In 1891, the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch was walking with some friends across a fjord near Oslo. Without warning, something happened to him that caused him to step aside to the side of the road to contemplate the landscape. “The sky turned blood red, and I stopped and leaned against the fence, very tired – blood and tongues of fire lurked above the dark blue of the fjord and the city,” he writes in his memoirs. “I stood still, trembling with anxiety, and felt an endless scream piercing nature,” he writes in his memoirs.
From that experience emerges the famous painting: Screaming. Today, when we look at this painting, we still feel that way Ordeal My existence. The irony is that we see someone who is suffering letting out a scream, but he conveys to us absolute silence. One way to describe it would be: moments of silence.
So we started thinking about some questions: Why is it so difficult to recognize when someone close to you is suffering? More specifically – and this brings us to our topic -: Why is it so difficult for us to see or hear when someone around us is gambling compulsively and suffering the consequences?
Authoritarians don’t like this
The practice of professional and critical journalism is an essential pillar of democracy. This is why it bothers those who believe they are the bearers of the truth.
Youth Gambling: 40% of college students gamble online and 22% are at risk of addiction
We say that Gambling addiction It is a silent addiction, because unlike drug addiction where there are clear signs of the disease (smell of alcohol, ataxia, vomiting, blackouts, dilated pupils, difficulty with the jaws, etc.), the aforementioned condition can remain hidden for a long time.
Even the person experiencing the problem does not acknowledge it: The disease takes rootgrowing steadily and powerfully, and the consequences ripening in earnest, without being able to issue any call for help. With psychoanalysis, we can think of the silent contentment that leaves the self without a place.
You can’t get out of this problem by making desperate decisions. Leaving addiction is like grief.”
The environment was discovered addicted Because that other life, which had been silenced, suddenly comes to light, like a desperate cry. For example: A creditor is shown demanding payment of his debt. Something that happens often. Although in this column we are talking about adults, it should be noted that there are cases of minors secretly putting their families into debt to gamble or gamble large sums of money, and that this can only happen due to the presence of illegal betting sites.
But once the gambler has crossed all the barriers of control, the family usually decides to come forward to talk about the topic, and at that moment they face strong resistance.
There are basically two mechanisms that work in synergy so that the affected person neither recognizes his problem nor accepts help. On the one hand, it’s an illusion of control: you think you can handle the problem, that it’s about retiring when you win, or that you can quit whenever you want.
Attention in families: 17% of teens bet online with real money
On the other hand, magical thinking: you only need a good streak, a stroke of luck, to win and solve setbacks, which may be debts.
When faced with these obstacles, a common reaction from the environment is to feel uncomfortable, give up, or even believe that the situation can be resolved on its own. Another reaction is to pay off debt, “cancel debt,” and move on.
It’s common for this kind of thing to happen, because it’s not easy to confront. There is the pain of feeling damaged by the consequences of addiction: “He stole my money,” “He gambled away his paycheck,” “He destroyed our dreams.” Also blame: “I couldn’t realize it before”, “He does it because he doesn’t feel happy in his life”, “I don’t know how to help him”.
The key aspect is moving from urgency to timing. We must first know that we cannot get out of this problem by making desperate decisions. Leaving addiction is like grief. You can’t grieve, like the loss of a loved one, from one day to the next. It takes a long time to process the loss, in this case: associating the dependency with the bet.
In order to do this, it is necessary to engage in a therapeutic process that is not limited to refraining from continuing to bet, but also to discover the roots of the matter. because? Because otherwise, on the one hand, the seeds of compulsion will be planted in fertile soil that can grow at another time, whether from gambling or other passions. On the other hand, to generate something different, action is crucial as the silence that fuels the destructive is translated into words.
* Psychoanalyst specializing in gambling and technological dependence