In life unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate….. Addiction, entertainment and pastime all has different meanings. Psychological definition of Addiction is ‘to be physically dependent on a particular substance’, Entertainment suggests something that amuses, or amazes, or thrills, and finally ‘Pastime’ suggests an activity that one does regularly for enjoyment that turns into a hobby. Turning towards gambling for paying debts, for amusement, it is generally bound to turn into a hobby, a regular demand of the conditioned human brain. The thrill of expectation, and finally seeing that expectation getting materialized in front of one’s own eyes, that ‘easy money’, all these makes gambling more attractive to one who played. As a result Gambling slowly becomes compulsive, much like a genetic disorder, an incurable disease.
It is very difficult to say that gambling is injurious to the mind and body. But then the famous Urdu Poet Mirza Ghalib used to gamble too. Shopping is an addiction, similarly few more examples like biting nails, playing too much computer games, or staying inside the bathroom for two hours, or addiction of sex, or medicine and drugs, excessive chocolate consumption. Are all these are equally harmful like the consumption of alcohol? As they say ‘too much of anything is bad’, because that too much starts to eat-up the entire human mind like a termite. Repeated loss through gambling leaves the player frustrated and when his hopes for ‘easy money’ and to become rich overnight shatter, he sometimes attempts suicide. On the contrary if a lover tries to forget his love and for that he takes emotional shelter in gambling, does that mean that he is an addict? Those who want to release tensions considers gambling as the one and only way to forget things that worries him, does that mean that he is an addict? At least gambling doesn’t cause lung cancer or brain tumour or lever damage. It is also a fact that those who get therapies to cure alcoholism methodically with the help of doctors and medicines doesn’t necessarily get cured where as a larger percentage of people overcome alcoholism than those who undergo treatment.