To treat everywhere, to treat always…
An experienced doctor with a sanitary
certificate will make out any diagnosis.
Urban folklore
Do you remember Jerome K Jerome's quotation: “It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form”?
Nearly the same I experienced during the Conference of Russian Association of the Gambling Industry Development dedicated to the game addiction phenomenon! I was practically driven into despair! According to our doctors and press's statistics, game addicts are all those who have once visited a casino, played a slot machine or bought a lottery ticket. Frankly speaking, I have done it lots of times, but I've never thought I'm ill.
After Boe Berhrand's idea about all game addicts considering themselves "normal", I understood that he was speaking about my case as well. Yes, I do think that I'm normal. But am I right, taking into account the "ski slope" theory? Having looked around I saw the same "normal" people around me. "Game addicts, for sure!" –I thought under their uncomprehending glances.
Then the situation even worsened. Having imagined myself being a game addict, I realized the basics of this social phenomenon and doctors' attitude towards it. At first, they offered me sugar pills convincing that it was the needed panacea from game addiction, which had been invented for the last two thousand years. It didn't help me. Then they started to give me antidepressants and I slept twenty hours a day. Though game addiction didn't pass, new illnesses appeared. However, it didn't stop my doctors and they kept treating me. That time it was the turn of sedative pills. "Wake up, will you? It's time to take pills". So, I slept 23 hours a day with only one hour left to cure game addiction. I couldn't stand it any more. Having jumped off the 17th floor, I was flying and thought that I hadn't played poker at the maximum stake in Monte Carlo. When passing the third floor I came to myself. Boe Berhrand’s had just finished his speech and I understood with relief that it had been only a dream. Taras Dudko was going to make his speech. I decided not to sleep any more.
I should mention that Dudko's report turned out to be very interesting and useful. To kill the time while he was talking about game addicts I started to examine the material distributed among the audience.
"This is a very important and alarming sign" – the material told me about the enormous number of game addicts in Russia. "In this respect Russian society has left behind the USA and the Western Europe and is quickly approaching Turkey, where the government had to close the gambling business because of the population impoverishment in 1998".
I think here I shall make a small diversion. First of all, Taras Dudko admitted that no statistics in this field exists and, consequently, we can't outrun anybody. A logical question arises: who is the author of the material and why is Dudko's name written on it? Also, I'd like to say a few words about the death of the gambling business in Turkey, though only a lazy person hasn't written about it.
In January 1998 the Constitutional Court of Turkey made a resolution according to which all gambling houses in the country had to close by February 11, 1998. By that time the number of casinos among Turkey amounted to 76. Why did the government take such a step? It's quite simple to explain. There were serious tax collection problems associated with those casinos. Besides, some assassinations of well-known people had been committed there. And finally, the authority changes took place in the country at that time. But what the gambling business closing gave to Turkey? After the government's vendetta casinos have shifted to the CIS countries, Italy, Greece, Romania, Czech Republic and to Turkish Cyprus. As for Turkey itself, being deprived of the gambling business which is an integral part of the tourism industry, for the last 6 years it has lost 400 000 tourists and 6 billion dollars. The most interesting fact is that 10 % of the casinos income came straight to the Tourism Ministry. 76 casinos constituted then one third of the total intakes from the tourism industry. The country overcame it with great difficulties. Nearly 17 thousand people lost their jobs. But it's true that casinos were closing gradually. The Parliament started to close them even in 1996, and the Constitutional Court resolution only finished that process. Besides, 10 thousand slot machines had been by that time in the country. The majority of them was then sold to Europe at a second-hand price. However, slot machines and casinos still exist in Turkey illegally without giving any income to the state budget. Nowadays the government is again inclined to open casinos for tourists only (locals will not be allowed to gamble there). Most probably these houses will be opened at the best 5-star hotels. The government plans to open more than 15 casinos. However, the law hasn't been passed yet and no one knows when it will happen. In other words, the material distributed at the conference contains the wrong date and the reason for the casinos closing. The population impoverishment is not the actual reason. And is it possible at all to close any institution because of the population impoverishment? Let’s move on…
American Gaming Association receives annually not less than 100 million dollars for addressing social problems connected with game addiction. The share of the state subsidy amounts only to 10 %, the rest is paid by gambling houses themselves, located mainly in Las Vegas.
Now everything is clear and obvious. Gambling houses! Be ready to loosen your purse-strings!
And one more statistics concerning the epidemic of game addiction in Russia.
