Gambling can be exciting. Winning increases the excitement and triggers a release of “happy chemicals” in your brain. The reward center is activated, and your brain likes the way it feels. It likes it so much that it wants you to continue gambling so it can feel that way again and again.
Your brain creates urges.
Gambling urges make it hard for you to focus on anything other than gambling. If you can’t get to a casino, you think about playing the lotto. If you can’t play the lotto, you make bets on the races or sports games.
You get caught up in the vicious cycle of trying to satisfy your gambling urges, even if that means other areas of your life are suffering consequences. For some, losing a relationship, job, or financial stability is not enough to make them stop gambling.
They want to stop, but they have not learned actions they can take to control gambling urges. If you are struggling with how to stop gambling urges, keep reading. Below are some proven tactics that help.
Stay Busy
Gambling urges are stronger during times when you are bored or have too much downtime. Your brain needs stimulation. It wants to feel high, like when you hear the slot machines clanking or when you win money by scratching off a lotto card.
If your daily schedule is filled with activities that keep you busy and distracted, your gambling urges will decrease.
Get Support
Gambling supports groups, online or in-person, are extremely helpful in reducing gambling urges. Meeting with peers who also struggle with gambling addiction helps you feel you are not alone in the journey of avoiding gambling.
Support groups may not always be available when your urges occur. That is why it is just as essential to building a support system of friends, families, sponsorship from a twelve-step program and co-workers who can help.
You can also get support from licensed individual therapists who specialize in gambling addiction treatment. One of the best skills you can learn in therapy is how to cope with emotions properly.
Learn How to Cope with Emotions
Your old way of coping with stress, anger, or even happiness may have been to gamble. It may have worked for a while. When you felt depressed, you gambled, and that boosted your mood. However, after a while, your need for gambling likely increased. The lows that followed the highs became worse.
Learning and practicing stress management, mindfulness, and relapse prevention are just a few ways to help you cope and avoid relapse.
Change the Positive to Negative
Your thoughts will lead to your behaviors. If you think gambling is good, you will give in the gambling urges. The opposite is true also. If you believe gambling is bad and associate negative thoughts with gambling, you will be less likely to give in to urges in time.
Start thinking of gambling as the negative, money-wasting, and relationship-damaging activity it is.
Change the Negative to Positive
Many with gambling addictions think poorly of themselves. You may have felt this way too. The problem is that those thoughts become internal statements that you say to yourself hundreds of times a day. You may call yourself bad names and criticize yourself for not being able to overcome gambling urges.
What you say to yourself determines how you feel about yourself and how you behave. Negative self-talk can lead to a gambling relapse.
It would help if you started focusing on all the good things about yourself. There are many good things. If you struggle with this, work with an individual therapist to learn how self-affirmations can improve your mental health.
The better you feel about yourself, the easier it will be to overcome gambling urges.
Be Prepared
Reaching a goal, like avoiding gambling, can be achieved much easier when you have a plan. Contractors do not just start building a home without blueprints and a list of materials. Runners do not win marathons without a structured running plan.
The same is true for individuals impacted by addiction who want to stay away from their drug of choice, such as gambling.
Structure and routine help you stay focused and less distracted by urges. Being prepared includes setting goals.
Set Short and Long-Term Goals
If you do not know where you are going, it will be hard to get there. Setting long-term and short-term goals gives you a step-by-step plan of how to achieve success.
Your long-term goal of never gambling again can be accomplished with short-term goals that help you do this. Examples of short-term goals are to attend Gambler's Anonymous three times a week, start a hobby, communicate better with your partner, work with an individual and family therapist, and create daily schedules filled with various activities.
Get To Know Yourself
The more you learn about yourself, the better you will understand why you want to gamble. You can learn how your brain works, specific triggers that make it hard to control your urges, and what it is about your lifestyle that contributes to your gambling urges.
Many gambling addicts claim upcoming special events, expected or unexpected, can be triggering. Events like weddings, funerals, holidays, promotions, and anniversaries are examples of special events. This may happen because significant events create stress, even if they are meant to be joyful events.
Ask any bride, and they will likely tell you planning a wedding is stressful. Or, receiving an achievement award at work can add pressure to an employee. Some seek gambling to alleviate this pressure. Unfortunately, gambling often has the opposite effect, making you feel even more stressed.
Then you find yourself once again in that vicious cycle.
In conclusion, you can learn how to stop gambling urges. Start by reaching out for help with a licensed individual gambling addiction therapist. You can learn specific techniques that you can apply daily, which have helped many others with your same struggle.
Together, you can create a relapse prevention strategy that can help you achieve the happy, successful life you deserve.