seeing that you don't suffer such issues again, you gamble to escape and sadly end up still coming back to he issues after the moments of gambling.
Some people have seen gambling as an escape from poverty but in reality, not everyone will have this kind of success to actually making it through gambling. Some are still struggling with making profit maybe because of insufficient experience or the kind of bets they are always betting. Not everybody that see gambling as an escape from poverty will actually make it which is why we don't have to look at other people's results and hope to have similar one. Everyone has different input rate so we should not expect to see similar results. Those that have the funds and are disciplined will always make good profits from gambling, but the greedy ones will always complain of having lower success rate as gamblers.