Are All Gamblers Narcissists? (+Sports Betting) (Gambling Disorder with Brian Pempus) - Vaknin Transcripts

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Are All Gamblers Narcissists? (+Sports Betting) (Gambling Disorder with Brian Pempus)

Summary

The discussion explored the complex psychological dynamics of gambling disorder, distinguishing it from professional gambling and emphasizing its nature as a process addiction linked to reward systems rather than impulse control or compulsion. The conversation highlighted strong associations between gambling disorder and personality disorders like narcissistic, antisocial, and borderline personality disorders, focusing on shared traits such as grandiosity, defiance, and magical thinking. The dialogue also examined the evolving landscape of gambling through technological advances, its societal normalization, and the symbiotic relationship between gambling, sports, and narcissism, setting the stage for a follow-up on treatment and recovery.

Tags

Abuse, it's, Meaning, narcissism, narcissist, Personality, Psychology, Reality, Sam Vaknin, Vaknin Summaries

August 16, 2025

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00:01 Okay, forgive me. I’m not normally a Zoom user. I I I use uh Google Meet. So, but
00:07 this is good. This is perfect. Yeah. Um so, yeah, Sam, thank you so much for
00:13 for taking the time to uh chat with me. I think you might have froze.
00:20 I might have froze. I’m not used to the kindness of strangers.
00:28 I’m okay. Am I okay now? Yeah, you’re okay now. Can you hear me
00:34 fine? I can hear you fine and I can see you fine, but I think my internet connection
00:40 might be unstable. But let’s let’s push ahead. Let’s see what happens. Oh, now you are you okay? Can you hear
00:52 me? Can you I’m okay. Yeah. Can you hear me and see me? Yeah, I can hear Yeah, I can hear you. Fine. Okay, we’re good to go. Okay. Um,
01:03 yeah. So, I know you’re an expert on um the personality disorders uh BPD and
01:09 MPD, and I wanted to pick your brain about how they relate to gambling
01:15 addiction. And um so, first off, I wanted to just read some stats off about
01:21 gambling addiction in in the world um to kind of set the stage for the discussion. Um according to the World Health Organization about 12% of men and
01:32 6% of women globally have suffered directly from gambling harm whether uh they themselves or through someone close to them. Um, and I’ve seen studies that
01:44 show about one in five people with gambling addiction uh have attempted suicide and as much as 80% of people
01:51 with gambling addiction or gambling disorder to be specific uh have expressed uh feelings that they’ve
01:58 wanted to die. So you know a high rate of suicidal ideiation among people with
02:04 gambling disorder. And then in the US in particular where I’m based out of, um we
02:11 found that half of people that engage in online sports betting, among all the people that that uh bet sports online, about half of them have uh chased their
02:22 losses have tried to recover money that they’ve lost in a way that um was
02:28 dangerous to their finances and potentially their mental health. and 40% of online sports betterers have felt
02:36 ashamed after gambling. Um, and then there’s another study that has shown that one in five US sports betterers
02:43 have verbally abused an athlete uh in a public way either at a game or through
02:49 the internet. Uh, and that would not factor in any sort of abuse that would take place in private, you know,
02:55 screaming at the television or yelling, you know, profanities at at an athlete on the on the TV. Um, so yeah, I threw a
03:04 lot of stats out there at you. Just wanted to kind of lay set the stage for uh the scope of the issue with gambling
03:12 uh how gambling uh you know tends to to uh have higher rates of suicidal
03:18 ideiation and potentially you know fostering some anger issues in uh the
03:24 people who bet. Um, so yeah, I just wanted to get your your general thoughts on that and then you know how this might
03:31 relate to the the work you do and what you’re an expert on. Okay. First of all, thank you for having
03:37 me. I’ll start with the confession. I’ve spent two years of my life as a young
03:43 man uh being a professional gambler and so I know the gambling industry and
03:50 and the gambling experience um firsthand. This is not uh this is not
03:57 an egghehead who has read articles or conducted studies and this is someone who is who’s who’s been through this.
