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Until recently, gambling was a very geographically constrained practice – you had to know of and go to a game, or travel to a casino in order to gamble. With the advent of online gambling, there is now a casino lurking in every computer and smartphone. This kind of availability makes it much harder to remove the temptation for a person suffering from addiction, as you are trying to get gambling addiction help, since it is virtually impossible to create distance between you and your addiction. At FHE Health we have gambling addiction treatment centers and have qualified professionals available to help patients who struggle with online gambling.
Is Online Gambling Legal?
Online gambling has been legal or unregulated in other countries for decades, but only within the last few years have a handful of states legalized online gambling, usually as a digital component of an already existing casino. This means that while there have always been online casinos hosted on foreign sites that allowed users to gamble with real money, they are now much more accessible, less suspicious looking, and have a more focused strategy for recruiting new players into their online casino.
The Trap of Free Play
Many of these sites will offer a set amount to “Free Play” cash to acquire new customers. This seems like free money and is very hard to resist even for people without a gambling addiction. The problem is that in order to collect whatever you won from your free play credits, you have to connect your account to a checking account or a credit card. At this point they’ve gotten the user familiar with using the online casino, gave them a feeling of winning (or cheating the system) and now have an easy, one-click method for the player to purchase additional credits in the casino.
That combination is a powerful psychological motivator that primes the user not only to spend their “free” winnings in search of bigger payouts, but it also enables the common gambling behavior of chasing losses. It is very easy to lose track of how much money you’ve won or lost, and the ready access to your finances can spell financial disaster for someone struggling with a gambling addiction.
If you have a problem with online gambling addiction you can find help at one of our Florida addiction treatment centers. Call us now at (833) 596-3502 to find out more about our gambling addiction program.