When Kate Sommerville visited a pub in Melbourne, Australia, to research a report on the socioeconomic impact of five new slot machines in the area, she never thought she would become an addict herself.
"I was almost instantaneously hooked," the 69-year-old confessed. "I was fascinated by the sensory stimulation: glittering lights, music, spinning of wheels. Everything about the machine is designed to draw you in."
Within months of starting to gamble in 2001, Sommerville, then a local government worker specializing in community support and health policies in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, was spending her entire salary on slot machines, known as pokies in Australia. She sold her car, remortgaged her flat and borrowed money at 40% interest.
Unable to concentrate, she eventually lost her job, and her seven-year relationship broke down soon after.
"The obsession overrules all your normal desires to look after yourself: You neglect diet; you can't sleep," recalled Sommerville. "I found myself in hotels gambling at two or three in the morning, sometimes all night."
At her age and with her extensive professional background, that was deeply shocking to her. She admitted, "I felt traumatized but couldn't stop."
After six years of being enslaved to a severe gambling habit, Sommerville sought help and stopped in 2007. Prior to her gambling addiction, Sommerville suffered from restless leg syndrome, and studies have shown that the medication prescribed for this, a dopamine agonist, can cause compulsive behavior in up to 20% of people who take them.
But Sommerville is adamant that her story "can happen to anyone," particularly in Australia.
A national problem
Australians are the world's most prolific gamblers, based on per capita spending.
In 2016, Australians lost more money per person -- an average of US $990 -- than any other developed country, according to research by consultancy H2 Gambling Capital. In comparison, runner-up Singapore lost $650 per person, and Ireland, which came third, $500.
One disadvantaged working-class Sydney suburb, Fairfield, gambled away more than AUS $8 billion from 2015-16 -- or just under $40,000 per resident.
Total gambling expenditure in Australia increased by 7.7% from $21.114 billion in 2013-14 to $22.734 billion in 2014-15, according to the latest edition of the Australian Gambling Statistics,published last year. Meanwhile, per adult gambling expenditure increased from $1,171.09 to $1,241.86.
The most prevalent forms of gambling are lottery-type games (such as Powerball or Oz Lotto), with 30% reported use, but poker machines come second, with 8% of adults reporting they use pokies in a typical month, according to the 2017 Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey.
Driving this national addiction are the country's 196,000 electronic poker machines. With the exception of Western Australia, pokies are allowed not just in casinos but in pubs and social clubs, where they are plentiful.
In Australia, "we have pokie machines on almost every street corner," said Charles Livingstone, a senior lecturer in the School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine at Melbourne's Monash University.
Pokies are "really good at getting people hooked: Each (bet) provides a dopamine release, similar to a drug like cocaine, in your brain," explains Livingstone. "They target people who are often under stress, offer a euphoric sensation, then take all their money off them."
Clubs NSW, a representative body for registered clubs in the state of New South Wales in Australia, declined to comment.
Livingstone estimates that one-third of the people who play pokies once a week will develop a gambling problem.
Relaxed rules means gamblers in New South Wales can insert a maximum of AUS $7,500 -- about US $5,900 US -- into machines in a single sitting, he said.
While gambling on sports tends to be male-dominated and seen as a traditionally masculine activity, playing the pokies has more equal distribution across the sexes, said Christopher Hunt, a clinical psychologist at the University of Sydney Gambling Treatment Clinic.
Part of the issue is both ease and access. At the horse races, "you have to think about what bet are you going to place. With a pokie, you just mindlessly sit there, pressing a button," added politician Andrew Wilkie, an independent MP who tried unsuccessfully to introduce reform to federal gambling regulation in 2012. "So we have a problem."
"The vast majority (of pokies) are high-intensity machines: big jackpots, fast games," Wilkie said. "A game can be less than three seconds, yet you can be pursuing jackpots that are tens of thousands of dollars.
"It is said that about four out of five gambling addicts in Australia experience their problem on pokie machines. They're prevalent in the community; they're high-intensity; they're highly addictive."
At the Star casino in Sydney, hundreds of brightly lit slot machines line a room decorated with neon lights and a drab patterned carpet. It might seem like a gambler's paradise, but ambulances are a regular sight here, with emergency services often answering calls for everything from psychiatric behavior to overdoses and attempted suicide.
"Ambulances regularly attend casinos. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported in 2016 that Sydney's Star City had 173 ambulance attendances a year in the period since 2012," Livingstone said. "This is consistent with reports around suicidality, mental health and other issues arising in Australia's casinos."
But Alex Blaszczynski, a director at the University of Sydney Gambling Treatment Clinic, warns that this "does not necessarily link up the excessive gambling with suicidality. I don't think there is sufficient evidence to make that cause and connection. It may or may not be related to gambling behavior."
"If someone is going to the casino and committing suicide, is this something compulsive or delivered over time?" he asked.
But when it comes to gambling, health problems are common.
Source: CNN
No comments:
Post a Comment