Common Sense? Gambling Taught Me A Lot About Addiction
I was
seven years
old when the
pastor of our church in Philadelphia
refused to fulfill my mother’s heart-wrenching pleas for him to speak
with my father, a
compulsive gambler who had been using his paychecks to "feed the
ponies" as my mother would say. Then he would borrow
money from loan sharks afterwards to continue his habit. I wanted
more than anything to be able to do something to help our situation.
My brother, eight years my senior and top student in his class,
chose to remain aloof from
family matters, so I speculated this was an ideal opportunity for me to
learn more about my father’s problem as the first step in providing a
resolution.
I
started generating ideas of how my mother
could stop my father from diverting his paycheck from being delivered to
our house so my mother could use it to pay the mortgage and life's
necessities. When my mother surmised that my father must be getting
his check from the mailman, I asked my
mother why she just doesn't ask the mailman himself. At first, my
mother feared that if she asked Danny, our mailman, he might tell my
father. After all, it was his paycheck, and back then in the 1960s,
there was more emphasis on protocol than on logic. But I
disagreed. First of all, no one
likes to be the object of a lie. Second, who would Danny side with,
a compulsive gambler with a fabricated hard luck story who can't wait
fifteen minutes until the mailman comes to the house, or a woman trying to
feed her kids and pay the mortgage. HELLO! It's common sense.
Of course Danny was very sympathetic to my mother.
From that day, he never gave the paycheck to my father but
delivered it right to the house where he and my mother would spend 30
minutes talking about it. And soon, my mother had the whole
neighborhood clued in on what my father was doing. My philosophy was
that the more people know about an injustice the more attention it will
generate. But that's where I learned my first lesson about
addiction: You can't embarrass someone out of an addictive behavior
when that person has no control over their actions. Likewise, you
can't punish them because
they won't be able to do anything to stop it.
Regardless
what has been said about addiction, I disagree that it is mental
illness. From what I've seen through throughout my life,
psychological-based addiction is a misguided response to societal
pressures. It is therefore powerful learned behavior that the brain
reasons will solve a problem because it is delivered as a solution from
someone who is trustworthy. It is evoked through a complexity of
illogical thought processes that stem from a person's belief that what
they are doing is the right thing even when there is evidence that it is
not. I know that now having been lured into gambling
myself. Sure gambling is self-destructive, but even if you've
never won a dime, the idea that you can turn $20 into $200 or even
more is a lure, particularly for someone in the right position. By
right position, I'm referring to those who don't work or work at jobs that
don't pay enough to earn all the things that advertising tells us we must
have. Middle-age is the time when many people turn to gambling,
although you can be any age. I was 12 years old when I turned $.50
into $2.50 and then walked away with nothing. The reason why is
simple greed and the pressure to make more. We live in a nation
which demonstrates every day that bigger is better, winners are in and
losers are out.
So what does
gambling have to do with drugs? A lot. And only because our
society has turned using drugs into a gambling venture. And in a
land where bigger is better, more is better than less. So uneducated
drug users continue down the same path that amateur gamblers
roam.
After over a
year of losing at the casino, do you think it would be easy for a gambler
to stop? Of course not! It's not easy for a drug abuser to stop
either. Once someone crosses that threshold without an ounce of
education, they are gone. Gambling is impulsive, just like drug
abuse. It can be controlled and it can be contained. All it
takes is education.
A few weeks
ago, I sent an email to the Spa Resort & Casino here in Palm
Spring. I addressed it to Richard Melanovich, the chairperson of the
Cahuilla Band of Indians. The Indians operate the Agua Caliente
Reservation which means "hot water" and is appropriately named
because many local casino goers find themselves in that before long.
My offer was rather substantial. The self-destructive nature of addiction, therefore, is triggered
by a person's inability to resolve the underlying cause. The only
way to stall an addiction is to understand the root cause and recognize
that no matter how many times the behavior is repeated, it will not
produce an optimal, long-lasting result. As simple as that sounds,
it is nearly impossible to do since the problem is generally societal, and
addiction is the genetic response. Most midlife crisis winds up with
an addiction because the brain realizes that a pattern of behavior is the
only way that knows might lead to satisfaction. In other
words, the goal of attaining material possessions doesn't become one of
putting aside money and earning them, but rather to assume this is going
to be that lucky day or the perfect high, and from that all things will be
resolved. The fact that it's costing you everything in your life is
more reason to dig a hole that gets deeper and deeper until only sudden
dramatic personal illness, death or death of someone close motivates the
addict to thinking differently.
There's
No Way to Prevent Addiction But There Is a Way to Prevent Abuse
Sooner or
later, we all become addicted to something. Addictions come and
go. They are a part of life. The problem is not with addiction
but rather with abusing the object of addiction. Going to the casino
every day to play one dollar is a lot harder than not going at all.
It's even easier to play $10 or $100. The problem is, if you depend
on that money for living expenses, you may be out of luck. I used to
think that just realizing how much money goes into the casinos and the
hordes of money these people make would be reason enough to stay away, but
it isn't that easy. First of all, somebody's going to walk away with
a lot of cash, why can't that be you?
You know the
answer. For everyone that walks into a casino and wins, there are
hundreds who walk out losers. And that is no exaggeration. The
payoff for a slot machine is so minimal that when casino-goers think they
are having a lucky streak, they are willing to pour the money they just
earned right back into the machines. Again, this is what we learn in
the US. While addictive behavior may be genetic, abuse is learned
behavior... or rather, unlearned.
During the
last six months, I taught several casino-goers some rules about gambling.
Surprisingly, not one of them has gone back to the casino since
then. The reason, they tell me, is because the online gambling
program I gave them, was teaching them that they couldn't win. And
if they couldn't win at home, they weren't about to go back to the
casino. Most of the online slot machines are geared to drive you
into the casino. Not mine. It's a realistic authentic program
that matches a slot machine in the casino with few payoffs to the user and
plenty of overhead.
Medication
should NOT be a gambling game. Unfortunately, the war on drugs has
turned it into that. Imagine what our world would be like if the
original inventors of the horseless carriage (or what we call today cars)
had their way. When cars were first introduced, they were only owned
by the wealthy. There were no rules about driving and there
were few road that could accommodate them. No roads at that time
were smooth enough. In fact cobblestones were just about as smooth
as one could get. Then Ford came along and started mass producing
cars for a price that everyone could afford. Someone with common
sense thought about driver's education and the automobile industry has
been improving ever since.
You would have
thought that by now, someone from the medical community would have
thought: "Hey! Why don't we educate the general public how to use
this stuff?" But the medical community is quite different from
the auto industry. To understand this, we have to look at our culture.
Priorities in the American
LifeStyle
Anyone who
says that contemporary American are greatly influenced by their
Puritanical past have missed the boat. The boat that brought our
families here. Puritans may have been the early settlers during the
colonial days, but they were only a small fraction of the populations that
continually come here from all over the world. From 1600 to even
today, the largest percentage of our population came here to escape
persecution of one kind or another elsewhere. Initially, this was
religious persecution, but there were other reasons. Then there were
the opportunists who saw opportunity in specifically the tobacco
industry. These were mostly the sons of wealthy Europeans.
They introduced slavery to the South. At that time, slavery was
becoming less acceptable in Europe. Because of Queen Isabella, the
American natives were free from slavery. It was Isabella's command
that the Indians not be captured and used as slaves. Her orders were
obviously obeyed, and instead, African natives were shipped to the
colonies. In each town that popped up from New England to the
Georigia, there was scarcely anyone who knew medicine. Even as
primitive as it was, a doctor an apothocary were among the most respected
in the town. Americans were always in awe of physicians.
As wealth accumulated following the Industrial Revolution, medical schools
began to spring up everywhere. In those days, God was the most
important aspect of life, therefore the clergy were idolized. Second
to clergy were physicians, third, bankers... and so on.
About 1900,
physicians became more prevalent. Standards were established and the
medical community in America flourished competitively with European
doctors. However, in Eur And finally, there we The majority of
these people were considered misfits in the Old World. In the New
World, many of them found progress the US, physicians are idolized more
than any other person in any other industry. Physicians are
empowered by some ambiguous divine right. Not that they shouldn't
be, but do they deserve to be? self-medicate, a bad drug could have
consequences. Theoretically, addictions can be prevented very easily but they
must be programmed correctly. Just like the body responds to a
vaccine, the brain can be made to avert addiction. In a a vaccine,
the actual "product" being diverted is fed into the body in a
weakened state. For example, a virus is introduced such that the
body is able to develop a defense against it. The reason why drug
addiction has never been diverted is because the strategies we use never
expose the victim to the actual problem. For most individuals,
"Just Say 'NO'" is completely pointless. First of all, a
drug dealer is never going to approach a victim and say: "Hi, I'm a
drug dealer and I want you to try something that is really
cool." In that case, one could easily say "NO!"
But drug dealers are far more sophisticated. They are not stranger
to their victims. They are usually friends who don't deal
drugs. They rarely ask someone or tell someone to do
something. They show them. In fact, the typical way a child
gets involved with drugs is not through a drug dealer but by seeing a
pleasurable outcome that someone gets from using a drug.
Let's take a
story like Jack and Jill. We all know that Jack and Jill went up the
hill to fetch a pale of water. Then Jack fell down and broke his
crown and Jill came tumbling after. First of all, Jack being the
leader, it's really less important how Jack feels about Jill. Jack
might care a lot about Jill or have no feelings at all. What is
important is that Jill has at least some bit of respect for Jack.
