Signs of Online Gambling Addiction
Jakarta — Dr. Kristiana Siste, a psychiatrist specialising in addiction disorders at Indonesia’s National Central Public Hospital (RSCM) Jakarta, has outlined the signs of online gambling addiction, including spending most of one’s time gambling.
According to the International Statistical Classification of Diseases 11th Revision (ICD-11) of the World Health Organisation regarding addiction, one symptom of gambling addiction is loss of control over gambling behaviour.
“This means regardless of the time of day — morning, afternoon or evening — they are gambling. They don’t care if their money has run out; they will go to great lengths to find money to gamble. In extreme cases, they may even engage in criminal activities such as theft or taking someone else’s money or belongings,” Siste told ANTARA in Jakarta on Thursday.
The Head of the Psychiatry Department at RSCM Jakarta noted that individuals addicted to gambling also make gambling their priority, willing to stop other activities to gamble.
“Some people will even pull over while riding a motorcycle to quickly check a website and play for a bit before continuing their journey,” she said.
“They rarely leave home because those addicted typically gamble alone, no longer gambling with others,” she added.
According to her, individuals already addicted to gambling will continue and even increase their gambling activity, both in frequency and bet amounts, despite experiencing real losses.
“What started as just three hours of gambling becomes 18 hours a day. They know the peak gaming times, and their behaviour intensifies,” she said.
She gave the example of slot machine gambling, which displays bright visuals and winning sounds that trigger increased levels of dopamine, a chemical in the brain.
“Slot machines have bright, colourful graphics, spinning reels, the sound of coins tinkling, and scatter symbols with multipliers of 2,000 or 50,000. This increases dopamine levels in our brains, creating excessive pleasure when levels are high,” she explained.
Dopamine also increases when people exercise or eat delicious food, but the increase is neither as high nor as intense as during gambling or engaging in risky behaviours such as drug abuse.
Kristiana stated that the dopamine surge produces a strong sense of pleasure and creates memories in the brain that gambling provides happiness.
Winning at gambling, she noted, can also create a belief that gambling is an easy way to make money.
Additionally, gambling wins can create an illusion of control, making people feel they have skill. In reality, gambling wins are purely a matter of chance.
“They don’t win much, but they feel ‘I’m not that skilled, I can win without even trying,’” Kristiana said.
“Not everyone who plays online gambling becomes addicted. However, there is indeed a very high risk of developing an addiction if those three factors are present,” Dr. Kristiana Siste concluded.