My aunt was addicted to gambling. Her husband was a wealthy architect and she was a housewife. She spent hours on end at Grand West. She would forget to take the kids to school because she would spend the entire night there. He got tired of it eventually and divorced her. He gave her a house and put a couple of million in trust for her. She pawned everything, even the TV, it got so bad that she sold the BM. She would toss every cent in the machines...she went to rehab...which didn't help because sticking gambling addicted people in rehab with drug addicts and alcoholics serves no purpose. She would spend all the money that she could draw on her card and then she would draw the next batch 12:01 at night at the casino.

I don't know if she ever came right, her kids got sick n tired of it and the husband remarried - I suppose the trustees still babysit her.

I have 1st hand experience of how a gambling addiction can destroy a person so I don't gamble. That said, the problem isn't the gambling per se - it it the psychology of that gambler - 1 in 100,000 go mad like she did. If it isn't gambling she would be addicted to something else (she was addicted to bible punching for a while....which could be thoroughly destructive too... )