04:03 However, I used to be a professional gambler, a pro gambler and I can tell you that the difference between a pro gambler and a compulsive gambler is like the difference between
04:14 two unrelated species. These are absolutely not the same kind of people. A progambler is a
04:22 mathematician basically. He he or she mostly he is detached. He’s cool is is
04:32 calculated and he has very strict boundaries
04:38 like stop losses and stop profits and so on so forth. The behavior is completely
04:45 controlled. There are no impulses involved. There’s no impulsivity. So the progambler is someone who tries to optimize a mathematical system
04:56 involving usually probability in order to ek out a meager existence
05:03 out of the experience in a casino. And a pro gambler who ends up the evening ends up 8 hours or 10 hours of gambling with 20% profit is a genius. Yeah.
05:14 Whereas the compulsive gambler is an entirely different animal and shares nothing with a professional gambler. So I used to be a professional gambler but I’ve I’ve spent two years observing
05:25 these people in their natural habitat and ecosystem.
05:31 Okay. You mentioned the phrase gambling disorder. It’s a relatively new phrase.
05:38 It was first introduced in the di in the fifth edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual which is the
05:44 diagnostic manual in use in North America mainly not only but mostly in
05:51 North North America. Gambling disorder is not recognized by other diagnostic manuals such as the international classification of diseases and and others. However, compulsive gambling, problem gambling, gambling disorder have been described
06:08 for decades and have been studied for decades. Initially, we when I say we, I mean the profession. I’m a professor of psychology. Initially, psychologists believe that gambling is an impulsive impulsive
06:25 behavior. It’s about an inability to control an impulse which takes over and
06:32 forces the hand of the gambler so to speak. The gambler is hijacked by the impulse.
06:39 Today we know this is not not true. Gambling is an addiction. It’s what we
06:45 call a process addiction or a behavioral addiction. It is not a problem with impulse control. Although some gambling involves impulsivity,
06:57 there’s a big difference between impulse control and impulsivity. Impulse control is the inability to
07:05 channel or to control or to sublimate or to transmute
07:11 an urge, a drive, something stronger than you that overwhelms you and drowns you and carries you along. Think of it as a river, an inexurable river. That’s impulse control problems. Whereas
07:23 impulsivity simply means that you make decisions on the spur of the moment.
07:30 You’re not driven by you’re not taken over by something. It’s just that when when you’re face to face with the need
07:36 to make a decision, your decisions are based on intuition, gut, gut instinct, um tells all kind of
07:45 tells, uh signs and omens, and I’ll come to it a bit later. magical thinking. Yeah. So, there’s impulsivity. There’s no problem with impulse control. Actually, majority of gamblers do not
07:57 have a problem with impulse control. However, they’re addicts. Another another thing that has emerged
08:04 lately in recent research, recent studies, is that gambling disorder
08:11 is not a compulsive disorder and it is not an obsessive disorder. These are
08:17 stereotypes propagated by the media, by show business, and by less than educated
08:23 psychologists. I regret to say um and I will explain in a minute why we
08:30 came to these conclusions that it doesn’t involve compulsion, doesn’t involve obsession, doesn’t involve a problem with with impulse control. If you were to observe gamblers,
08:41 they would appear to be unable to put a limit to their behavior. they will appear to be non-disiplined. They they are out of control. They are, you know,
08:52 they can’t stop what they’re doing. And this this resembles a lot compulsive compulsion and compulsive behaviors.
08:59 However, what is what is important is the motivation. Whereas compulsive obsessive people are
09:07 motivated by fear. Compulsive obsessive behaviors are intended to amilarate and mitigate
09:14 anxiety. These are anxolytic behaviors. When the when the person has anxiety or is afraid of something, that kind of
09:21 person engages in compulsive activities, washing your hands 10 times a minute or
09:27 whatever. And the idea behind this is to reduce the anxiety. It’s to reassert control over yourself and over your environment via the compulsive behavior.
