Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Gamblers Always Lose Out!
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com
If you know someone in danger of gambling addiction, get specialist counselling before that wheel spins out of control
A group of young men are drinking in a pub. One of them is playing the fruit-machine. The others are wanting to move on. They ask him to finish off and come with them. He looks at the coins in his hand and says. “Hang on. Just wait till I’ve…”
He doesn’t usually finish the sentence. Because it would be “Just wait till I’ve lost this lot.”
Notice that he’s not saying “Wait till I’ve won the Jackpot”, because they’d be there all night. No, the message is clearly “Wait till I’ve lost.”
That little cameo of small-time gambling reflects a psychology which bulks-up big in those serious cases where huge money is blown away, and whole careers and families wrecked. It proves that on one level, gamblers want to lose.
It stands to reason.
You look at the sumptuous furnishings of the casino… the flash bookie with his stretch-limo… the huge fortunes of the dotcom gaming promoters…
Who’s doing all the winning ? Not the punter. And he knows it - only a little below that shallow surface where he can still pretend he’s about to scoop the pool. Which mostly reflects a desperate lunge at recovering losses.
What Your Gambling Addiction Says About You
You have to face the unflattering truth that a gambling addict is basically an inadequate and immature character.
Leave aside the depressing spectacle of the all-day drunks lurching in and out of the betting-shop, so obviously going nowhere in life.
Try a respectable casino, and take a look around that roulette table. One or two big swaggering figures, perhaps with dubious connections. But mostly ordinary little people. All the shy and sheepish types who would never dare take a risk in the real world of business, or in the other real world of romance. (And don’t fail to notice the sad little elderly widow who always seems to be there, so obviously looking for substitute excitement.) All the ones who might be called losers.
About to become losers in another form.
Knowing deep down that they can’t win-out, then, what is the buzz ?
One is the sheer fantasy world they are allowed into at second hand - James Bond, Monte-Carlo, the Mississippi riverboat. A world of triumphant winners (as often portrayed garishly on fruit machines and pin-tables) with their cigars and buxom mistresses. Remember, gambling addicts are chiefly the sort of people who will never experience one single day of life beyond the office and the train home.
Another is a kind of snobbery concerning effortless wealth - the feeling that a flick of a card here means enough for a world cruise, a few chips pushed casually across the green cloth could be a sports car. This is essentially sneering at those who strive and earn. It is a deeply deceptive idea of an elite club of special people who are too good to work, and of course deeply unreal. Those who sneer at effort are usually rotten to the core.
Gambling Compared To Other Addictions
But seeing that it doesn’t directly damage health, you might still rate gambling addiction as less serious than other habits. Well, here’s a first-hand comparison.
A famous entertainer’s wife and agent once described her husband’s three addictions: alcohol, drugs and gambling.
Alcohol was the least of it, she said - not ruinously expensive, mostly just boring. Drugs were somewhat worse - dangerous and messy, with sinister people hanging around the house. But neither was as bad as the gambling. Nothing, she said, was so depressing as to watch four or five-figure sums disappearing over that green cloth in a matter of minutes, especially as she had been the financial brains behind their fortune.
The Need For Specialist Help
When you do face up to your condition as a gambling addict, you’re going to need more than a sympathetic chat. You’re going to need trained specialist help by counsellors directly experienced in tackling gambling addiction.
Carole Spiers Group (CSG) can boast twenty years’ experience of counselling and consultancy to blue-chip corporations on a vast range of stress-related conditions, including many kinds of addiction.
So call in an expert specialist from our nationwide team without delay.
And stop that wheel before it turns once too often.
For more information on CSG’s services including in-house and public stress management training, post trauma support, mediation, impartial investigations, nationwide employee counselling team, and coaching and mentoring services, please contact us:
Carole Spiers Group
International Stress Management & Employee Wellbeing Consultancy
Gordon House, 83-85 Gordon Avenue, Stanmore, Middlesex. HA7 3QR. UK
Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8954 1593 Fax: + 44 (0) 20 8907 9290
Email: info@carolespiersgroup.com
Web: www.carolespiersgroup.com
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com
If you know someone in danger of gambling addiction, get specialist counselling before that wheel spins out of control
A group of young men are drinking in a pub. One of them is playing the fruit-machine. The others are wanting to move on. They ask him to finish off and come with them. He looks at the coins in his hand and says. “Hang on. Just wait till I’ve…”
He doesn’t usually finish the sentence. Because it would be “Just wait till I’ve lost this lot.”
