How Do You Stop a Gambling Addiction?

I have this friend of mine who is very addicted to gambling but would never admit it. Amongst my friend group, he's always the one who complains about not having any money on him and this is simply because he is always gambling on his phone.

If you ask me, the worse form of gambling is the one you could do at the comfort of your home just pressing your phone. Ever since this friend of mine opened a betting account on his mobile phone, everything has gone downhill for him. And this is because it literally takes less than five minutes to open your mobile banking app to fund your betting account, and when he loses that money, he quickly goes back to the mobile banking app to fund more money to his betting app.

I've told him countless times that he is addicted but he always denies it, which is very bad because I feel like when it comes to him getting help, the first step he has to take is admitting that he has a problem to begin with. I've tried offering solutions in the past but it just seems like every solution I bring up, he finds a way to just make it useless.

One time I had suggested that whenever he has money in his account, he should go take it all out and hold it as cash, and I gave him that suggestion because I felt the only reason he was gambling so much was because he knew he had money in his account and seeing how the only way you could fund your betting app was through your mobile banking app, not having any money on your mobile banking would automatically mean not being able to fund the bet app.

That idea worked for about a day or two but my man was addicted and probably felt like a crackhead who needed to take some cocain unless they might die, he had gone to put all of his money back into his account just so he could continue gambling.

_{Photo by Alois Komenda}

The sad thing about this whole thing is that if he was winning, then we wouldn't see this as that much of a problem, but my friend is a chronic loser. No matter what option he chooses, he always loses. It's so bad that if he places a bet that the referee will have his shirt on for a particular match, the referee would walk into that match with nothing other than his shorts on, that's how cursed my friend is when it comes to sport betting and yet the man isn't giving up soon.

Surprisingly, he had been a bit lucky today and had won the sum of twenty thousand naira. He had used about five thousand of that to get us dinner, kinda like a way of celebrating his win, while the remaining fifteen thousand naira he was going to save, but we both know that money won't be staying long with him.

I won't be surprised if half of it is already gone as I write this. My friend needs help and unfortunately, I don't think I know how to help him.