Gambling is a multi-billion dollar industry that thrives on people’s losses. Instead of creating real value or improving lives, it ruins them.

You’ve come here to stop being a gambler and regain control of your life. This habit can seem harmless at first, but the longer you do it, the harder it becomes to escape.

Thankfully, quitting this addiction isn’t as difficult as it seems. You just need the right mindset, strategies, and some dedication.

In this article, we’ll discuss why gambling is so addictive, how casinos manipulate you into spending more, and how you can break free from their grasp. Let’s begin.

Why is Gambling So Addictive?

In hopes of acquiring extreme wealth, status, and freedom for life, millions of people waste thousands of dollars of life savings on casinos. But why is it that addictive?

For starters, gambling abuses the brain’s reward system to keep you playing. When you anticipate a reward, such as food, water, or intercourse, your brain releases dopamine – a hormone of pleasure and motivation.

The more you anticipate a reward, the more dopamine your brain produces. Over time, if this release is constant, your brain gets less sensitive to dopamine, and requests more and more of the trigger activity to keep experiencing the same high.

In simple words, you get less and less pleasure from simple things and life, and neurotically focus on winning as much money as possible in a rigged game (we’ll discuss this later).

You never know what reward you might get after the next spin. Sure, most of the time it’s a loss that drains your life savings, but what if it brings a huge win?

Finally, gambling becomes the most addictive when you have nothing going in your life. When there’s no progress in fitness, career, hobbies, relationships, or any other area of life, the opportunity to win easy bucks becomes a lot more enticing.

There’s no more need to try to improve yourself, your health, or your life when you can set yourself up for life in just a few spins (or so you think).

In short, gambling is addictive because of intense dopamine release, anticipation of massive rewards, and lack of progress in one’s life. Knowing this, we can use optimal strategies specifically designed to eliminate these reasons, and therefore the addiction itself.

6 Steps to Stop Gambling for Good

At a first glance, the most obvious solution would be to just stop visiting casinos and speculating your money. But that’s not how it works.

If you keep anticipating great rewards when gambling, you’ll inevitably desire to come back again and again, until you’re stuck in a pile of debt.

That’s why the first thing you need to do is realize how dangerous this addiction is.

1: Realize How Dangerous Gambling is

Millions of people lose their money every year because of gambling. In 2022, commercial casino gaming revenue was around $60 billion, all taken from those who wanted to make quick money.

Each game you play at a casino has a ridiculously small chance of winning: slot machines’ odds range from 1 in 5000 to 1 in 34 million. For every dollar you win, you waste dozens, if not hundreds more.

As explained before, gambling overstimulates your brain, as you never know if you might win or lose after the next spin. It’s enticing to keep pouring money without tracking your expenses, which obviously leads to enormous losses.

The money you could’ve spent on advancing your career, building new hobbies, education, and acquiring property gets wasted for nothing. It’s hard not to get depressed or start hating yourself after experiencing such consistent losses.

Gamblers are not only more likely to lose large sums of money, but they’re also more likely to suffer from other addictions: 60% of gamblers are regular smokers, while 26% are chronic alcoholics.

Is it really a good idea to continue losing your hard-earned money, numb yourself with substances, and watch life pass you by as you lack the strength and resources to succeed in it?

The truth is: gambling won’t bring you wealth, and it certainly won’t make you happy. The only thing it will do is drain your money and ruin your life, and I can prove this claim. Casinos aren’t designed to make you win; they’re designed to rob you.

2: Decide You’ll Never Gamble Again

So far, we’ve discussed how addictive gambling is, how it gradually ruins your life, and how casinos are designed to make you lose. But why dedicate so much attention to these things if this is a how-to article?

The reason I did this is to help you realize that the path of gambling only leads to a deep pit with no escape. If you keep walking on this path, you’re either going to get bankrupt, addicted to substances, depressed, suicidal, or all of them combined.

Thankfully, there’s an alternative way, one that leads to prosperity, genuine contentment, and fulfillment. It’s a way where you’re free from addictions, external validation, and complete on your own, with personal hobbies and pursuits.

To step on this path, though, you need to make an important decision: quit gambling cold turkey. Not for a month, not for 3 months, not even for a year – the only way out is to stop gambling entirely.

