by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Gambling Addiction Keeps You Locked in a State of Disconnection From Yourself and Life But You Can Free Yourself by Growing REAL
One of the most common but least discussed problems that many men deal with these days is an addiction to gambling which is unfortunate because gambling is literally everywhere:
According to the World Health Organisation, the global gambling industry now generates well over $500 billion a year which is an absolutely insane amount of money – especially, when you compare it to the whole of the global cinema box-office revenue which is ‘only’ around $30–35 billion a year at time of writing.
It goes without saying, then, that this means there’s a lot of gambling taking place every day all around the world but perhaps an even more mind-blowing thing is that so much of the industry’s revenue comes from people who are gambling repeatedly and losing money (people gambling at harmful levels generate around 60% of overall gambling revenue according to the same source as linked above).
Though for some people gambling might be something they do occasionally do for a bit of fun, for many others it becomes a compulsive behaviour that can lead to financial destruction, relationship breakdown, secrecy, shame, debt and – in the worst cases – the complete unravelling of their lives that can end in literal death (a lot of gamblers in debt end up committing suicide).
This article is an exploration of why gambling is so addictive in the first place and also why people keep gambling even know that it’s just making their lives worse and worse.
From a REALNESS perspective, the answer goes deeper than money and boils down to the need for a deeper need for a RELEASE from the TENSION of being unreal in the first place.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Gambling Addiction & The Casino in Your Pocket
Gambling is a particularly vicious addiction because whatever game you might be playing is literally designed so that the odds are NOT in your favour (the house always has a statistical advantage which is how the industry makes money).
To make things worse, though, modern gambling has another advantage that previous generations of gamblers didn’t have to contend with which is the simple fact that you can now gamble almost anywhere, at almost any time:
There was a time when gambling required you to literally get up and go somewhere – for example, to the casino, to the bookies, or to go buy a lottery ticket from the local corner shop but these days technology has changed the game and now the casino is literally sitting in either your hand or your pocket for most of the day.
Of course, I ‘m talking about your phone which can give you instant access to sports betting, online casinos, poker, slots, casino games, and countless other forms – all of which creates an entirely different and more hardcore psychological environment where there’s NO ESCAPE for anybody who’s addicted to gambling.
The temptation is sitting beside you on the sofa and in your pocket while you’re walking to work. It’s there when you’re bored, when you’re stressed, when you’re lonely, or if you’ve just had a crappy day, and so – if gambling has become your preferred way of releasing tension – the temptation is essentially calling out to you all day long without ceasing.
To understand why this can have so much power over people then we need to take a quick look at the mechanics of addiction in general – let’s dive in:
Why Do We Get Addicted in the First Place?
When it comes to realness, addiction ultimately comes back to something I call the VOID:
The VOID is the fragmented state of being we enter when we pick up SHAME early in life and become disconnected from the truth about ourselves, the world, and reality.
Shame isn’t simply feeling ‘bad’ about something you’ve done (that’s guilt which is another story) but about picking up and then carrying the core assumption about yourself that “I’m not good enough as I am“.
At a deeper level, this type of shame is a disconnection from truth because instead of observing things about ourselves and life honestly and accepting reality as it is, it causes us to judge ourselves and life and then reject very real ‘parts’ of who we actually are and what life is in order to remain ‘acceptable’ in the eyes of the world.
This type of toxic shame is what causes us to tell ourselves things like:
- “I’m not allowed to be like that“.
- “I’m not good enough“.
- “I’m not worthy“.
- “People won’t accept the real me“.
- “I have to become something other than what I really am.“
- Etc. etc. etc.
The end result of internalising and living according to these kind of limiting beliefs is that we create the EGO which is essentially the character we learn to play inside the VOID and therefore the unreal version of ourselves we believe we need to be in order to survive, belong, and receive approval.
The cost of playing this ‘character’ of the ego is that the very real ‘parts’ of ourselves that don’t fit the character get pushed into the Shadow Self and this just ends up creating tension within our inner experience of ourselves (because we’re suppressing what can’t remain suppressed and so we end up fighting ourselves).
All of this just serves to create tension…lots of tension because real ‘parts’ of us don’t just disappear because we refuse to acknowledge them – instead, they remain and lurk beneath the surface whispering at first for our attention but eventually screaming or derailing our whole lives until we actually listen.
In short, being fragmented and unreal because we’re identifying as the ego (the character we play in the Void) creates an inner sense of restlessness and purposelessness that leads to anxiety, frustration, dissatisfaction and the persistent sense that something is missing (which it is: your realness).
