Post
Topic
Board Gambling discussion
Re: Does refusal to play (deprivation) help cure gambling addiction?
by
mirakal
on 31/08/2025, 12:54:53 UTC
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.
Know your priority and stick to it. You don’t have to leave gambling in an abrupt way, but take one step at a time until you get used to it and find yourself not fond anymore of gambling, and you can peacefully live already even without gambling in a week. Once you made it happen, rest assured that you can recover from gambling addiction if you consistently avoid gambling.

Find another productive hobby and spend your time on it which you usually spend in gambling. It will be effective if you are determined to leave from gambling for good.