There's No Silver Bullet For Problem Gambling
Published: Wednesday, December 14, 2005 Online-Casinos.com
THERE'S NO SILVER BULLET FOR PROBLEM GAMBLING
But they're trying for a pill that might help
The Las Vegas Sun carried an interesting article this week which reported on
scientific research into drugs that may help in the fight against gambling addiction.
A leading researcher in the field of drug and addiction research, Dr. Jon Grant
talked about the work at the Sixth Annual National Council for Responsible Gaming
conference held recently at the Mandalay in Las Vegas, revealing that drugs
used to treat other addictions could possibly be used to treat compulsive gambling,
with some early successful and consistent experimental results.
In a field that is still young, prescribing experimental drugs for gamblers
"is one of the best studied areas of gambling addiction," said Grant,
assistant professor of psychiatry at Brown University and chief of impulse control
disorders at Butler Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.
"I'm far from believing in a perfect pill," Grant said, adding that
compulsive gamblers often suffer from multiple disorders that can complicate
treatment. Gamblers also appear to benefit the most from a closely monitored
combination of drugs and therapy, he added.
Grant, who has received research money from the National Council, conducted
the largest gambling drug study of its kind in 2003.
It found that the drug nalmefene effectively curbed gambling cravings after
about 16 weeks of use and that people were "significantly improved"
after about 10 weeks of use compared with gamblers who took a placebo, Grant
said. The results are to be published in the February issue of the American
Journal of Psychiatry.
More than 200 patients in treatment centers across the United States participated
in Grant's 2003 study. The researcher said he will be following up with a second
study that will involve input from up to 25 different research groups nationwide.
Las Vegas gamblers are among those who will participate in the study.
About 11 double-blind studies involving more than 350 patients have so far been
conducted using drugs to treat problem gamblers, Grant said. Double-blind studies
involve patients and researchers who don't know whether they are receiving or
prescribing the drug in question or a placebo.
Around 73 percent of gamblers in these studies got better, meaning they reported
minimal to no compulsive gambling symptoms, Grant said. The results of about
seven additional studies in which patients and clinicians knew who was taking
what also had similar success, he said.
Bo Bernhard, a UNLV sociology professor and director of gambling research at
its International Gaming Institute, calls drug research "an important chapter
in the history of the field."
Bernhard was involved in overseeing one of the first drug experiments with gamblers.
The drug used in the study, Zyprexa, is made by Eli Lilly to treat people with
schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The experiment, which used Las Vegas gamblers,
found that people who took the drug reduced their gambling significantly while
those who took a placebo also reduced their gambling but to a lesser extent.
The results weren't conclusive because the drug made participants drowsy and
was causing them to sleep excessively, which likely accounted for some of the
time they weren't gambling, Bernhard said. However, the research paved the way
for future studies, he said.
Compulsive gambling is a complex disorder and isn't easily solved with drugs
or other means, Grant said.
"Gambling is one manifestation of perhaps several underlying problems,"
he said. "We need to figure out how all these symptoms interact. If someone
is suffering from depression and is gambling, do we fix one and then the other
or do we fix both at the same time?"
Smoking addiction is another complicating factor, he said. In one study, people
who were addicted to nicotine had more intense gambling cravings than people
who didn't smoke, he said.
Research is a slow, imperfect process, Bernhard said. "There's no magic
pill out there. We've been looking at alcoholism for generations and haven't
found it."