She might like the cool way he dresses or she might have this mad,
passionate infatuation. But to make the association with Jack less
of a bond, let's say that Jill just met Jack and likes something about
him. Jack and Jill get together for lunch or to work on a project.
They are alone and Jack is feeling really good. Jill likes what she
sees and wants to know what's gotten into Jack. But Jack may be
evasive. He may even try to blow Jill off. Maybe Jack meets up with
one or a few friends who share the same connected behavior. Jill
surmises it's drugs, but because her genuine curiosity is so strong, she
is compelled to ask, even beg, Jack to let her inside Jack's circle.
By this point, "No" is not a word in Jill's vocabulary when it
comes to Jack. She wants to feel what Jack is feeling and will go to
all lengths to get there. This desire to "feel groovy",
"feel awesome"... etc. may not be as clearly worded today as it
once was, but that doesn't change the feeling. At some point, Jack
will break down and will show Jill what to do and how to do it, but he
will most likely be concerned that she doesn't do so much, maybe not
because Jack has any affinity for Jill, but because he is merely
selfish. But Jill might not "get off" on the dose that
Jack gave her or Jack might not be as sensible and might want "to get
Jill off" for whatever reason. But because all that Jill has
been told is to Just Say "NO", she has now exceeded to a level
where she is on her own.
Jill's
experience might be a bad one, in which case she will go back to her
friends and tell them the story and walk away from it -- thus, her friends
who like Jack may now be infected by the competitive nature of the
situation are all candidates to be caught in the web of addiction, and
eventually, this might intrigue Jill to return to Jack. Regardless,
without propositioning anyone, Jack has swarms of teenagers pulled over to
his side.
If Jill's
experience is a good one, she is more likely not to share the secret, on
the other hand, for a teenage girl to keep a secret, it's quite
difficult. Then again, because we live under the oppression of the
Patriot Act, Jill will be careful to conceal who she tells. When
Jill's doctor asks her if she does drugs, Jill will remember what she
learned and will "Just Say 'NO'". Thus, Jack pulls
Jill into a situation, which is carefully orchestrated and one day, Jack
may be long gone but Jill discovers that no matter what, she can't get
out. The the fact is, she may not even want to get out.
Had Jill
learned more about the drugs that Jack was using, she would have had
multiple opportunities to get herself out. Furthermore, had Jill
spent one semester working with patients the hospital who might be using
drugs and suffering from multiple problems. Jill's association with
those from the hospital would have strengthed her ability to resist Jack's
temptation. The more honest that her healthcare support system is,
the better off Jill is in making a decision that is the right
choice. Should Jill still decide to use the drug, it will be on her
terms only. She will know what dose level is good for her and will
command control over the situation which is more than anyone can
ask. Whaterver she decides to do, Jill will not let herself be led
into a destructive situation. Everything will be under her terms, and she
will be able to speak freely and openly with her doctor about it. A
good doctor will not force Jill to make a certain decision, but will warn
her of the consequences. Given this situation, Jill is least likely
to become an addict because she knows that's a state which interferes with
her plans for the future.
The way to stop a gambling
addiction or a drug addiction is much the same. You have to address
the root problem directly and fix it. Once it's fixed, the addiction
becomes more manageable. The problem is that the longer the behavior
is repeated, the less likely it's going to go away. The question is:
When does a behavior become an addiction
and not a solution. For this, I have my own definition: An
addiction is a repeated behavior that cannot be controlled even though it
may be resulting in harm to the individuals involveed or to those around them.
The underlying cause must be found and corrected before the addiction can
be stopped.
In my father's case, other physical illness
occurred that reshaped his quest for winning a pot of gold.
CAB
There's a group that puts
citizens with a commitment to change at the top of it all. Your
local AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) Community Advisory Board
(CAB) is dedicated to the process for promoting changes to not only drug
treatments but hearing your concerns about how your local AIDS
organization is operating to meet the needs of the AIDS community.
If you want to spark
changes in the way that HIV/AIDS organizations are doing business or if
you have an idea about improving AIDS research, or even if you just want
to learn and get involved, join your local AACTG CAB... become a member...
learn about the latest developments in drug treatments, nutrition, and
where to get access to the programs you need to maintain a quality of life
that suits your interest, make a visit to your local CAB. Each CAB
holds monthly meetings and sponsors trips to conferences and
seminars. The cost is FREE and your transportation and hotel
accommodations to conferences are covered.
If you cannot attend a CAB
meeting, contact the US Department of Health & Human Services and let
them hear your voice. Turn your ideas and opinions into
reality. The changes you introduce could help not only you but all
of us.
Copyright C
2007
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