"Gambling Risks within the Male Population".
My family had been experiencing many difficulties with my father's addiction to gambling. He became a pathological gambler that sprung from an earlier adolescent addiction. My father's habit became severe that my mother was threatening to leave him and take her children with her. He became a compulsive liar and made promises that he could not keep. He lied about the amount of money he had, stole money from my mother's purse, hid his paycheck stubs, pulled out loans, applied for credit cards, and even asked his own children for money to feed his monstrous infatuation with gambling. My mother's decision to stay and numerous threats to leave was a non-ending battlefield because she did love him, but not for his habit. .
One day my mother put up an inspiring advice article on the refrigerator to remind everyone that gambling existed in our family and that it should not be ignored or kept a secret. The article, "Gambler love: Know when to hold, fold "em" narrated a woman's experience on how she left her husband. Both my father and this woman's husband mortgaged the house, cheated, and stole. He was secretive and picked up gambling as his mistress and tried hiding it any way possible. The description of her husband's habit was very similar to my father's lifestyle. My mother felt she shared similarities with the anonymous woman and that she was not the only one suffering the consequences my father bestowed on our family financially and emotionally. .
Compulsive gambling is a progressive impulse disorder for the urge to gamble. The results from excessive gambling damage a gambler's personal, family and vocational life. "Like substance abusers, pathological gamblers make frequent unsuccessful attempts at cutting down and quitting" (Riconda 154-155). Habitual patterns of a gambler are the emotional dependence on gambling, the loss of control, and the interference with normal functioning.
