Gamblers tell their stories: Life patterns of gambling

always worked, I’ve always been a working mother and since I had Sam he’s 3, I’ve
not worked, I’ve been a housewife and everything has to be run, it’s like an army
barracks because everything’s perfect and I find that hard because I find that I’m a bit
lost, I don’t know what I want to do with my life . . .
For Leila, playing EGMs was a way of coping with the stress of being a housewife and her
caring responsibilities including looking after two autistic children. The fact that her life
revolved only around her home and family was very difficult for her and left her without a
sense of direction and goals in her life. EGMs provided her a temporary release from stress
and feelings of emptiness, enabled her to spend time away from her family and to forget
about her family responsibilities for a short while.
Men talked about escaping work stress and relationship stress as well as general life
stresses. However, it was more difficult to gain more insight into particular aspects of these
stressors as the men did not tend to discuss these in any detail. While women were usually
able to articulate the areas of their lives that gave them the most stress without being
prompted further, this was not the case for the men interviewed.
Therefore, as discussed, the motivation to escape life, responsibilities, stresses, emotional
pain and worries was strong among our participants, particularly problem and moderate risk
gamblers who had grown up in dysfunctional families. They found many life situations
difficult to cope with and gambling provided them with a temporary escape from reality.
Several of our participants had also had other addictions either to substances or other
processes that had also provided a coping mechanism and an escape throughout their lives
or at certain stages in their lives.
5. 2. The Thrill and Hope of Winning
Gambling in the hope of winning was another important motivation. Many of our participants
gambled to win as well as escape. Through gambling many people sought a thrill, an
adrenaline rush that usually came from risk taking and winning or the hope of winning.
Another motivation related to the desire to win money to gain control over their lives and
start a new life. Both the thrill of winning and the hope of making money were motivations
for low risk, moderate risk as well as problem gamblers and across all forms of gambling.
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