09:38 Similarly, obsession involves intrusive automatic thoughts that usually have
09:45 nothing to do with the environment with it. So, um, a gambler doesn’t have
09:52 intrusive thoughts. He’s not like a gambler. A gambler is intentional. Most gamblers are intentional. They know what they’re doing. They are they’re planning for it. They are daydreaming about it. They’re fantasizing about it. It’s it’s totally
10:04 controlled. It’s not intrusive. And what gamblers are motivated by is
10:10 reward. It’s a reward system. We think it’s connected to dopamine dopamine and similar, you know, neurom modulators or neurotransmitters or hormones or whatever. So, it’s a reward system. It’s
10:22 not an anxietybased system. It’s not an impulsebased system. It’s simply about reward. There is a problem with the reward system in the brains of gamblers, in the
10:34 minds of gamblers. It seems that the reward system uh has gone haywire, has
10:41 gone, is completely out of control. The individual forms an addiction to the
10:47 biochemicals released in the brain when the individual is exposed to a rewarding experience. And this is another very important thing to realize. It’s not about money at all.
11:01 It’s about the experience. It’s about the experience of winning. Yeah, that’s quite true. But it’s also about the experience of uncertainty and
11:12 risk. These are risk seekers, thrillsekers, adventure seekers. They need the
11:18 adrenaline. They need the dopamine. They they’re addicted to their own chemicals and hormones
11:24 and and the whole process is addictive, not just the end result. This is not
11:30 this is not private banking or a private equity, you know, where it’s the bottom line that matters. It’s the bottom line
11:36 doesn’t matter at all. It’s it’s this um confrontation with the unknown. It’s
11:43 harnessing somehow the uncertainty. It’s the indeterminacy of the situation. It’s
11:50 the baited breath just a second before the you know the outcome. Actually the
11:58 anticipation of the outcome in problem gambling in gambling disorder the
12:04 anticipation of the outcome is much more addictive than the outcome itself. So that’s why we call it a process addiction. It’s about the process. Now
12:16 I um I can describe the the I can describe the um behavioral dimensions of of gambling if you wish and I can describe what’s going on in the gambler’s mind as
12:28 far as the pathology what what what pathologies are involved but I don’t I
12:34 don’t know if you want to want this to become a monologue or so um
12:40 yeah no can you um expand on that thought that um it doesn’t matter whether you win what the result of the bet is. It’s sort of the the adrenaline and the high of the bet. And you know,
12:52 I’ve I’ve heard it said before that um you know, the losses are just as pleasurable in a way as the wins even
13:00 though you’re gambling logically to win money. Uh can you talk a little bit more about that? How it’s
13:06 like you said, it’s not really the the outcome of the bet per se. Yeah,
13:12 it’s about thrill. It’s about excitement. It’s about It’s about arousal. It’s about risk, about the
13:18 unknown. It’s about uncertainty. And ironically,
13:24 a win is an antilimax, is anticlimat climatic. It’s a win is
13:30 like the end. It’s the end of the of the adventure. It’s the end of the affair. Mission accomplished. Go home.
13:37 The signal when you win the signal is you know the evening is over or the night is over. Whereas a loss is
13:46 excruciating. It’s it’s a delectable torture. It’s
13:52 it’s it it legitimizes the the participation in the game, the ongoing participation in the game. Because you could say to yourself and to others, I’ve lost money. I have to recop
14:05 it. I have to get it back. So I’m forced to continue to gamble. So there’s an element of legit legit
14:11 legitimizing the misbehavior, the misconduct and losses. Losses are the precursors to future gains, to future winnings.
14:23 There is an an inherent or innate belief that losses and gains are in
14:31 inextricably linked. They are they are like two two faces of the same coin.
14:39 It’s like if you lose the more you lose the more likely you you are to win. This is known as the gamblers’s fallacy. The more you lose the more likely you are to win. Actually
14:51 losing is a harbinger of winning. It’s the crier the messenger that announces your forthcoming glory and winning. And losses are also intense, emotionally
15:02 intense. You feel much more alive when you lose than when you win.
