Daraine Luton, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

- Winston Sill/Freelance Photographer

Children are not the only ones at risk of being sucked into the potentially poisonous habit of gambling.

Members of the support group, Gamblers Anonymous (GA), say once persons get involved in gambling they run the risk of being hooked and it may have serious implications for the personal, social and financial lives.

No study has ever been done in Jamaica to capture the extent of gambling in the population. However, studies in the United States suggest that approximately 30 per cent of the population gambles and five per cent of these persons are problem gamblers.

Problem gambling, according to the National Council on Problem Gambling in the United States, is any gambling behaviour that causes disruptionin any significant area of life: psychological, physical, social, or vocational.

The essential features of problem gambling are increasing preoccupa-tion with gambling, a need to bet more money more frequently, restlessness or irritability when attempting to stop, and continuation of gambling behaviour despite mounting serious, negative consequences.

Steve, a middle-aged Kingston businessman, says gambling for him started as a regular Sunday evening activity with a friend. But when that friend migrated, Steve says he wanted to continue and searched for entertainment houses with gaming facilities in order to pass time. After years of draining his pocket and putting various areas of his life on the line, Steve made up his mind to quit.

"I recognised what I was doing. I was destroying myself and I sought help," he says. He went overseas for treatment and later returned to Jamaica and joined GA. And even though he was the only one present at meetings for five years, he never gave up. Now he has gone over 12 years and almost two months without placing a bet.

Wagering

Steve may be the only member of GA to have abstained that long from gambling, but all the members have known what it is like to chase their fate by wagering. One man says: "Gambling offers no winning. It is a lose-lose situation; today you may win $500,000 and tomorrow you lose $1.2 million."

Ken, who works in the service industry, has learnt the harsh lessons of gambling.

He says he started out playing the illegal street-side game of Crown and Anchor as a teenager and graduated to wagering on race horse boxes.

"I gambled everything, everything - and I am now broke," Ken says as he shares his testimony with persons who too have admitted to having a gambling problem.

"I lost everything ... to the point where I am now working with a borrowed vehicle. Right now I am working to pay back debts," he adds.

While the stories of gambling addicts are many, Richard Henry, co-ordinator of Rise Life Ministries' gambling prevention programme, stresses that it does not have to be like this.

"You have people who gamble and are OK But you have people who gamble and lose control and this is the sort of behaviour we try to prevent," Henry says.

And for persons who have already been hooked, GA members say it is not the end of the road. The first step to recovery they say, must be with an admission that one has become powerless over gambling and that one's life has become unmanageable. Once that is done, they say, GA welcomes you with open arms; all that is required for membership is the desire to stop gambling.

Not their real names.

For information on joining GA call 877-7074; 470-7501.