What Drives Us Throw The Road of Gambling?

(this is original content published in Bloom Magazine written in Macau and Hong Kong - China - when I was there in 2007)

When we think of driving we think in a car going somewhere. But what is that somewhere? Isn’t somewhere a place? Isn’t somewhere some place that we wanted to go? Yes. We went that place, because we wanted to go there, because we needed it. Why? Well, it depends. We could go because we must or because we like.
Let’s focus just our attention to the drive we do because we like. If we notice, when we do this, we’re spending money (gas, parts of the car, etc.), spoiling time, risking our life with speed and, possibly, a car crash. So, the main question is: why do we risk all this in order to have a moment in that place we go? Isn’t it all this that drives us also to gambling?
We gamble not because we will win, but because we don’t know if we can or when we’ll do it. This is why we like to gamble: the risk of loosing and the possibility of winning, and also not knowing when we’re going to loose or win.
So, gambling is entirely a game of emotions: our own. All gambling is our own precious personal and emotional game. We play with our emotions and that’s what drives us through the road of casinos, houses, and other places where we can gamble. The risk of feeling great is worth the risk of feeling bad. It’s all about the anxiety of the possibility, the depression of loosing, the increased heart rate when we think we can win in the next play, the impression that “tonight is our night”, etc. What mixed up feelings these are! And the reason is because we don’t know the outcome.
As we see, the most important idea we conclude from these aspects is that the road we drive is much more important for our emotions that the end point. This is not a matter of winning or losing. The road to that end point is where we actually live our life, our moment, where we risk everything, where we have feelings of luck or bad luck, where we have the urge to play and keep driving on that road to achieve that place, whatever that is. The apogee of that mixed emotions road we drive through is obviously winning. The problem is that we can get lost to that place because in gambling it doesn’t depend just on us. Of course you have to pick your car to go the place we want. This depends on us. But to do this, we have to check if the car, the wheels and tires are ok, if we have enough gas, if we know which road to take and if we know the way back.
This is exactly just as gambling! We need to listen how we feel and interpret our emotions in the road to the end point of winning or losing. Scientific research has shown that over 4% of adults who gamble have a problem with gambling, but researchers think the actual rate could be twice as high because of under reporting. That may not seem like a large number, but it is. Only a few other mental health disorders come with such a higher incidence rate, such as depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder. Teenagers are at five times greater risk than adults. Furthermore, the problem gambling rate has doubled between 1977 and 1997. No other mental health disorder has measured such a significant increase.
The main conclusion is that many scientific evidence say that when we hear what we feel we have more possibilities of controlling our behavior, because we can use our thoughts in order to do that. We cannot be blind to our emotions. They are our “best friends” when we listen to them and our worst enemies when we ignore them.
As a moral conclusion of all that has been said: listen and know your car and be careful with the roads you take to the end points you like. Your emotions will appreciate. As Mohandas K. Gandhi once said: “we must become the change we want to see”.