15:08 Um, it’s a form of selfharming. If you want to compare it to borderline personality disorder, in borderline personality disorder, we have what we call selfharming behaviors. So, for
15:20 example, cutting or burning yourself with a cigarette butt or, you know, whatever. So these behaviors self harming self-mutilation behaviors
15:31 they are intended they they accomplish several psychological goals in borderline personality disorder. First
15:37 of all the borderline feels alive by cutting she feels alive. The second
15:44 thing, the intense pain, as I said, excruciating pain of cutting
15:50 or mutilating yourself or burning yourself or whatever drowns the internal noise, drowns the dissonance, drowns the
15:59 drowns the the complete disregulation and and internal collapse and and you
16:05 know, so it’s a way to generate external noise which would drown out the internal
16:11 noise. um overwhelm your pathology if you wish. Now losing money in gambling is a form
16:18 is a is a selfharming behavior and it has exactly the same the same um
16:25 functions. It caters to exactly the same psychological needs. It makes you feel alive
16:31 and it drowns out the underlying anxiety and depression.
16:37 Mhm. Stands to reason, although we have no studies to substantiate this, but it stands to reason that most gamblers
16:44 suffer from a depressive illness or anxiety or both. It stands to reason
16:50 because we know with other addictions, substance addictions that this is true.
16:56 The majority of addicts are also comorbid. They also have depression and
17:02 anxiety. So, it’s very likely that gamblers are the same. And the only way to shut the depression off, to switch off the anxiety, is to create a much greater anxiety outside yourself. um um uh to generate an environment or
17:20 an event which would be so challenging, so risky, so dangerous that you simply won’t won’t
17:26 have time, won’t have the time and the resources to focus on your misery and your anxiety because you’re too busy
17:32 surviving, you know, and losses in this sense are psychologically much more
17:38 meaningful and much more useful than winnings. And so the addiction is actually to
17:45 loss, to selfharming, to selfmutilation. It’s it’s suicide.
17:53 That’s why many of these people have suicidal ideiation and and so they’re killing themselves softly
18:00 um first financially and then and then the the gambling disorder spreads into relationships and the ability to hold a job and the ability to function and so on. Um gambling disorder gambling. The
18:13 gambling behavior is persistent. It’s recurrent.
18:19 It consumes not only money but time. There’s a there’s huge amounts of time consumed. And because there’s a lot of time consumed by the disorder, there’s
18:30 very little time left for intimacy, for relationships, for fun, job functioning,
18:36 for holding a job, for anything else, for education, for I mean, you name it. The disorder takes over. It’s cancerous. It mutates. It metastasizes and consumes the gambler. The gambler therefore becomes an instrument of the disorder, an extension of the disorder. And the
18:53 disorder supplants the gambler. It’s no longer a gambler with a disorder. It’s a
19:00 disorder with a gambler. And it leads to severe impairment.
19:06 Impairment in reality testing, the ability to perceive reality. We’ll come to it a bit later. Impairment in
19:13 functioning. And this of course results in distress. There’s a lot of distress. Not only
19:20 shame and guilt, but also fear and and so on. So whereas
19:26 compulsive obsessive disorders start with fear and end with behavior,
19:33 process dis process addictions start with behaviors, misconduct, misbehavior
19:40 that leads to shame and guilt and anxiety and fear. So the the emotions
19:46 here are the outcome, not the cause. And yet we find in many studies that
19:53 gamblers are even more distressed and more depressed and more anxious when
20:00 they are not gambling, when they’re prevented from gambling. We can therefore say pretty safely that
20:08 gambling behavior, the act of gambling is anti-depressant and is anxolytic. The gambler gambler self-medicates with
20:19 gambling. That’s the only way he knows how to reduce anxiety all consuming anxiety and
20:25 and depression. And that that is why gambling is an escalating behavior. The
20:32 gambling tends to escalate. We the clinical term is telescoping. There’s a telescoping in behavior. The
20:39 behavior explodes literally. uh so you start small and then you lose control
20:45 and it consumes your totality your entire life and this is called telescoping. I would make one last
20:51 comment many many gamblers are manic in the sense that they they suffer from bipolar
20:59 disorder or bip one of the bipolar disorders. It’s a family and then in the manic
21:05 phase of the bipolar disorder they gamble. This is not considered gambling a
21:11 gambling disorder. This is not considered problem gambling. It’s considered a reckless behavior. So in
21:18 borderline personality disorder, in bipolar disorder and so on, in narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder and above all in psychopathy, psychopaths, they
21:29 um they have manic phases where they perceive themselves as godlike, uh immune to the consequences of their actions, possessed of impunity, infinite
21:40 impunity, um untouchable, invulnerable, and then they gamble and they fully expect to win
21:47 endlessly. They fully expect to be on a winning streak and they get very aggressive and very violent when they don’t and when they end up inevitably losing. And so um so we differentiate
21:59 between manic and non-manic gambling. Only non-manic gambling is actually
22:07 gambling disorder. So this is general overview. Very interesting. Yeah, that’s seems
22:14 like a very important distinction there. Um, so would you say that um people with
22:20 bipolar disorder are more vulnerable uh to to gambling disorder than you know narcissistic
22:27 personality disorder or borderline personality disorder? I saw a study that uh nearly one in five compulsive gamblers uh meet the criteria for uh NPD. Um and do you think that might
22:39 actually be higher uh with regards to bipolar or or borderline?