This just makes the symptoms of the Void even more prevalent which increases even more inner tension which brings us on to a fundamental law of life and the human experience:
Tension always seeks release.
Tension Always Seeks Release
Let’s repeat that (again) because this is one of the simplest and most powerful principles when it comes to understanding addiction:
TENSION ALWAYS SEEKS RELEASE.
This is really important to know because if you don’t understand where your inner tension is actually coming from – a disconnection from the truth leading to the Void – then you’re going to look for something outside yourself to make it go away.
In other words, you’ll spend all your time trying to fill the Void instead of focusing on healing the disconnection that opened it up in the first place.
When we don’t know this then we end up looking for substitutes for the truth (of which, of course, there are none) and the ‘substitute’ can be literally almost anything.
Some of the most common are things like:
- Drugs.
- Alcohol.
- Sex.
- Pornography.
- Work.
- Food.
- Shopping.
- Relationships.
- Social media.
- And, of course: Gambling.
Initially, these things can appear to work which is why they can hold so much power over us (eventually becoming the demons we have to battle):
You take the drug and feel release, you have the sexual experience and feel release, you throw yourself into work and temporarily stop thinking about everything else, or you place the bet and suddenly your attention is somewhere completely different and you’re in a world of possibility where all of your dreams could come true (hint: they won’t).
For a moment, the tension is lifted and the sweet release makes you feel light and even real again (even though it’s an illusion because the fundamental disconnection from truth remains).
But, wait, there’s more…
The plot gets even thicker because the human nervous system is incredibly efficient at learning what produces this release and makes you feel ‘safe’ and so you remember it for the future which means that when the tension of the Void inevitably creeps in again your brain says “I know what will make this go away” so you do it again.
And again.
And again.
Eventually, you aren’t simply doing something because you want to or even CHOOSE to but because you feel like you need to – in other words, it’s become a COMPULSION.
Congratulations because now you’ve created another source of tension which means you have to keep dealing with the original tension of the Void but also the tension created when you don’t get your chosen source of release.
Your addiction has become self-reinforcing.
The Gambling High Isn’t Really About Winning
This is where gambling becomes particularly interesting because we often assume that gambling addicts are simply addicted to winning money but:
The deeper addiction is the CHASE.
Think about the moment immediately after placing a bet:
The roulette wheel is spinning, the horse is running, the cards are being dealt, or the football match is reaching the final few minutes and – in that brief window of time – something extraordinary happens psychologically.
Possibility opens up, anything could happen, and the potential RELEASE of whatever tension you’ve been carrying will change everything.
For someone living in the Void, this can feel completely intoxicating because somewhere inside them are the persistent feelings and thoughts that haunt all Void-dwellers:
- “There must be a way out of this“.
- “There must be a way to finally become free“.
- “There must be something that will change everything once and for all“.
- Etc. etc. etc
In short, gambling offers the perfect fantasy of a life free from pain and tension:
Imagine winning £100,000…heck, imagine winning £1 million, paying off the mortgage, quitting the job you hate, buying the house or the car, taking the holiday, and/or becoming financially independent.
Finally, you can prove yourself, be somebody, be free, and escape from the SHAME of disconnection.
To a gambling addict, a bet is never ‘just’ a bet – it becomes a promise which is, really, the crucial point:
The gambler isn’t necessarily addicted to the ‘winning’ but addicted to the promise of what the ‘winning‘ represents at the deepest emotional level.
Freedom, possibility, escape, and the promise of ultimate release…
It all sounds great but the problem is that such promises can never deliver what a person actually needs because no amount of ‘winning’ can repair an internal disconnection from truth.
It’s a sad tale that gets told over and over again all across the planet:
The roulette wheel stops turning, the horse loses, the bet fails, and the app flashes another disappointing result so suddenly the gambler is back to square one.
The only difference is that now they’re poorer, more ashamed, and more desperate which all creates more of that inner tension so what do they do?
They place another bet because the next bet might be the one and so the chase begins again.
If you’re serious about overcoming the Void and living your real life then check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace.
The Ultimate Substitute
The main reason gambling can become so destructive is because a man addicted to gambling isn’t really chasing money but the feeling that his life could finally change.
He’s chasing the feeling that the tension could finally disappear and that they can finally leave the Void behind.
Unfortunately, there’s a fundamental problem with all this:
You can’t gamble your way out of the Void, you can’t ‘win’ your way into REALNESS, and you can’t buy your way back into the truth.
The only way back home is to return to yourself by transforming your relationship with yourself in life and this is where the process of growing real comes in:
Awareness (Deconstruct the Ego), Acceptance (Integrate the Shadow), and Action (Trust Yourself & Life).
