AddictionsFor yourself55 min read

Gambling: taking stock

One more bet to win it back, then another, and the month's money gone in a single evening. This guide helps you take stock without judgement: how gambling keeps people playing, which thinking traps make you play again, what changes with sports betting and online gambling, and how to take back control, from the barriers you can put in place tonight to the debts you need to face. A whole section is addressed to family and friends.

Reviewed on October 25, 2026
Dr Zayan Al-Falasi, psychiatrist

In short

This guide is for people who gamble and wonder whether their gambling has become a problem, for those who have decided to take back control, and for the people close to them. It explains what research has established about how gambling works, mistaken beliefs about chance, chasing losses, debt and the risk of suicide, without dramatising or minimising. It then offers a concrete method: measuring, choosing a goal, closing off access to gambling, protecting the money, getting through the urge, facing the debts, coming out of secrecy and preparing for a slip. Finally, it tells family and friends how to protect their own finances and how to help without policing.

Topic: Addictions
Who it's for: For yourself
Languages: FR · EN · DE · IT · ES · ZH · AR

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The programme

This guide is psychoeducational content. It does not replace a consultation. If you are thinking about dying, especially after a big loss or when a debt is about to be discovered, talk about it the same day to a doctor, to someone close to you or to a suicide prevention line, often free and available day and night (look up the one in your country now); in immediate danger, call the emergency services in your country. If the urge to gamble appeared suddenly after a treatment was started or increased, particularly a treatment for Parkinson's disease or for restless legs syndrome, that unpleasant need to move your legs in the evening or at night, talk about it promptly with the doctor who prescribed it, and never stop that treatment on your own. If someone is threatening you to get a debt repaid, it is a matter of safety: tell the police. Allow fifty-five minutes to read.

The notice at the start of the resources is hidden.

1. Before you begin

It is almost midnight. The nine o'clock match finished long ago, but the app is still offering a tennis tournament on the other side of the world. You had planned to bet twenty euros. The account shows minus three hundred and forty. You top up one last time, just enough to get back to zero, promising yourself you will go over the figures tomorrow. The next day, you swipe away the notification from your bank without opening it.

Or perhaps you are on the other side: on the statement for the joint account you have seen transfers to names you do not recognise, you asked about them, and you did not believe the answer.

Three things, straight away.

Taking stock commits you to nothing. Reading this guide does not oblige you to stop gambling, or to confess everything tonight. The first step is to look at what is happening, with figures rather than impressions, and only then to decide.

Gambling is not a matter of willpower or intelligence. Gambling products are designed to keep people playing and to make them lose money over time. The thoughts that make people play again are found in brilliant people who are very sensible in the rest of their lives. Understanding these mechanisms already helps you resist them.

A money problem, even a very heavy one, almost always has a way out. Every day, professionals help people organise debts that seemed insurmountable. What makes a debt dangerous is above all the secrecy in which it is kept, and the idea that you could wipe it out by gambling again.

If you are reading for someone close to you, section 16 is meant for you, but the rest will help you understand what that person is going through.

2. How gambling keeps you playing

A stake, chance, and no going back

Any form of gambling brings together three elements: you stake money, the result depends wholly or partly on chance, and once the stake has been placed it cannot be taken back. Lotteries, scratch cards, sports betting, slot machines, roulette and poker all fit this definition.

The win that comes when you are not expecting it

Behaviour that is rewarded from time to time, with no way of predicting when, holds up much better through long runs without reward than behaviour that is rewarded every time. Psychologists call this intermittent reinforcement. It is a little like what happens when you keep checking your phone in case a message has arrived. So gambling does not need to make you win often. It only needs to make you win sometimes, at random, for every stake to become the one that might pay off.

Near-misses and disguised losses

When two cherries out of three line up, or your horse is beaten by a head, it feels as though you came within a whisker of winning. A study by Luke Clark and his colleagues in 2009, using a simplified slot machine, showed that these near-misses were experienced as less pleasant than an outright loss, but that they increased the urge to play again when players had chosen their combination themselves, and that they activated regions of the brain that also respond to real wins. A near-miss is nonetheless a loss like any other.

Modern machines also celebrate, with music and lights, "wins" that are smaller than the stake: you staked one euro, the machine gives you back forty cents with a fanfare, and you have just lost sixty cents. Mike Dixon and his colleagues showed in 2010 that, in novice players, these losses disguised as wins triggered arousal, measured by slight sweating of the skin, comparable to that produced by real wins. You feel as though you are winning often, while your balance goes down.

