The goal of gambling addiction treatment is to stop the person from playing often or at all, goes without saying that there will be an attempt to slowly take the person away from their source of addiction and replace that activity with a different one that gives same levels of dopamine but one they can manage effectively and not get hooked on.
Exactly, you need to divert your attention to different things or habits. If you’re only restraining yourself without finding distractions, you’ll just keep thinking about playing and eventually fail in your attempt to recover. You should do other things you enjoy the most, and if that’s not enough, add more activities so you can avoid thinking about gambling. It’s important to do things you genuinely like so you won’t get bored or lose interest.
Well said. Deprivation therapy do really work for many addictions and is not limited to gambling addiction alone. When you are addicted to a particular thing that is negative or posses some kind of danger to you, the most likely best solutions to such kinds of addiction would be to stop or at least take a chill pill. The advantage of taking a break from any form of addiction is to allow your brain to relax and be able to reconfigure itself because it is really something that greatly works with your brain and affects the feelings. This makes Deprivation your first line of thought.