22:45 No. As I just said, someone with bipolar cannot be cannot have a gambling disorder. Okay. Okay.
22:51 In the manic phase, there are many reckless types of behavior. Not only gambling, there’s um sex without
22:57 protection, unprotected sex. There is, you know, there all kinds of crazy crazy making and acting out and all kinds of
23:03 things. And we don’t consider this a primary problem. We consider this a
23:09 secondary derivative problem of the of the pathology. However, you’re right. However, you’re right that
23:15 there are multiple studies that have demonstrated a confluence of what we call co-occurrence or dual diagnosis or
23:22 co-orbidity. Many things a co-occurrence of gambling disorder and
23:28 personality disorders especially narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder aka
23:35 psychopathy and borderline personality disorder to a lesser extent. So this
23:41 cluster B personality disorders are strongly associated, strongly correlated
23:47 with not only gambling behavior but a variety of self soothing behaviors, a
23:53 variety of risky behaviors, reckless behaviors and and so and a variety of
23:59 types of acting out when you essentially lose control and and do crazy crazy
24:05 things. And they this when we study the problem
24:11 gambler and when we study the narcissist or the psychopath or we discovered that they have an inordinate amount of
24:18 commonalities. I mean it’s pretty shocking actually. And if you want I’ll go I’ll go into it.
24:25 Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. You give me if you give me the Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So both narcissists
24:33 and gamblers, both nar psychopaths and gamblers and a large percentage of
24:40 border lines and gamblers have the following common psychopathological
24:46 denominators. They share the same clinical features. Number one, uh grandiosity. Um we know for example that when people
24:57 drink alcohol there’s something called alcohol myopia where you become
25:03 indistinguishable from a narcissist grandio entitled you know same goes for
25:09 coke when you consume coke cocaine when you when you do coke you become grandio you become narcissist in effect it stands to reason therefore that the
25:22 emergence of pathological narcissism is a byproduct or somehow accompanies or even predisposes people to develop
25:29 addictions somehow correlated with addiction. We’re not sure if it’s causation or but correlation definitely
25:36 and the same applies to a gambler. If you talk to a gambler, they’re very grandiose.
25:43 Now remember the distinction I made at the beginning, not a pro gambler. A progambler is actually very humble. is a
25:50 progambler has to accept the verdict of the roulette or the verdict of the blackjack table or the verdict of the
25:56 you know whereas the gambler rebelss against it. The gambler is defined
26:02 and the gambler is not only defined but the gambler fully believes in his int or
26:08 her intellectual superiority or experiential superiority or you know
26:16 ability to read to read other people. So if you talk to poker players, they would
26:23 tell you that they are they f they’re far better than any psychologist. Like they are they can read other people’s uh
26:30 bluffs and tells and they’re amazing at deciphering and decoding human behavior and so on. So the grandiosity erupts and
26:38 taints and colors many many statements and beliefs held by the gambler and what
26:46 we know as the gamblers’s self-concept. It’s very grandio
26:52 mentioned defiance. Defiance is actually a psychopathic behavior or a psychopathic trait. Uh gamblers are
26:59 defined defined in the sense that they will not accept the verdict of probability and mathematics. They will
27:06 defy so they openly defy the odds. They defy the casino.
27:13 They defy the the inherent rule-based structures structure of the games.
27:20 They defy the inexurability of of what’s happening. They so there’s
27:26 a lot of defiance there and the defiance is connected to entitlement.
