Recent changes in laws have made gambling widely accessible, and its popularity has soared. While occasional bets are rarely an issue, uncontrolled gambling can lead to financial, psychological, physical, and social consequences, some of which are extreme. Understanding whether gambling is becoming a problem in your life can help you head off the worst of these issues.
The Brief Biosocial Gambling Screen is a validated way to screen for gambling disorder. It contains three yes-or-no questions: During the past 12 months, have you become restless, irritable, or anxious when trying to stop or cut down on gambling? During the past 12 months, have you tried to keep your family or friends from knowing how much you gambled? During the past 12 months, did you have such financial trouble as a result of your gambling that you had to get help with living expenses from family, friends, or welfare? Answering yes to any one of these questions suggests that you are at higher risk for experiencing gambling disorder, which is an addiction to gambling that includes loss of control, craving, and continuing despite bad consequences.
Options for Managing Gambling
If you want to keep gambling in some way, lower-risk gambling guidelines suggest gambling no more than 1% of household income, no more than four days per month, and avoiding regularly gambling at more than two types of games. Other ways to reduce your risk of gambling harm include planning ahead and setting personal limits, keeping your entertainment budget in mind, considering leaving credit cards and debit cards at home and using cash instead, scheduling other activities directly after gambling to create a time limit, and limiting your use of alcohol and other drugs.
If you’re looking for slightly more active approaches toward change, you can engage in traditional self-help experiences such as helplines and chatlines or Gamblers Anonymous. Your First Step to Change is a popular workbook that provides information about problem gambling, self-screening exercises, and change exercises to get started. A clinical trial of this resource suggested that users were more likely than others to report having recently abstained from gambling.
This article is an AI-assisted summary. All facts and figures are drawn from the original report: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/ever-worry-about-your-gambling-202403063022