How to Avoid Gambling Triggers

Even if you stay away from casinos and only clip coupons, you’re still likely to get addicted again. You lose way more than you gain: money, relationships, status, mental health, hobbies, self-respect. None of that is worth risking for momentary pleasure.

Decide that you’ll never gamble again, and stay away from all places where gambling is possible. These include:

• Online casinos
• Commercial casinos
• Bingo
• Lotteries
• Sports betting
• Scratchcard games
• Games with randomized loot boxes

This advice might sound extreme, but I hope that you understand the importance of these measures by this point. Remove all gambling triggers from your life, for even small games can escalate into losing hundreds of dollars again.

To help the brain heal from gambling, it’s important you become mindful of how you spend your money. One of the best ways to do this is by tracking your expenses.

3: Track Every Purchase You Make to Stop Gambling

Tracking your spendings is an underrated strategy for dealing with gambling addiction. Gambling numbs your brain to spending, and it progressively loses track of how much you spend the more you waste your money on casinos.

If you want to save money, stop being a gambler, and realize how impulsive this addiction makes you, tracking your expenses by budgeting is an excellent solution.

All you need to do is just buy a notebook and write every purchase you make daily. You should include details like the purchased products/services, the individual sums spent on them, and dates of those purchases.

Then, after a few weeks of practice, you can reflect on how well you saved money, where you made impulsive purchases, and take steps to reduce them to minimum.

Is it simple? Yes. Is it practical? Yes. Is it difficult to do? Unfortunately, yes. But this habit of budgeting has a high return on investment, as it will directly help you take control of your financial and personal lives.

To make the budgeting habit formation easier, you can download a simple habit tracker on your phone, and tick off on days when you successfully track your expenses.

Speaking about habit trackers: to stop being a gambler, you can expand the number of habits you tick off by focusing on more fulfilling and rewarding pursuits.

Related article: How to Develop Patience and Self-Control

4: Focus on More Fulfilling Pursuits

To stop being a gambler, you don’t just focus on the financial aspect of your life. You tackle the problem holistically, targeting the root cause of your addiction: dissatisfaction with life and your current progress.

Sounds rough? Yeah, but it probably is the truth. This isn’t to offend you, but to offer you areas for improvement, so that you can obtain fulfillment and freedom from intrusive thinking.

There are many things you can do every day to make your life better, with the most obvious one being fitness. If you still haven’t, start going to the gym 3-4 times a week, or training by doing pushups, pullups, and other calisthenics exercises.

Undoubtedly, fitness isn’t the only area where you can improve. Below is the list of habits you can start to also grow intellectually and spiritually:

• Meditation
• Reading books and articles
• Hiking in nature
• Learning a skill
• Studying a topic (e.g. economics or history)
• Building an online audience
• Woodworking
• Fishing

The best part is that most of these hobbies don’t require much financial investment and offer great benefits, such as reduced anxiety, stress, depression, better cognitive abilities, and higher overall happiness levels.

It’s enough to pick 3-4 of these habits (preferably, reading, exercise, and meditation) and practice them daily for 10-20 minutes. After a few days of practice through willpower, you’ll build momentum and start to enjoy the benefits these lifestyle changes create.

Appreciation of what you have is one of the most important factors determining your happiness. For this reason, the more grateful you are, the easier it is to stop gambling for good.

Recommended article: How to Incorporate Meditation Into Your Daily Life

5: Appreciate the Little Things to Stop Gambling

In most cases, the core of people’s unhappiness with their lives is their inability or unwillingness to express gratitude. Most people tend to focus on what they lack or can acquire rather than the blessings they already possess.

Some men keep working 12 hours a day despite already possessing millions of dollars, pursuing even greater wealth while ignoring the one they have. Some keep wasting a lot of money to get rich when they already have stability and opportunities for growth.

The point is: if you do not express gratitude and keep fixating on what you supposedly lack, you will get more dissatisfied with each passing day.

The solution for this problem is, obviously, expressing gratitude as regularly as possible. The easiest way to do this is through gratitude journaling.

Write 5-10 things you’re grateful for every morning after waking up, either using a notes app on your phone or a physical notebook. Express appreciation for food, water, air, shelter, family, and other things we usually take for granted.

