The U.S. gaming industry generated record-breaking revenue last year of $60.46 billion, a 14% increase over 2021, according to the American Gaming Association. This week’s clergy discuss how faith can help when betting becomes an addiction.
THE REV. JOANN BARRETT
Senior Officiant, Gathering of Light Interspiritual Fellowship, Huntington Station
The strength of the faith-based but nonreligious Alcoholics Anonymous program lies in its combination of understanding the addictive mind and the influence of a personal conscious contact with a higher power. Its tenets have been successfully transferred to Gamblers Anonymous. The power of these 12-step programs lies in two people coming together with the same problem and helping themselves by helping each other.
An additional factor that is required is a deep faith. Our everyday world is focused on the external, and an addiction profoundly exacerbates this need for worldly success. Gambling addicts tend to be very intelligent people. Their minds are on overdrive with the next possible windfall and all the ways it is going to be the answer to everything. Faith is focused on the unseen. A journey of faith travels through the noise of the mind, challenging the person to honestly hear the thoughts and beliefs that lie within it. This calls one to calm the mind. Then faith goes deeper into the core of our being where one can discover that they are a true spiritual being. This requires surrender and a trust that, when adhered to, can bring a peace that passes all understanding and, with the steps, a release from addiction.
THE REV. ARTHUR L. MACKEY JR.
Senior Pastor, Mount Sinai Baptist Church Cathedral, Roosevelt
Faith can help ordinary people with a troubled gambling soul by finally getting them to face the overwhelming death grip of the deep denial of an addiction that is destroying their public and private destinies, families, finances and futures. Faith can help ordinary people with a tortured gambling soul to finally admit that the dangers of gambling addiction have led to major losses far too numerous to count. These losses can eventually lead to financial ruin, the damaging of valued family and other relationships, and in some cases — sadly — even suicide. Faith helps salve the people’s pain. Faith can help by providing the strength, finally, to declare “No!” to the deadly chokehold of gambling addiction, and, finally, to say, “Yes!” to getting much-needed professional mental health counseling and therapy to save troubled, tortured and tempted souls from the burning fire of self-destruction. Faith can help the troubled, tortured and tempted gambling souls of ordinary people in everyday life by finally discovering with the substance of steadfast hope that gambling addiction can be overcome by developing, implementing and spreading a mindset for change.
RABBI ANCHELLE PERL
Director, Chabad of Mineola
The only one who can defeat an addiction is yourself. But you can’t do that as long as you are the same person who got yourself into the addiction. You need to plug into something bigger than yourself.
Begin by framing the addiction in a spiritual context, by using the story of the Exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt as a model for the journey from addiction to recovery. Addiction is slavery, a state in which one is powerless and out of control. Exodus is also the personal story of each addicted person emerging from his or her narrow place to reach the promised land of recovery, serenity and spirituality. To rectify our cravings is to bring our knowledge of God into our hearts. This spiritual awareness is incompatible with addictive thinking and behavior. Addiction says, “I need, I want, I can’t cope with this.” Recovery and spirituality say, “I am in God’s presence, I am here to do God’s will. Anything I can’t handle, God will.” In a dramatic practice of doing God’s will, on Shabbat, we stop doing what we want to do, and do what God wants us to do. We simply rest and allow ourselves to be in tune with creation, enjoying food, family and community, praying and studying.