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This chapter deals with prevention for Responsible Gaming, offered to you by ADICTEL, the referential for supporting the compulsive gamblers. |
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Mind your wallet and the people you love Gambling is entertainment. Some players lose sight of this concept and then see the game as a way to make money. Thinking they have better luck or insight than the others, they often fall into a vicious circle, where they bet each time more to offset the increasing losses. This is what we call "problem gambling". |
| Questions to identify a compulsive gambler: • Do you gamble more money than you have in your wallet? • Have you already gambled to cover the debts or settle a financial issue? • Do you often overrun the time to game you have previously established? • Are you leaving your children alone or with community members for long periods of time, in order to gamble? • Do you gamble the money designated to first necessity payments (rent, clothes, food…)? • Do you feel you have to gamble to spend time with the people you care about? • Do you abandon your family responsibilities in order to gamble? • When you are with your family, at work or at social events, are you constantly thinking about your next bet? • Do you think gambling is a means to earn a living? • Have you already thought to cease gambling? • When you lose, do you immediately feel you have “to recuperate”? • Have you consumed more alcohol, painkillers, and sleeping pills since you started to gamble? |
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| Being a responsible player means having fun and having the sensations that result from betting, being lucky, believing in your lucky star … without becoming addicted to gambling and risking your financial health. Responsible players take care therefore to choose how to spend time and money and where to do that. they control their game. |
| • Establish an amount to gamble during a determined period of time and stick to it. • Gamble only for the pleasure to tempt your luck and not to win. • Protect yourselves against financial risks, in order to keep control. • Never borrow money to gamble from close friends/relatives or financial institutions. • Take frequent breaks after game sessions in order to avoid getting worked up. • Balance gaming with other activities. • Don’t gamble when highly stressed, depressed or anxious... • Do not gamble under the influence of alcohol or psychotropic drugs. • Only gamble with money set aside for entertainment, never with money for essential expenses (rent, power, heat…) • Find another escape than gambling to your problems. |
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| If you think you are a player at risk, please contact ADICTEL, for a completely free support (24 h/a day, 7 days/a week service). Adictel supports 10,000 players a year. |
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