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Brain Patterns Give Clues To Why Some People Just Keep Gambling
Research from several UK universities, as reported by Time, indicates that the brain activity of compulsive gamblers shows a marked difference in response to pleasure-triggering behavior, which may help explain why they have trouble stopping:
[The participants] took an amphetamine capsule, which unleashes endorphins with similar effects to the rush you get from exercise or alcohol, the study says. An additional PET scan revealed that pathological gamblers responded differently to the drug. They released fewer endorphins than those who didn't gamble, and they also reported lower levels of euphoria on a questionnaire afterward. This might help explain the addictive part of pathological gambling: to get pleasure from the act, problem gamblers might need more of it or to work harder for it.
Did they always need more gambling to achieve some baseline satisfaction or have they just gotten habituated to gambling and it merely takes more stimulus for them to achieve the same effect? Have they developed a tolerance through frequent gambling or have they always needed more gambling since they started?
I would think since lots of experiences become less appealing after a while and need to be done in more intense ways to get the same "fun" out of them that pathological gamblers may be reacting in the same way.
Yet maybe some people are ALWAYS that way, no experience is intense enough unless it's done in some extreme way -- your so-called adrenaline junkies. It's not enough to ski down a mountain, you have to heli-ski into some mountainous backcountry in Kazakhstan riding an avalanche the last half of the run. Maybe gambling just isn't enough, they have to play for big stakes on money borrowed from a loanshark or embezzled from their employer.
I kind of curious about the dislike of gambling. I have nothing against gambling morally, but I just can't do it even though some of the games like craps can be fun as games and have odds that are about as favorable as they come in most casinos. Yet I like most other adrenaline activities.
That's also why people play Powerball, they only hear stories about the people who hit the jackpot, never stories about not hitting it.
Yes, there's something I find distasteful about states running lotteries for this reason. It's basically a tax on the stupid. Sure, some people play for entertainment. But I personally have known a few lottery addicts who were poor or senior citizens, and they'd shell out literally thousands of dollars each year on lottery tickets. (If only they would invest that money instead....)
And, as I always tell people: I never buy lottery tickets, but I only have a VERY slightly less chance of winning than the addicts. In fact, anecdotally this proved true for me in the past few years -- some members of my family have bought lottery scratch tickets as stocking stuffers. I've received fewer than 10 of these over the past few years, but I've won on 4 of them... Totaling $175. The last year this happened, I had a $100 ticket (more than anyone else in the family ever got, including one person who buys tickets regularly), and someone gave me another cast off that day, and I got $20 more.
And yet, I have absolutely no desire to buy more tickets...I took the money and enjoyed it. Same thing one of the few times I was in a casino (and the only time I gambled)... My father gave me $25 to play some slot machines with, so after spending about $7, I hit $50. I gave my dad back his $25, took the $40+ profit, and I've never played again.
Thus, if you're going to gamble, I highly recommend using someone else's money. It's proven lucky for me. :)