Gamblor’s World

By ROSS ROMANIUK, SUN MEDIA, Winnipeg Sun, Wed, June 6, 2007

Charlette says thinking positively and intuitive feelings won’t help you beat very long odds. (JASON HALSTEAD, Sun Media)

If you think the bingo numbers and spinning lemons are lining up in your favour, Val Charlette has a warning for you — the gambling gods are not.

The Addictions Foundation of Manitoba consultant wants just about anyone trying their hand at bingo, video lottery terminals or other gaming machines to ultimately recognize the risks of overconfidence in “their own efforts” to beat very long odds with unproven methods or unrealistic hopes. Because the most proven science of gambling numbers is that they’re stacked against you, she said.

“When you’re playing bingo, do you think positively? Do you think that thinking positively is going to result in a win?” Charlette, a gambling prevention educator with the AFM in Thompson, asked a crowd of dozens of representatives gathered at the National Aboriginal Gambling Awareness Conference in Winnipeg yesterday. “Are there gambling gods listening to my thoughts or my prayers? Probably not.”

It was a sobering message about the dangers of wonky strategies and “looking for that power within” when shoving coin after coin into a ringing, flashing gizmo.

A long list of red-flag mindsets were highlighted — selective recall in “remembering a win and forgetting or glossing over losses,” the near-miss notion in “justifying further tries” at a game after appearing to come close in lining up numbers or symbols and “personification” with a game in believing it’s a thinking entity.

As well, Charlette pointed to superstitions in keeping possessions or clothing on hand for luck, as well as cognitive distortion in believing “that every intuitive feeling is going to give them a win.”

IT’S CHANCE

For aboriginal gamblers, such conceptions could become an issue through their “very strong connection to spirituality,” she said. And she said aboriginals sometimes have “the gift of intuition and dreams,” they shouldn’t attempt to use it when chance is a major player. “Every time someone presses a button on a VLT machine, it’s just like when you throw a die. It’s one in six, no matter what.”

Copyright © 2006, Canoe Inc. All rights reserved.

ED - note that this is a very small sample size and the reported side effects may discourage pg from trying Celexa.

Compulsive gamblers may soon be betting on a new treatment for their addiction - antidepressant medication.
Thirteen of 15 compulsive gamblers who took the antidepressant Celexa in a Brown University study reported they gambled less and had fewer urges to gamble.

“At the start of the study, the gamblers were averaging almost $1 900 in gambling losses in the two weeks prior to the initial assessment. At our last follow-up, that was down to $145 in the past two weeks,” says one of the study’s authors, Robert Breen.

Gambling addiction has been highlighted in recent weeks by stories of South African families ruined by mothers and fathers who cannot seem to control themselves . The addiction shares many similarities with obsessive-compulsive disorders.

The 15 men and women in study were ready to stop their pathological gambling, the researchers say. Most gambled on slot or video poker machines. Their average gambling debt was $30 564 and their age average was 44.

The patients were given Celexa, an antidepressant in a class of drugs known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), and were asked to report to the researchers every two weeks over three months.

Breen says some participants reported improvement at their first appointment, suggesting a placebo effect because the drugs take several weeks to become effective. But he says improvements over three months showed the added benefit of the drug.

Several participants reported sexual side effects, such as impotence and the inability to achieve orgasm, Breen says.

By the end of the study, 13 of the 15 subjects (87 percent) reported spending less money and fewer days gambling. They also reported fewer problems with gambling urges.

Breen says he’s not sure how Celexa works for compulsive gambling; however he says other SSRIs have helped control other disorders like compulsive shopping and kleptomania.

The study, sponsored by Forest Laboratories, the maker of Celexa, was presented to the National Institute for Mental Health’s New Clinical Drug Evaluation Unit last week in Phoenix.

from: http://www.health24.com/mind/Sexual_dysfunction/1284-1300,12905.asp