This habit makes you a lot happier, is easy to build, and helps you stop being a gambler. You’ll be less inclined to spend money impulsively when you remember your blessings and the dangerous consequences of gambling.

Your blessings aren’t just about physical possessions, though. The peace of mind you cultivate, the skills you build, and the man you become are a lot more valuable than chasing the “success” imposed by society.

Related article: How to Erase Negative Thoughts For Good

6: Let Go of Materialism, Embrace Slow Living

This final step is optional, as the strategies offered above are enough to stop gambling if you fully dedicate yourself to change and action. However, if you want to take your development to the next level, I highly recommend you try slow living.

You can have all the luxury cars, houses, and tons of women – but if you have a weak, wandering mind, none of these things will make you content.

Constant rush of modern life and overinvolvement in activities that don’t contribute to your wellbeing are some of the major reasons a lot of people are stressed nowadays. Hence, if you want to reduce stress and compulsions to gamble, slowing things down can help.

Wake up earlier than usual (at around 5-6 AM), and dedicate the morning entirely to your hobbies and mental health. When you eat or do any other act, do it intentionally, appreciating the Present moment and the fact of existing.

What I’ve just described may sound cringe, but it works. By doing all things slowly and intentionally, you’ll significantly reduce overthinking, anxiety, dissatisfaction with life, and ultimately eliminate the root causes of your gambling problem.

There are too many people who overthink and stress about insignificant things. Make sure you stand out and learn to be happy no matter the circumstance.

Stop trying to get or control what you can’t change, focus on your own development, and take daily steps to create a better life both for yourself and others around you. That’s all you really need.

During your journey, you’ll inevitably go through relapses and setbacks that come with them. Thankfully, there are a few things you can do to recover.

Related article: How to Be More Stoic: 10 Ways to Become Unbeatable

A Couple Tips for Handling Relapses

A lot of people online love to ramble about timelapses, benefits, and tricky ways to avoid gambling/masturbating/any other bad habit. What they don’t tell you is how to handle periods when you give in to temptations and reset your sobriety streak.

The first thing to remember is that there is no need to blame or punish yourself for failing. Guilt, shame, and self-hatred will not help you stop gambling.

When you realise you’ve relapsed, don’t panic or start blaming yourself for what happened. Instead:

• Drink a glass of water
• Accept what happened as a normal part of quitting
• Figure out what caused you to relapse (advertisements, being in close proximity to casinos, etc.)
• Avoid making the same mistake again
• Forgive yourself, and switch focus to a different activity

A lot of people can easily see their mistakes, but they never get to the steps beyond this one. Punishing and hating yourself for what happened in the past you can’t control is irrational, harmful, and counterproductive.

Remember your strong sides and achievements during the day, so that you can recover quickly and avoid falling into the guilt trap.

Make mistakes, learn from them, be cautious not to repeat them, address the root causes of the problem, and follow the strategies above. That’s all you need to quit.

Recommended article: How to Quit Any Addiction (Without Relying on Willpower)

Stay Away From Casinos, They’ll Ruin Your Life

Gambling addiction affects millions of people worldwide. It drains people’s life savings, causes bankruptcies, and ruins countless lives every year.

If you’re reading this article, you’ve made a conscious choice to change and not contribute to the statistics, and for this I admire you.

Gambling is addictive because it over-stimulates your brain and provides excitement that you (most probably) lack in your daily life. Thus, addressing these root causes requires taking control of your mind and finding worthwhile pursuits.

To stop being a gambler, use the following 6 strategies:

• Realize how dangerous this habit is
• Consciously decide to never do it again
• Track your income and expenses daily
• Develop fulfilling habits and hobbies
• Appreciate the little things and express gratitude
• Let go of materialism, live intentionally

These practices require no inhuman effort or dedication. All you need is just doing some research, doing a few actions consistently, and taking steps to improve your mental health.

Most gamblers can quit on their own if they address the root causes. However, if you implement the advice above, feel helpless, and that nothing works, seek professional help. They’ll provide you with all guidance and resources to help you stop gambling for good.

Work hard, drink water, develop your mind and body, and stay a good man. Good luck on your newfound journey, brother.

If you liked this article and found it useful, make sure to share it on social media and leave a comment below. See you next time.