27:32 Gamblers feel entitled. They’re entitled to win. It’s not a question of you know are you a good player or you know they are winning is their entitlement like they
27:43 deserve to win. They they had it coming in the positive sense you know and so
27:49 the entitlement is a key clinical feature in pathological narcissism. Narcissists are entitled
27:56 They feel entitled to special treatment. They feel entitled to special consideration. They feel entitled to you name it, they’re entitled to it. They’re entitled to your money, your wife. I mean, they’re entitled. And similarly,
28:07 the problem gambler or the pathological gambler or whatever uh feels entitled to
28:13 an outcome that is always favorable. And when he fails to secure this outcome, he
28:21 becomes aggressive. and on quite a few occasions violent
28:28 because of the entitlement like it’s an injustice when he loses money. It’s an injustice and not only an injustice, it’s a conspiracy against him. So the roulette is is tilted and there’s a break or the cards are are
28:45 marked or you name it. I mean all these the sports game is rigged, the the refs
28:51 are corrupt or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. The deck too many decks too few decks too I mean or the or the player next to you is an idiot you know and he effed up your game and so on. So we call this aloplastic defenses. Aloplastic defense is when you refuse to
29:08 accept responsibility for the outcomes of your decisions and choices and attribute adverse outcomes
29:16 to others to circumstances or to outright cheating and conspiracy which
29:22 you usually is attributed to envy. So there’s what we call conspiracism.
29:29 Everything I’m describing applies not only to gamblers but chiefly and mainly to narcissists and psychopaths and to a lesser extent border. So you’re beginning to see the the you know the
29:42 affinity between these disorders. Next is lying. Gamblers lie all the time. That is common with all junkies. That is common with all addicts. Addiction and
29:54 pathological lying go hand in hand like an unbreakable couple, you know, a romantic relationship there. Gamblers lie all the time. They lie not only to others. There’s a strong element
30:06 of selfdeception. There is also uh selective memory and dissociation. In
30:14 other words, gamblers forget. There’s amnesia. And when they do remember, the memories
30:21 fit into a fantastic narrative that has little to do with reality. It’s counterfactual.
30:28 So there’s a lot of that going on. Many of these apparent lies are actually not lies, but they’re what we call
30:34 confabulations. They are stories. Stories and narratives that are intended
30:40 to make sense of what has happened, to imbue what has happened with meaning and to provide purpose and direction. These
30:47 are not lies in the sense that the liar believes in these lies. So it’s not exactly lying. And it’s very very common in gambling. It’s very common in narcissistic personality disorder,
30:58 borderline personality disorder. Whereas the psychopath is a cunning scheming liar. The
31:04 psychopath gaslights you. Psychopath simply constructs a fantasy, but he
31:10 knows the difference between fantasy and reality. The gambler doesn’t. The gambler doesn’t. And in this sense,
31:16 gamblers are much closer to narcissists than than to psychopaths. They do construct all consuming
31:23 allvading fantasies and then they fall for these fantasies. They believe in them. They propagate them. They immerse themselves in them. They use these fantasies to explain what is happening
31:34 around them and to them. And then they try to convince others that these fantasies are not fantastic at all, but
31:40 they’re actually an accurate description of reality. For example, we know that gamblers tend to forget losses. They
31:48 dissociate losses and consequently they have a completely distorted view of how
31:55 the how the evening went. They they remember very vividly the winnings and they forget completely. They slice off the losses and and they
32:07 get a very distorted view of riskto-reward ratio which impacts their decision- making
32:14 adversely. There’s the element of risk takingaking or risk seeking, thrillseeking,
32:22 seeking arousal by uh risking self harm.
32:28 And this is very common with psychopaths. Psychopaths are risktakers and thrillsekers and adventurers and you
32:34 name it. And so in this sense, gamblers are psychopathic. So in this particular narrow sense,
32:42 they’re psychopathic. They seek they they addicted to sensations. They addicted to thrill.
