Salon.com > Chris Wright

My gambling addiction epiphany

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Recently, the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry sent me a paper by a Dr. Richard Rosenthal, which contained what the author allowed was an "overwrought" scenario. A young crack addict has been given a choice. A man is holding a pipe in front of her and a gun to her head. Have a smoke, he says, and I pull the trigger. The addict responds: “Do I at least get to take a really big hit?”

The story is meant to illustrate the dissolution of willpower in addicts, a central point of the paper. The doctor goes on to remark that, "as a result of loss of control in the addicted state, people can make exceedingly bad and completely unreasonable decisions." You could take this argument further, however, and say that the woman here isn't making a bad decision at all, for the simple fact that there is no decision to be made. Sick as she is, the addict is no more able to resist her impulse than a Tourette's sufferer is able to control his tics.

“Workaholism” is real

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 22:38:00 +0000

You're sitting at your desk, scrolling through the Alcoholics Anonymous website, when your boss walks up behind you. Not the best career move you'll ever make, perhaps. But let's say you're looking at the Workaholics Anonymous site instead, the section about how even when you're not in the office you're still toiling away. What then? Does your boss give you a talking to, or does he give you a raise?

This rather glib question captures something important about how society views work addiction. Recently, a business strategy website published an article with the headline "Four Famous Workaholics (And The Secrets of Their Success)." It's hard to imagine any other addiction eliciting this kind of approach: "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Junkies," say, or "The Sipping Point."

You bet your life

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 17:20:00 +0000

Of all the destructive habits in the world, gambling would seem to be one of the more benign. It doesn't blow out your liver. It won’t make your nose cave in. Even after the most appalling run of bad luck, you can be reasonably sure that you won't be carted away, having expired with a mouth full of vomit. No harm done. It's only money.

You can keep telling yourself this until the moment you kick the chair out from under you.

Suicide rates among gambling addicts are staggeringly high. The National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG) has estimated that one in five problem gamblers attempt to kill themselves, about twice the rate of other addictions. The reasons for this fact are both blindingly simple and impossibly complicated. And the central befuddling fact is this: Gambling kills you because it doesn't kill you.