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Gambling Withdrawal Symptoms
We typically associate withdrawal symptoms with addiction to substances.
Your body gets used to the presence of a certain chemical and gradually adapts to it.
You need the substance to feel normal, and when you quit, your system is out of balance.
This causes various withdrawal symptoms, including headaches, irritability, nausea, insomnia, and depression.
What may be surprising is that you don’t have to be addicted to a substance to feel withdrawal symptoms. Withdrawal from behaviours can also have physical symptoms.
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Psychological Addictions
Although much of the withdrawal process is caused by chemicals present in the substances.
Some of it is also caused by secondary effects.
Addiction to drugs and alcohol is only partly physical. Other factors affect the brain too.
For example, using involves habit and ritual. People tend to make time to use and do things in a certain way.
Every time you repeat these behaviours, you scratch an itch. Put another way; your brain releases dopamine in anticipation that the craving will be satisfied.
This is essentially the same mechanism drugs use to make you feel good.
Gambling and the Brain
Drugs and alcohol certainly have physical effects, mostly on GABA, glutamate, and dopamine. However, these mask the spike in dopamine caused by chronic use.
What you see in gambling addiction is the effect of dopamine on its own. This is a real effect.
Your brain doesn’t care whether the excess dopamine comes from cocaine or hitting 21 in blackjack.
Eventually, your dopamine will down-regulate, and you will need more to feel normal. If you suddenly quit, you will experience withdrawal.
As with other addictions, how bad withdrawal symptoms depend on how much you gambled and how long.
Symptoms of Gambling Addiction
Symptoms typically include irritability, restlessness, anxiety, and cravings.
Some people even experience insomnia, headaches, nausea, and diarrhoea.
The good news is that these symptoms will eventually go away independently. So they aren’t dangerous like benzodiazepines or alcohol withdrawal.
They can be intense, but they won’t kill you.
If you find ways to cope, they will begin to fade after about a week.
It may help to enter a treatment programme where you won’t be tempted during the roughest part of withdrawal.
As with substance addiction, gambling is usually a way of coping with stress and anxiety. You will need to find ways to manage stress and anxiety to prevent relapse.
Therapy has been seen to help, along with meetings.
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