32:49 They get aroused by risk and danger. The risk and danger of losing your money time and again, you know,
32:56 and all of them engage in what is known as magical thinking. Magical thinking is a primitive uh psychological process which is common between the ages of 18 months and 36
33:08 months. Some some people carry it forward to the age of 6 years but it’s unheard of after
33:16 6 years. I mean among healthy normal adults it’s unheard of. Mhm. Magical thinking is the belief that
33:24 your wishes, your cognitions, your thoughts have an
33:30 impact on the environment. That if you just wish for something to happen strongly enough, it’s going to happen. That if you just want something,
33:41 you know, with all your with all your being, you want something, you’re going to get it. that the
33:48 universe will rearrange itself or the cazasino will rearrange itself to cater to your dreams and fantasies. Why?
33:56 Because they are intense because they’re all consuming because you are in it in
34:02 an uncompromising manner. So this is magical thinking and also the belief that thinking cognitions thought processes can somehow break the code
34:16 like the belief that um you can invent systems to break the casino or to break
34:22 the roulette or whatever these are known as martangal. Matenali’s kind of system.
34:28 This whole subculture of systems like I have a system to break the roulette. I have a system in blackjack. I have a system. This whole culture is magical thinking. Of course, there are no systems. It’s nonsense.
34:40 There are no systems. You can of course be very cautious. You
34:46 can weigh probabilities and so on and can consistently come out ahead in a tiny minor way. When I say consistently, you know, in a typical month, you can come ahead 16 days or 16 days. You can reverse the
35:02 advantage of a casino to some extent, but that’s not a system. That is discipline.
35:08 Just discipline. you play long enough and you’re sufficiently disciplined, you
35:14 ek out a profit and the most important thing with a professional gambler is when to stand up and go home. Yeah, that’s by far the most important thing. Not a system, not mathematics, not forget all this That’s magical thinking.
35:29 Don’t want this customer, right? The casinos don’t want this player. The casinos don’t want this player. They blacklist you. Yeah. Yeah. the the the only way to beat the casino is to not
35:41 play. So you start the game, you you decide in advance, if I lose
35:49 20%, I’m going home. If I make 20%, I’m going home. You’re disciplined. You
35:56 follow this rule. You’re going to come ahead to some extent. You’re going to make 2 3% a month, maybe like a good
36:03 government treasury bond, you know, similar. End of story. All the rest, the
36:09 maltangal as they call them in Europe or the systems as they call them in in the states or whatever, that’s magical
36:15 thinking. It’s a belief that with your brain power, you can crack the code and
36:21 and so on. But there’s no code. There’s no code. It’s simply constructed to take your money. End of story. There’s no
36:28 code anyway. And finally, there are cognitive biases. Cognitive bias is when you mispersceive
36:35 reality. When we have what we call impaired reality testing either because you’re prejudiced or you’re selfdeceiving or because you tend to reframe reality, you tend to
36:48 rewrite it in a way that caters to deep psychological needs. Be that as it may, you’re not in touch with reality. So this is known as cognitive biases. An example of a cognitive distortion would
37:01 be grandiosity. where you think that you’re godlike whereas reality begs to differ in most
37:07 cases begs to differ. So this is a cognitive distortion. Anyhow, this is a non-exhausted non-exhaustive although exhausting list of the psychological the clinical features of a gambler of a typical problem someone with a gambling
37:24 disorder. And you’re very right. It is literally indistinguishable from a list I would construct for a narcissist or a psychopath or a
37:35 borderline. Right? So yes, I think there is a huge confluence, a huge overlap between these
37:41 uh I think gamblers are people who believe that
37:47 they’re entitled to special treatment by the universe. They misidentify money with love. When they win, they feel loved. They feel accepted by the universe. Again,
38:00 the process of losing and winning is addictive to them because it involves
38:06 grandiosity and magical thinking and all these sick dynamics. And losing is also a form of self harming. So, it makes them feel alive. It drowns out the depression and the anxiety. It’s all very sick. It’s a sick
38:22 process. It’s even to some extent more sick,
38:29 sicker, more pathological than other addictions. Because for example, imagine that you’re
38:36 consuming drugs. You’re doing drugs or you’re you drink. You have a drinking problem or whatever.
38:42 Yes, it’s going to impact you. It’s going to impact people around you. It’s going to it’s a form of self harming.
38:49 But everything else I’ve mentioned is minimized. If you’re an alcoholic, it doesn’t much involve magical thinking.
