Gambling addiction hits Kampala

By Oscar Bamuhigire

THE middle-aged woman sitting before me looked as frustrated as the mother of an alcoholic. The only difference this time was that she was the mother of a gambling addict.

“I am afraid they are going to kill Fred,” she said of the illegal moneylenders in Kampala Casino. “My boy just can’t stop gambling, I think he is addicted.”
Fred gambled and lost all his money one night. Determined to win, he borrowed sh6m from illegal money lenders in Kampala Casino, gambled and lost it all in one night! In spite of this, he continued to gamble.

The moneylenders began using desperate measures to recover their money. They waylaid him in the casino toilets and beat him. A few weeks later they kidnapped him, took him to Kalangala Islands and tortured him for a day.

On his release he sold his car and paid off some of the debts he had accumulated. By the time he was through, he had no money left, and he had not even paid the casino moneylenders. They threatened him and his family, and called his workplace, asking his boss to pay them. He refused, but Fred’s job was now on the line.

In Namuwongo Market, several small-scale businesses have had to permanently close because their owners gambled and lost all the capital!
“Pathological gamblers do not have the choice to gamble; they are addicted,” explains Tom Raabe, the clinical director of Keystone Treatment Center and author of The Gambling Addiction Patient Workbook.
“When pathological gamblers gamble, they are in a chemical psychoactive high. The moment the gambling is over, they slip into a chemical psychoactive low, an irritable depression they cannot tolerate. In time, their pleasure hormones become used up, and problem gamblers must gamble to feel normal.”
Findings of several researchers reveal that:

In a survey of nearly 400 Gamblers Anonymous members, 28% reported being either separated or divorced as a direct result of their gambling.

The National Gambling Impact Study Commission (NGISC) reported that it received “abundant testimony and evidence that compulsive gambling introduces a heightened level of stress and tension into marriages and families, often culminating in divorce and other manifestations of familial disharmony.”

The number of divorces in Harrison County, Mississippi, has nearly tripled since the introduction of casinos. The county, home to ten casinos, has an additional 850 divorces per year since casinos arrived.

A nationwide survey undertaken for the NGISC found that “respondents representing 2 million adults identified a spouse’s gambling as a significant factor in a prior divorce.”

The NGISC reported: “Children of compulsive gamblers are often prone to suffer abuse, as well as neglect, as a result of parental problems or pathological gambling.”

Children have died as a direct result of adult gambling problems. In Louisiana and South Carolina, children died after being locked in hot cars for hours while their caretakers gambled. An Illinois mother was impprisoned for suffocating her infant daughter to collect insurance money to continue gambling.

According to the National Research Council, studies indicate that between one quarter and one half of spouses of compulsive gamblers have been abused.

Case studies of 10 casino communities conducted for the NGISC revealed that the majority of those communities witnessed increases in domestic violence relative to the introduction of casinos.

Domestic violence shelters on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast reported increases in requests for assistance ranging from 100 to 300 percent after the introduction of casinos.

Domestic violence murders in at least 11 states in the US have been traced to gambling problems since 1996.

The writer is an addiction counsellor. He can be reached on 077-927955