Gambling Addiction

Oregon Lottery addicted to big losses of gambling addicts

"Addictions," says Joseph Frascella, director of the division of clinical neuroscience at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), "are repetitive behaviors in the face of negative consequences, the desire to continue something you know is bad for you."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1640436,00.html

It is intriguing that researchers have actually found that gambling excites the same dopamine activity that other behaviors, or substances, do in the brain. MRI work at Cal Tech in 2006 surprised a lot of folks and of course the DSM IV has criteria distinguishing gambling addiction. The point is that there are actual physiological differences between an addiction and a habit, like how you like your eggs, etc.

Now what interests me is of course related to nicotine addiction and genetics. Ever wonder why some people find it easy to quit smoking and some go to their grave clutching a fag? Well an important part of that is how the body metabolizes nicotine in the liver and that enzyme is inherited.

I don’t really have a dog in this hunt but, if problem gambling is inherited and the government is exploiting that genetic makeup to fund the bulk of whatever it is they fund w a lottery, an ethical quandary comes into play. It seems analogous to taxing redheads for no other reason than the color of their hair. This is one reason the article interested me.

A fellow at UAMS, Warren Bickel just got a couple of million $ from NIH I believe to study what he’s calling behavioral economics and meth addiction. I heard him speak a few years ago and the short of it is that addicts don’t have the same concept of long term and short term rewards. You and i may contribute to an IRA for long term goals but an addict my think of a long term goals as scoring tomorrow’s fix today. That’s over simplified but not much. ( This comes into play w nicotine addiction and children. Kids just do not recognize long term health benefits. We were all immortal once.)

Anyway, that’s a little bit about the difference and similarity between being unable to stop smoking, or feeding the ponies at the race track, and how you like your eggs.