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5 Ways You Can Prevent Gambling Addiction
Public Group active 2 years agoGambling involves wagering or betting money or other valuable items to win something in return. Contrary to what you may believe, gambling is not just limited to betting on sports events but also concerns live casino games, the lottery, and racing, for example.
Generally, gambling can be pretty enjoyable, provided you have the right sort of betting limits and a strict bankroll firmly in place.
Yet the act of gambling may sometimes do more harm than good — purely because it can quickly become an addictive practice and may result in financial difficulties, legal troubles, and even relationship problems.
As a result, it can become a real issue for many people, and may result in gambling addiction if the circumstances are bad enough.
Fortunately, there are multiple ways to prevent gambling addiction. Here are our top 5 tips!
Find Better Ways To Cope
Okay, this tip may sound a little too vague, but hear us out! Having an alternative coping method in place could truly mark the difference between having a gambling addiction and not.
If you find yourself becoming very reliant on gambling as a means of stress or boredom relief, there’s something drastically wrong with your situation. This means it’s time to implement a change to your routine so you never find yourself back in this situation again.
Staying in control of your emotions will do wonders for minimizing your stress levels which will automatically reduce the temptation to gamble away your money. It may not completely eradicate the urge to gamble, but it will help you along the way.
Some alternative coping strategies may include:
Meditation
Traveling
Spending time with friends and family
Trying out new hobbies
You may even want to take yourself for a walk to clear your mind. Whatever makes you feel more content!
Join A Local Support Group
If you’re truly struggling after recognizing the fact that you have a gambling problem, you may also want to reach out and join a support group.
These groups can often provide you with the extra assistance that you need to succeed in your life. The best part? They’re usually run by people with a similar background as you, meaning they’ll be well-equipped to help you out in the way that you require.
These aren’t always professional interventions but are completely free and highly accessible for you to sample either in-person or online. Ideally, you should only do what feels the most comfortable to you.
By sharing your struggles with your support group when you are feeling the urge to gamble, you will likely find it much easier to prevent yourself from acting on your impulses. In the long run, this will help you to prevent gambling addiction from occurring (or re-occurring!)
Make A List of Goals to Accomplish
The key to preventing gambling addiction is to spend more time doing other things instead of actively gambling away your money.
This is because your brain gets used to working in a particular way when you spend time gambling yet it still needs to be constantly stimulated once you cease your gambling play.
Try to motivate yourself by setting tasks and goals to complete each day. These can be as small or as big as you would like, and may range anywhere from household chores to writing in a journal.
Whatever it is that you choose to spend your time doing, actively choosing to do something new will keep you on track and will focus your mind elsewhere — far away from gambling.
By turning your attention to problem-solving and achieving specific goals, you’ll be better equipped to cope with any gambling urges when they first appear.
Consider the Consequences of Gambling
Guilt, shame, and embarrassment are strong feelings for anyone who has recently struggled with any form of addiction. Gambling is no exception.
These feelings can be quite dangerous and too much of these emotions could encourage people to relapse or give in to their intense gambling urges. Yet some level of guilt and shame may be a great encouragement and an effective motivator to keep you in recovery mode.
As hard as it may be, sometimes you may need to reflect on the negatives of gambling to make sure your life stays positive. This includes thinking about the consequences of your past actions in terms of gambling so that you can avoid them in the future, and prevent them from spiraling into gambling addiction.
Some of the main consequences of gambling may include the following:
Financial hardships
Lies you might have told
The emotional toll of gambling
Identify Your Gambling Triggers
There are many situations that you may encounter that might work to trigger you into gambling away your money. Of course, this can be very disheartening – especially if you’ve worked hard to keep yourself gamble-free.
Fortunately, you can prevent a gambling addiction by working out exactly what these triggers are and how they come about. Once this is done, you can then figure out a plan concerning how to completely avoid them in the future.
Start by working out how you feel when you get the urge to gamble. If you’re stressed or feel another negative emotion pretty intensely, you may later find out that this is the one thing that triggers you into your gambling habits!
Your next step is working out a way to resolve these triggers so that the behavior stops. For example, you can learn new coping mechanisms to help you deal with any stress that you may be feeling.
Essentially, working out what your triggers are will work wonders to prevent gambling addiction as it allows you to focus on protecting your recovery.
Summary
To put it simply, gambling addiction is a real issue that should never be treated lightly or underestimated. Fortunately, it is possible to stop or prevent a gambling addiction in its tracks with the right kind of support and life structure.
By implementing the steps in this article, you are already setting yourself up for more success!
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