1. Awareness: Deconstruct the Gambling Ego
The first step is to become brutally honest about what gambling is actually doing for you:
Don’t just ask “Why do I gamble?” but dig a little deeper by exploring what gambling is helping you to resist both within yourself and in your life as a whole.
What does gambling allow you to avoid?
What happens immediately before you get the urge? Are you bored? Lonely? Angry? Restless? Ashamed? Feeling unsuccessful? Etc?
What identity do you temporarily get to inhabit when you’re gambling?
Perhaps you’re the guy who is about to get lucky or you’re the guy who’s going to escape his financial problems.
Maybe you’re the guy who is going to prove everybody wrong or who is finally going to win.
This is EGO and it’s a temporary and unreal self-image that gambling bestows on you that gives you somewhere to go when you don’t want to be where you actually are.
Awareness just means seeing that clearly.
2. Acceptance: Find What You’ve Been Hiding
The next step is Acceptance which means facing and owning your shadow self.
You can get started by asking yourself:
What real ‘part’ of myself am I trying to escape when I gamble?
- Maybe you’ve been hiding your fear of failure or your buried anger.
- Maybe you’ve never accepted that you’re unhappy with your career or that you feel inadequate in general.
- Maybe you desperately want recognition or you’re carrying shame about money.
- Maybe you’ve convinced yourself that you’re supposed to have achieved ‘more’ by now.
- Maybe you’ve spent years pretending that you’re fine when you’re not.
The answer will be different for everyone but the principle is always the same:
What you refuse to accept creates tension but anything you accept can finally be integrated which means you no longer need to keep running away from unnecessary tension.
3. Action: Learn to Trust Yourself and Life
Finally, there’s Action which means that you change your behaviour and start living differently (not perfectly or dramatically – just differently to how you’re currently doing if you’re in the Void).
One of the key differences is that instead of automatically reacting to tension, you learn to sit with it and let it pass (you learn to urge surf).
When the urge to gamble appears, you don’t immediately obey it like a slave but you pause, breathe, notice what’s happening and ask yourself:
What am I actually feeling right now?
And then:
What would the real version of me do right now?
Perhaps you go for a walk, call someone, exercise, have the conversation you’ve been avoiding, or deal with that financial problem directly.
Perhaps you finally admit that you’re unhappy or even allow yourself to do absolutely nothing and simply allow the tension to exist without trying to escape it (you don’t suppress the emotion or express it in an unreal way).
This is an important part of recovery because you’ll begin to see that tension itself isn’t the enemy – it’s just information about energy moving through your system (emotions are “e-motion, energy in motion”).
This energy is pointing towards something that needs your attention…that’s all – it’s not physical danger, just emotional discomfort (which might feel like a threat but isn’t) so instead of immediately trying to release it through gambling, you learn how to understand it.
This is how you start becoming REAL again.
The Final Word: You Don’t Need Another Big ‘Win’
The great irony of gambling addiction is that the gambler is constantly waiting for one enormous external event to give them the freedom they’re looking for but freedom doesn’t work like that:
The ‘thing’ you’re waiting for isn’t coming, there isn’t a magical bet, amount of money, win, or future version of yourself who suddenly arrives and makes everything okay – there’s only the process of becoming increasingly more real about who you are, what you’re feeling, and how you’re actually living.
That’s REALNESS and it doesn’t promise that life will always be comfortable or perfect – instead, it offers something much more valuable:
You no longer need to escape yourself and life.
If gambling has become a serious problem then none of this means that you should simply try harder to resist temptation, of course – if you need it then professional support, gambling-blocking tools, financial safeguards, support from people you trust, and specialist treatment can all be important parts of recovery.
The deeper work, though, is in understanding what the gambling has been doing for you because if you remove the behaviour without addressing the tension underneath it then all of that unresolved inner friction and fragmentation will most likely just look for another outlet and you’ll end up replacing one addiction with another.
The goal isn’t merely to stop gambling but to become the kind of person who doesn’t need gambling to escape their own life.
This all brings us back to the fundamental truth:
REAL ALWAYS WORKS.
The gambling industry can sell you the fantasy of ultimate release, put a casino in your pocket, keep dangling the possibility of the big win in front of you, and telling you that the next bet might change everything but the freedom you’re looking for was never hiding inside the roulette wheel (or whatever else) anyway.
It was hiding on the other side of shame and the Void all along and the way back home is to return to the truth about yourself and life.
Once you see this, you’ll discover discover something that gambling could never give you:
You were never missing the thing you thought you needed to ‘win‘ – you were just missing yourself.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re struggling to get out of the Void and grow real then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you to shift gear and take real action.
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