A growing addiction - A gamble that’s worth the risk

LAST year we gambled something around €6 billion at racecourses, in bookies’ shops, in casinos, on the net or by just buying Lotto tickets.

You do not need to be able to understand what the workings of an underground hadron collider might do for our appreciation of our little globule’s place in this universe to work out that that represents €1,500 for every citizen of this small Republic.

It also, in a neat piece of symmetry considering the chaos caused by the failure of so many gambles on international financial markets, more or less matches the shortfall in government revenues expected this year.

It is a tremendous sum and explains why there is an Irish betting shop for every 2,728 people. In Britain there are far fewer, just one for every 7,058 people. Six years ago there were 909 betting offices across this country, two years ago that rose to 1,151. However, that considerable growth rate was surpassed just last year when 404 premises were opened. This was the largest increase in a single year.

These figures give credence to the anecdotal evidence that the number of Gamblers Anonymous meetings across the country has quadrupled in recent decades.

Gambling is almost unique among human afflictions; it is born equally of optimism and despair. The occasional victory makes it possible to endure the far more frequent failures. Any comfort it brings is fleeting and, as anyone addicted to it will confirm, it will eventually demand its pound of flesh. It is also a subject that is easy to be sanctimonious and hypocritical about.

Just as the vast majority of people who drink are not alcoholics, the majority of people who enjoy a flutter on a Cheltenham hopeful for no better reason than it is Irish consider gambling a leisure activity. Just as those of us who occasionally scratch a Lotto ticket knowing it to be little more than a tax on stupidity, we know it is low-level risk taking.

However, as these figures show, there seems to be an increasing number of people who cannot manage their relationship with gambling. They, and those who depend on them, live lives of misery and indebtedness. A very significant number of addicted gamblers resort to a second addiction or, in too many cases, suicide.

This is another instance when we might consider being our brother’s keeper. Many of us know someone who gambles too much or maybe someone whose occasional punting or internet poker is becoming problematic. It is usually hard to point out to someone that they seem to be in difficulty and that help is available but if doing so turns someone’s life around it is well worth the gamble.