Speed and access

The shorter the time between the stake and the result, and then between the result and the next stake, the harder it is to stop. A lottery draw once a week leaves time to think; an online slot machine gives a result every few seconds and immediately offers the next spin. Studies that have compared faster and slower games point in the same direction: fast games make people stake more and for longer, especially players who are already in difficulty. Access matters too: a gambling venue closes, it is far away, people see you there. A phone never closes.

What the operator wins

The operator is the company that runs the game: the casino, the betting site, the lottery company. Every game is built so that the operator wins over time. Take European roulette, which has thirty-seven pockets, the numbers 1 to 36 and the zero. A single number pays thirty-five times the stake, on top of your stake, which is returned to you; for the game to be fair, it would have to pay thirty-six. That small gap is enough: on average, the casino keeps a little under three cents of every euro staked, on every spin.

Sports betting works in the same way, through the setting of the odds, that is, the number by which your stake is multiplied if you win. On a perfectly balanced match, fair odds would be 2 for each team; the operator will offer 1.90 on both sides instead. If ten people bet ten euros on each team, it takes in two hundred euros and pays back one hundred and ninety, whatever the result.

The consequence is relentless. You can win on a given evening; over a year of regular gambling, you almost always lose, because the longer you play, the closer your result comes to the average loss built into the game. Poker, where players compete against each other, is a partial exception, though it offers no protection against loss of control.

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What the rest contains

3. Where do I stand?
4. The gambler's thinking traps
5. Winning it back: the central trap
6. Gambling today
7. What research says
8. Taking stock: the record
9. Deciding: the balance sheet and the goal
10. Closing off access
11. Protecting the money
12. The urge: letting it pass
13. Replacing what gambling did
14. Debts and secrecy
15. The slip
16. For family and friends
17. Suicidal thoughts
18. When gambling hides something else
19. When to seek help, and from whom
20. Eight weeks, step by step
21. Frequently asked questions
22. Key points
23. Sources and foundations

Frequently asked questions

How can I tell whether I'm addicted to gambling or simply gamble a lot? It is not the amount that counts, but control. If you stop when you have decided to, without hiding anything, gambling remains a pastime. If you play again to win back your losses, if your sessions only end when the money runs out, or if you lie and borrow, talk to a professional about it.

I only bet on sport, and I know football well. Is it the same thing? Your knowledge is real, and it can help you predict results, but the operator sets its odds so as to win across all bets, and in-play betting adds speed. The only reliable judge is your result over twelve months, calculated from your accounts and not from your memories.

Can I win it back if I stop at the right moment? In a game of chance there is no predictable right moment, and the more you play, the closer your result comes to the average loss. Money lost is lost; the only question is how much you will lose trying to recover it.

Does self-exclusion really work? It is a useful barrier, especially against gambling on a whim, and those who use it generally report gambling less. It can be got round and does not cover unlicensed sites: always use it alongside other barriers.

Should I stop completely, or can I gamble a little? When the problem is established, stopping is the goal most often recommended. Some people with the disorder do nonetheless manage to control their gambling during therapy: this goal can be discussed with a professional, especially when the problem is mild and the gambling slow, with limits set in figures. The fast forms stay closed in all cases.

Is there a medicine for gambling addiction? None is officially approved to treat this disorder, even though a few have given promising results in trials; the decision rests with the doctor. Treatments remain very useful for what often comes with gambling, such as depression or a drinking problem.

Should I tell my partner everything? The decision is yours, and it needs preparing. But when your partner's money is involved, it is very hard to protect it without their knowing. Come with the figures and what you have already done, rather than with promises.

I gambled again after a month without gambling. Is everything ruined? No, a slip does not cancel a month's work. Slips are very common after stopping, as section 15 shows, and they do not doom what comes next. What counts is not gambling again to wipe it out, noting the episode, closing the access that made it possible and talking about it.

Someone close to me has gambling debts. Should I pay them? It is better not to without a plan. Paying everything at once, with nothing else changing, puts money back into circulation and can set the gambling off again. If you want to help, do it with an adviser, by paying the creditors directly, once the barriers are in place.

How long does it take to get out of it? The first weeks often change a great deal, especially when the barriers are in place. But the urge can come back months later, around a competition or an influx of money: keep your barriers for at least six months, and lift them in stages.

gamblingpathological gamblingexcessive gamblingsports bettingonline gamblingcasinoslot machinespokerlotterytradingself-exclusiondebtsover-indebtednesschasing lossesillusion of controlfamily and friends

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