Notice that he’s not saying “Wait till I’ve won the Jackpot”, because they’d be there all night. No, the message is clearly “Wait till I’ve lost.”
That little cameo of small-time gambling reflects a psychology which bulks-up big in those serious cases where huge money is blown away, and whole careers and families wrecked. It proves that on one level, gamblers want to lose.
It stands to reason.
You look at the sumptuous furnishings of the casino… the flash bookie with his stretch-limo… the huge fortunes of the dotcom gaming promoters…
Who’s doing all the winning ? Not the punter. And he knows it - only a little below that shallow surface where he can still pretend he’s about to scoop the pool. Which mostly reflects a desperate lunge at recovering losses.
What Your Gambling Addiction Says About You
You have to face the unflattering truth that a gambling addict is basically an inadequate and immature character.
Leave aside the depressing spectacle of the all-day drunks lurching in and out of the betting-shop, so obviously going nowhere in life.
Try a respectable casino, and take a look around that roulette table. One or two big swaggering figures, perhaps with dubious connections. But mostly ordinary little people. All the shy and sheepish types who would never dare take a risk in the real world of business, or in the other real world of romance. (And don’t fail to notice the sad little elderly widow who always seems to be there, so obviously looking for substitute excitement.) All the ones who might be called losers.
About to become losers in another form.
Knowing deep down that they can’t win-out, then, what is the buzz ?
One is the sheer fantasy world they are allowed into at second hand - James Bond, Monte-Carlo, the Mississippi riverboat. A world of triumphant winners (as often portrayed garishly on fruit machines and pin-tables) with their cigars and buxom mistresses. Remember, gambling addicts are chiefly the sort of people who will never experience one single day of life beyond the office and the train home.
Another is a kind of snobbery concerning effortless wealth - the feeling that a flick of a card here means enough for a world cruise, a few chips pushed casually across the green cloth could be a sports car. This is essentially sneering at those who strive and earn. It is a deeply deceptive idea of an elite club of special people who are too good to work, and of course deeply unreal. Those who sneer at effort are usually rotten to the core.
Gambling Compared To Other Addictions
But seeing that it doesn’t directly damage health, you might still rate gambling addiction as less serious than other habits. Well, here’s a first-hand comparison.
A famous entertainer’s wife and agent once described her husband’s three addictions: alcohol, drugs and gambling.
Alcohol was the least of it, she said - not ruinously expensive, mostly just boring. Drugs were somewhat worse - dangerous and messy, with sinister people hanging around the house. But neither was as bad as the gambling. Nothing, she said, was so depressing as to watch four or five-figure sums disappearing over that green cloth in a matter of minutes, especially as she had been the financial brains behind their fortune.
The Need For Specialist Help
When you do face up to your condition as a gambling addict, you’re going to need more than a sympathetic chat. You’re going to need trained specialist help by counsellors directly experienced in tackling gambling addiction.
Carole Spiers Group (CSG) can boast twenty years’ experience of counselling and consultancy to blue-chip corporations on a vast range of stress-related conditions, including many kinds of addiction.
So call in an expert specialist from our nationwide team without delay.
And stop that wheel before it turns once too often.
For more information on CSG’s services including in-house and public stress management training, post trauma support, mediation, impartial investigations, nationwide employee counselling team, and coaching and mentoring services, please contact us:
Carole Spiers Group
International Stress Management & Employee Wellbeing Consultancy
Gordon House, 83-85 Gordon Avenue, Stanmore, Middlesex. HA7 3QR. UK
Tel: + 44 (0) 20 8954 1593 Fax: + 44 (0) 20 8907 9290
Email: info@carolespiersgroup.com
Web: www.carolespiersgroup.com
Carole Spiers - The Empowerment Guru grows successful people. An International Female Keynote Speaker, Conference Chair and Business Mentor who helps you to achieve step by step success with inspiration and motivation. www.carolespiers.com
# posted by Carole Spiers @ 11:36 PM 
