Adult video games have been referred to as the “crack cocaine of gambling” and Alabama stands a good chance of creating an ‘addiction oasis’ as arcades continue to spread at a rapid pace across the state.
Last week 50 machines debuted at the Mobile Greyhound Park dog track where $5 gift certificates from Kmart™, Amoco™, Winn-Dixie™ and Lowe’s™ were substituted for cash payouts. A Birmingham News article reported track owners were installing the machines in an effort to generate more revenue. The general manager, David Jones, was quoted as saying: “In a two-mile radius of the track there’s probably 200 of these machines. We said, ‘Shoot. Why not try it here?’ ”
A Time magazine article written in 1998 described the horrors of video gambling addiction, mentioning the breakup of families and loss of homes and cars to pay off gambling debts. The story cited the tragic death of a 10-day-old baby girl whose mother left her unattended in the car while she gambled for hours on video machines.
“Video gambling is the most addictive form of gambling there is,” said Dusty McLemore, pastor of Lindsay Lane Baptist Church, Athens. McLemore should know. Before his conversion and call into the ministry, he was a compulsive gambler who contemplated suicide as a solution to his addiction.
“It’s a rush — much like a drug addiction. You get high on the need to compete and win. You start out just playing nickel and dime machines, and then it escalates,” the pastor of eight years said.
Not aware of addiction
“ I didn’t know I had a problem. Your emotions get so wrapped up in gambling that you aren’t aware that you’re addicted,” he said of his compulsive behavior that controlled his life for eight years.
One of the reasons that gambling can become a subliminal addiction is because there is no appearance of an altered state that is evident with drugs and alcohol addictions, said Glenn “Skip” Archer, an adjunct professor in the program of marriage and family counseling at the University of Mobile.
“Because video gambling does not involve a substance, it appears to be benign, so we’re not aware that it’s working on our emotional system,” Archer said. “These type of machines play on our fantasy of getting something for nothing. The machines are designed to be hypnotic in nature. The player is unaware this … is nibbling away at our ability to say ‘no’,” he said.
“The loud music, low lighting, visually stimulating images and free refreshments all contribute to the surreal atmosphere that creates an altered state of reality for the gambler,” Archer explained.
Because of the nature of today’s electronic society, Archer is not surprised by the growing trend of video gambling machines and their accompanying addictive powers. He points out that arcade gambling plays on all of the senses: visual, hearing, touching and tasting (if refreshments are offered). In some types of games that incorporate pornographic images, the sexual curiosity desire is being met as well.
“A person may be tempted to look at sexual images on an arcade game where they would not succumb to temptation under other circumstances,” he predicted.
“Look at the electronic stimulus that bombards us every day. Kids get addicted to playing home video games for hours on end. Look at the impact of the Internet. People become addicted to it every day,” he said in illustration of his point.
Why is video gambling so seductive a form of what many advocates say is ‘harmless entertainment?’
Archer said, “It’s easily accessible, and therefore doesn’t appear to be dangerous; it doesn’t cost millions of dollars at a time to participate so the player may lose touch with how much money is being spent; there is a fallacy that the player can say ‘no’ at any time and stop playing.
“A gambling addiction is a way of trying to fill an emptiness that is designed to be filled by God,” Archer said.
Even when a gambler discovers God is the only way, getting over a gambling addiction is hard work, Archer noted.
“You have to learn to manage your emotions,” he said. “You have to work physically, emotionally, relationally and especially spiritually to overcome the grip of addiction,” the clinician said.
Share with others: