With addiction research continuing to help those addicts most in need, it isn’t often that we see major progress for one of the most quickly growing addictions out there. Gambling. While it’s agreed that gambling addicts probably won’t suffer the same nasty effects as prolonged drug use, or be at anywhere near the same risk of “overdose” or death, the addiction shares key brain chemistry issues with all the other so called “big” addictions like drugs and alcohol. Pleasure centers in the brain are activated and the gambling addict will continue to seek that part of their brain’s reward system over and over again. But back to the good news. Apparently a research group from an Iowa university have determined that in Iowa, at least, measures put in place to help problem gamblers are working. Unfortunately details regarding the breakthrough in treatment success are scarce, but the fact that it’s working is great news for all those people out there desperate to rid themselves of a very serious addiction.
The big news here, it seems, is that perhaps some of what is being done to help gambling addicts may rub off on those seeking treatment for other serious addictions, and with numbers like 92% success rates being reported for gamblers in Iowa, we sure hope that whatever methodology or treatment programs they’ve practically perfected may go a long way to helping others afflicted with other addictions.
Let’s face it, addicts need all the help they can get. Even if it comes from an unusual source like the treatment of another addiction that shares some properties but is also significantly different in a few key aspects. Something to note would be the symptoms that both gambling and substance abuse have in common like severe financial problems, rifts between family members and the addict and of course self-harm and suicide which are commonplace in both. If a program designed to help problem gamblers then perhaps such a program could be used to help addicts of another nature deal with, at the very least, the financial, family and mental health problems that frequently arise.
Whether researchers will investigate further into using treatment for one addiction to treat another remains an unknown, but it’s certainly possible that the obvious success in treating gambling addiction could very well spill over into other areas of addiction research and treatment.