I was just thinking about how I'v only had around thirty shares on my Facebook promotion competition where i'm raffling off five of my own handmade bead bracelets to two winners on 1st december if they 'like' the campaign page and share the photo.
I was thinking about writing a status to repost the picture out , something like 'only a few days to go , there's still better chance of winning this than at a bookies roulette wheel'.
Just from that one single thought, my pattern of thinking began to change and it was after all this I thought that still in the deep inner workings of my brain i still have signs of gambling addiction.
As i thought about my Facebook competition being better odds than a roulette wheel I found myself back in the old world of odds and statistics, figuring out how I had a better chance of beating the roulette wheel.
In my mind I was placing bets , knowing that you had a good chance of winning a certain amount of money if you placed a bet a certain way before thinking of the smaller chances I had of losing.
It was then that I had to shake myself out of my previous ways of gambling thinking.
It got me thinking again of how many people think that gambling addiction is about greed. Its easy to understand why people would think that as the perceived rewards seem to be money, which is the prize that the betting shops and casino's are giving out. But both gambling 'entertainment' and gambling addiction are about a completely different thing.
We'v all got this drive in us, to do well and figure out how to achieve something. It manifests itself differently in different people. But without that drive which alters our patterns of thinking , we wouldn't have the world we have today. Its in every creature, without it we would still be tiny bacteria with no driven purpose.
I realised how easy it was to slip back into that pattern of thinking, without it having anything to do whatsoever with winning money , just simply by thinking about the roulette wheel.
I'v been researching problem gambling-related crime in the UK since 2005 which consists so far of over two hundred cases of convicted people that had committed frauds, thefts and robberies. I was suprised to see how many bank managers and office accountants were stealing money from their companies to fund gambling addiction. Amongst the other cases were policemen, community support officers, postmen , footballers , carers of the elderly as well as many other people in our society. If you google "gambling addict court UK" or something along those lines, you will find the many many pages on google referring to these cases.
What i'm trying to get across is that there is a pattern here , the above professions that i'v just mentioned all involve critical thinking, finding patterns, making things happen. They all involve some sort of drive.
The concept of gambling addicts being low-lives , criminals, greedy lost souls needs to be done with. The modern-day betting shop and online gambling is destroying a lot of creative and driven people. Its in us all naturally to find patterns to help us evolve and that is why once winning EVER in a bookies is so damaging to our mental health. Everybody has some-sort of competitive nature, imagine seeing an apple in a tree that you think you have a good chance of getting , wether you climb the tree or use a stick to knock it down , it is those brain drivers that the gambling industry is heavily manipulating.
You will often find out how 'sheila won £500 last week playing Scamelot bingo' , or how 'david from essex won £7,000,000 on the lottery. Even more so we here how our friends and family won a tenner on a lottery, or fifty on a scratch card. More people giving lip-service to encourage others to play and for the lottery winners and lucky-scratchers.... well looking at gambling-winners track records....I'm sure we can be certain that it won't be the last card they ever scratch or the last time they pick out six numbers on the lottery. The chances are that they will gamble more than they ever did after that point.
I feel sorry for the winners I really do , just seeing how much damage winning just five hundred pounds on roulette caused, I can only imagine that surprising winning a million pounds on the lottery will serious mess up the inner workings of the brain for a very long time.
Its easy to say that people should have more control, and yes they should, but it's not about that. This is a serious case of destructive marketing that can only naturally be of harm to a lot of people, not just the so called 'vulnerable' , but some of the most driven, creative and brilliant people in our society.
Take care :)