For the last 5 months of the current year 200 people have applied to Russian National Scientific Centre of Narcology at the Ministry of Health for consultations. 50 people with evident signs of the ludo-mania have stayed for the program of treatment and rehabilitation. They are 40 men and 10 women in the age range of 18 – 47 years. On the basis of a specially developed system a research has been done, including a clinicodiagnostic, experimental-psychological examination and an estimation of the rehabilitation potential level. 19 patients have a heredity burdened by alcohol addiction, mental diseases and game addiction (in 3 cases). 32 patients are married, 8 cohabitate, 6 are secondly married, 4 are single and 10 are about to divorce. 28 patients have permanent work, 48 (96 %) have problems connected with debts, work discipline violation, money stealing at work, in the family etc.
The age when patients started to gamble varies from 15 to 40 years. The duration of pathological gambling varies from 6 months to 10 years. 41 patients got addicted to slot machines, 3 patients – to electronic roulette, 6 patients gambled only in casinos, 6 patients stopped visiting casinos because of lack of money and switched to slot machines. The time for gambling tended to increase rapidly from 30 minutes to 48 hours, from one time per 1 – 2 weeks to daily visits to a gambling house. Periods of abstention from gambling were mainly connected with lack of money or to a lesser degree with the necessity to work.
The following psychological syndromes were chrematistic of the observed patients: pathological gambling, game abstinent syndrome, winning syndrome, losing syndrome during the game and after it is over. A game degradation (including mental and ethical, intellectual and behavior diversities resulting in both personal and social disadaptation) was characteristic of all the patients without any exception. A remission for a period from one month to one year was observed only in 6 cases.
In fact, I was eager to ask Taras and Boe some questions and even to propose my own methods of game addiction treatment, which might be useful for the world science. But alas! I wasn’t able to raise my hand. It’s a real pity. The world famous professor hasn’t learnt the way pathological gambling can be treated in Russia. And it could have been so profitable! For example, all game addicts from Las Vegas clinics could be brought by a charter flight to Siberia and left for two years with only a week stock of provision. I’m sure those who’d survive would never enter any casino in Nevada. I think after this experiment is completed a new government tranch can be transferred. Besides, it’s obvious that such method of treatment is much cheaper than to feed patients with sedative pills for 3 weeks. By the way, at the conference nothing was said about the first aid to be given to a game addict. And I was very much concerned about that. What should I do if I witness a gambler suffering from a pathological gambling attack in a casino or a slot-machine house? Should I call an emergency or tore my clothes and bandage a wound at their heart? A mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, a so-called kiss of life, done while a gambler is squandering the last money might be a good idea. Or should I add some laxative to their tea so that they think about something else apart from winning. All that let me understand one thing about Russian medicine. Here you’d better keep away from it.
Also I would like to ask Boe about the way American professionals, i.e. the ones of Standford University, continue to study the influence of antidepressants on the people inclined to do impulsive shopping. It's very important! Not long ago American authorities allowed to treat anxiety, obsessive and compulsive disorders as well as sociophobia, i.e. excessive timidity, with the help of antidepressants. So, one can say, it's enough. But American doctors decided that it's not and insisted on impulsive shopping, compulsive game addiction and kleptomania to be added to the disease list. Lorrin Coran, a psychiatry professor (!!!) at Standford University and a senior specialist in the medicine research, reports on the results: "I'm fully satisfied! The medicines help people who have been suffering for years! I have never seen anything alike!"
However, the US press hasn't supported the scientists. It's a well-known fact that US pharmaceutical companies and doctors try to label "a normal" behavior as "an impulsive" one so as to increase the volume of the medicine sales. Allan Horvits, a professor at Radgers University and the author of the book "A Creation of Mental Disorders", says: "The attempts of pharmaceutical companies to find in a normal behavior the symptoms of a disease that can be treated by their medicines are becoming more and more numerous."
According to A. Horvits, an impulsive shopping (as well as kleptomania and pathological gambling) is peculiar to a small number of people only. “It’s a very rare condition. But its definition is so vague that millions of people, who are fond of shopping or buying lottery tickets, match it.”
And the last point. The material contained information about attacks on slot machine houses for the period from January to June 2004 (on the basis of mass media reports by June 15 2004). Evidently it is closely related to pathological gambling.
Since January to June 2004 79 armed attacks were made on slot machine houses during which 5 guards, 5 cashiers and 3 visitors were killed. 10 more employees and one visitor were wounded. The property damage amounted to 8.2 million rubles. 43 slot machines were stolen.
Most probably the slot machines were stolen by game addicts to satisfy their game hunger at home.
That's all about the conference. No one of those who have come to it was able to understand anything. According to the doctors' reports the problem of game addiction exists in Russia. According to their answers to the audience questions, it doesn't. Anyway we'll see. The conference showed me that a new windmill appeared in Russia and all of us are invited to tilt at it. It's up to you to decide. As for me, I'm not attracted by quixotic fame.
Lanskaya Polina