Obsession over Myths of Compulsive Gambling

We hear about a reporter who borrowed money from law-enforcement officers and even the city's police commissioner; we read about this football quarterback who gamble away hundred of thousands of dollars, and then we learned that a TV producer had tax irregularities and had committed bank fraud. To the public eye, they would have been objects of scorn. But that had changed to pity when media and the public turned their attention to was has been called as compulsive gambling.

When compulsive gambling (or pathological gambling) became a medical issue, it sort of received a promotion. DSM-III (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) in 1980 classified compulsive gambling as one form of impulse disorder, making individuals who are heavy gamblers as suffering from a disease. They are suffering from a mental disorder that makes their gambling uncontrollable. Consequently, what all heavy bettors needed was sympathy. On top of that, they need treatment and third-party financial support.

What's troubling about this is that there is no research or evidence that proves that excessive gambling is really a disease. Neither can it be proven that it is uncontrollable. Moreover, this gambling-as-a-disease conclusion might even worsen the situation of hindering the efforts of helping compulsive gamblers to resist their addiction.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual has no medical catalogue for pathological gambling. They only refer to it as an activity that describes the person's frequency of gambling and its financial legal, social effects. In other words, compulsive gambling isn't anywhere near your black and white definition of a disease. There is no proof that there is a neurophysiological or neurochemical disturbance that occurs when a person's is playing the game. The only things that change are heart and adrenaline rates, which is a normal when excited. Indeed, researchers admit that if they found out that there are neurobiological factors that disrupts normal mental states during gambling causing uncontrollable actions, then that would be their Holy Grail.

This was what gambling researchers have claimed in 1989 when they have published proof that compulsive gambling is indeed a disease. In their study, 17 heavy gamblers displayed increased neurochemical behaviors that explained their extroversion. However, the researched lacked evidence that would finally unify compulsive gambling to biology. It didn't showed biological differences that are unique for compulsive gambling. Similar neurochemical behaviors are evidenced by other emotion like desperation and aggravation. Moreover, the gamblers under study were not related to other groups so there is really no answer with regard to uniqueness and specificity. Lastly, no additional studies ever followed the 1989 research.