More people are seeking emergency care for gambling and it's mostly men and boys | Hacker News Reader

More people are seeking emergency care for gambling and it's mostly men and boys

cbc.ca

15 pointsrdmuser3 comments

As a Xennial it has been hard to watch how mainstream gambling and its ads have become.

I was taught gambling was foolish, and abstained. Later I came to appreciate that some folks can gamble with losses in mind and have fun. Sadly too many just cannot self regulate, so societal limits are necessary even if it means a bit less fun for those who can afford to lose a lot.

Now everything is out of balance. The US president himself is fleecing his own supporters, his family profits from deregulating and even promoting online gambling, and all the competent regulators have been bought or run out of town.

I recently went to a casino. I had dropped my daughter and her friends off at a theme park a couple hours away from home and I had about six hours to kill. Took out $200 and planned to nurse it on slot machines for a few hours. 20 minutes later and I walk out of the casino with just over $600 in my pocket. I didn't get the amount of time playing that I wanted, but couldn't justify sinking more in when I was up so quickly. Best to walk away. Many people struggle with that. Probably won't gamble again (outside of the odd $1B Powerball moonshot) for a couple years.

When I was young living in Oklahoma my family was something else. Dirt poor living in Wilson, OK. At the time gambling was illegal in Oklahoma so a few times a year they would pool money together and some folks would drive to Texas to buy rolls of scratch off tickets. A much more desperate version of the "what if I win" game that I sometimes play.

gambling is a contagious disease.

I will place a personal bet/wager on the outcome of some personal action or personal contest, though I refuse to gamble, ever, and people will try and gift me various lottery tickets, or partisipate by facilitating the aquisition of tickets, OR attempt to have me choose there "numbers", whatever the fuck that is, or operate a special device for such magical inteventions, not kidding. The hardest part for such people is that I refuse on purely personal grounds, and do not and will not directly critisise or admonish gamblers, the only thing I stick to is that whatever luck I have is fully engaged in direct personal activities and I have none to spare. I am a gen x'er and as a boy there was no legal gambling, but as boys we bet and wagered constantly on everything with whatever (little) we had, and were also given tools, guns, and equipment to be used under our own discretion, or more often under duress, our very lives at stake should we prove unable to self assess and slow or careless, and the betting was a big part in learning to self assess. the standard answer to

"WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU!!!!" bieng

'nutin'

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