Overcoming Gambling Addiction Through Specialized Clinical Support and Radical Acceptance

A question I wish people would ask themselves is what's the worst thing that could happen if I gave it one hour? I do think people don't believe me when I tell them that if you give this treatment plan every fiber of your being for four months, you'll be done. Hi, I'm Amanda Arnold and I'm a licensed professional counselor. I work as a therapist in the state of Texas. Burch's Health is special for me because of the support staff within the office, the way that the customers receive support and the way that we as therapists receive support. It feels very comfortable and casual to an extent and in a therapy world, that's a great thing. You know, I see a range Just like the folks that you see at the grocery store or in your office, I see regular people. When our skill sets stop working in life, we reach into what makes us feel the best, the fastest. And sometimes those come with unintended consequences that we end up needing to develop new skill sets, unravel consequences, and fix the picture to get back in control of our life design. People believe that things will fix their gambling addiction, which is a procedural-like habit. And when you look at what it is, is a brain chemistry issue. The extra receptors you, goofy juice is what I call it. And you get that in your brain, you have to degrade those receptors and that detox is brutal. And I don't think people expect that. They expect that because I'm not putting a substance inside of my body, I'm not going to experience that side of the withdrawal process and it's shocking how physical it becomes. But it's a good tool. It's a good point to look at how physical it is affecting you. I feel like people wish that they had realized earlier in the game that what they were going to stuff on top of that pain was what made things feel better. They didn't just fail as human beings. is a logical process, a medical process, and we can sort it into camps and fix the damage that was caused financially, fix the damage that was caused in relationships, and repair the wounded spot. I find that the way that gambling enters into our daily rituals and our daily lives is vast. It's not just the table games in the bars or in the private residences. It's not just the casinos. Every click of the button, a lot of video games, those acquisitions of those imaginary assets become the same kind of process that we have to then relearn, meet that need in a more sustainable way. I find that throughout the years that I've worked in the addiction field, clients will try to name that problem, anything but addiction, because of the way that we value mental health in our society. One of the things I feel like people are surprised to find out in therapy is that the blame game ends up serving a final purpose. And once all of that is out, because people are legitimately wronged, legitimately violated, that leads to legitimate wounds that cause legitimate issues, especially with gambling. So we use radical acceptance to just start again. and to pay off that dang debt, get back to work in dignity and not live too much in the future or the past. That's the key to a lot of self-care. Okay, so a common misconception about what willpower is is the definition of what willpower is and the medical condition of gambling disorder, pathological gambling disorder. It is an addiction. It is a chemical processing addiction and it's been studied, it's been proven, and we know that there is recovery, there is achievement, and I want to just really assure people that the relapse process really is a part of the recovery process. It's not a failure. The hardest part about this is going from reaching and grabbing that warm, fuzzy, best friend comfort blanket that always works a little bit at least and not doing something else, that's the hardest part. And then you do something else enough that it gets less hard. And I say that's okay because we do hard things. That's why we're in this spot in the first place. One of the tricky things our mind tells us about the game of gambling is that it's just a game. Everybody does it. Look at them. They do it regularly. We understand it's difficult to let go. That's why harm reduction exists. That's why relapse is part of the growing and learning process. When you feel like you're drowning, you're gonna reach out and grab that thing that saved you the last time. Why wouldn't you? And that's why you put a lot of things out there to grab onto. So it's not just that one thing. I say gear up and dive completely into your treatment plan. Decide that you have to do things every single day that you don't want to do and do it anyway.