High Risk Situations

While you are learning the skills to challenge your thoughts about gambling, it is important to identify and avoid high risk situations that may result in you returning to heavy gambling. High risk situations can be:

• Places where you tend to gamble too much
• People with whom you usually gamble heavily
• Times in the day or days of the week when you gamble heavily
• Activities that eventually turn into heavy gambling sessions
• Feelings that lead to gambling
• Thoughts that lead to gambling
• Research studies suggest that the highest risk that lead to relapse are:
• Feeling positive and confident—the person believe that they are in control of their gambling after period of not gambling. They go to a gambling venue with the intention of gambling a small amount, but quickly return to the old gambling thoughts and behaviours and lose heavily.

2. Feeling depressed or negative—it can take some time for a gambler’s life to improve once they have stopped gambling — this can lead to feelings of despair and unhappiness—the gambler thinks “what’s the point of trying” returns to gambling , ending up in a bigger mess then when they first came for help.

3.Testing one’s self—often after a period of abstinence. A person decides that they want to prove that they are in control of their gambling by going to gamble with a small amount at their old venue. They lose and they start to chase as all the old gambling thoughts return and heavy gambling begins again.

You can deal with high risk situations by:

• Avoiding driving past venues where you usually gamble
• If you must go to these gambling venues, go with non-gambling friends
• Only carry the money you need with you
• Don’t carry key or credit cards if you do not need them
• Plan other activities on danger days
• Not testing yourself — the real test is not to gamble
• Remembering that gambling will not take away negative feelings
• Remembering that how you feel has no influence on gambling outcomes

(Material sourced from a handout from the Illawarra Community Health - Problem Gambling Facilitators Manual).

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