38:56 It does, you know, there’s not not many cognitive biases. It’s like it’s like
39:02 alcoholism is addiction 101. Whereas problem gambling is addiction
39:08 301 or 401 or whatever. It’s it’s an advanced form of addiction because
39:14 exactly as you said because it is it it it takes a free ride on underlying
39:21 problems, mental health problems such as personality disorder. It piggybacks piggybacks on personality disorders and
39:27 amplifies them and it’s an outlet for personality disorders. Whereas a typical narcissist, for example, would be
39:34 grandio in a in a party or in the at the office or in his family or in church or whatever, the gambler would harness his
39:43 grandiosity a and then proceed to spend all his
39:49 money and to borrow other people’s money because he believes he’s God and God can
39:55 never be defeated and God deserves the best and only the best and so on. It’s really it’s really dangerous
40:01 because I think gambling addiction there are others by the way not only gambling addiction but these process addictions
40:08 are very dangerous because they they make use of the sick energy of other
40:14 mental health issues. They they’re not isolated like the alcoholic is grandios a bit
40:21 but you could have an alcoholic who is not a narcissist you know definitely quite a few of them
40:28 and Whereas in process addictions, it’s uh it’s the four four horses of the
40:36 apocalypse. They’re all collaborating. So it’s really that’s why gambling addiction is thoroughly destructive to oneself, to one’s family, to one’s absolutely absolute devastation. A wasteland leaves nothing behind.
40:52 Well yeah truly insidious. Um, you know, some of these betting apps, they have trackers to help you remember your losses and your wins. They allow you to see your chart over time, the up and
41:04 down, and you usually it’s down. But I think with pathological gamblers, people
41:10 suffering from gambling disorder, they’re not either looking at this or it’s it’s another thing to have amnesia
41:18 for, right? These these trackers are not effective for people that are steep are deep into this. you talk about um you
41:24 know some of these tools that are are used to promote quote unquote responsible gambling which is kind of a
41:31 industry marketing term uh to keep people gambling you know responsible drinking is is the parallel uh but I
41:37 think with with responsible gambling it can be even more misleading um so there
41:43 are are all sorts of tools especially in the world of online gambling to try to give people more um a stronger memory of
41:51 their past gambling behavior but it doesn’t seem like it’s effective for for quite many people.
41:57 Responsible drinking uh can be done only by responsible people. In other words, the people who who drink responsibly don’t need
42:09 responsible drinking aids. The people who gamble responsibly and there are such people don’t need don’t need
42:16 responsible gambler gambling aids and they don’t need trackers or all this nonsense. They don’t need all this. This
42:22 is make believe, complete make believe. Either you have innate discipline and then you don’t need any of this.
42:28 Or you don’t have innate discipline and none of this works. Uh listen, we when we’re talking about gambling, we imagine casinos and poker games, you know, smoke shrouded poker games or what have you. But there’s gambling everywhere. For example,
42:44 uh there’s a there’s something called technical analysis. Technical analysis is an attempt to
42:50 predict future prices of stocks, commodities, you name it. And they have these pseudo mathematical techniques where they analyze graphs. They have
43:01 candles and candlesticks and and momentum and I don’t know what other types of nonsense. It’s complete unmititigated boulder dash. It’s nothing to do with reality. I happen to have a
43:13 PhD in physics so I feel comfortable to say this. So, and yet serious people including Wall
43:21 Street firms and banks, they use technical analysis to predict prices and they bet money on this.
43:29 That is absolutely problem gambling. It’s absolutely an institutional gambling disorder.
43:37 And I give you one example. There’s only one example. Gambling is everywhere. Yes. And the what’s common to all these
43:44 phenomena technical analysis casinos uh backroom poker games what’s common to
43:51 all these phenomena is the grandio belief that you can crack the code which
43:59 is a form of magical thinking not grounded in reality devoted from reality fantastic childish infantile and when it is coupled
44:12 with other dynamics. For example, suicidal ideiation in borderline or um
44:19 entitlement in narcissism. When it’s coupled with this, it it really has catastrophic outcomes.
44:26 And I mentioned technical analysis in finance. I mentioned technical analysis. You have gambling in healthcare.
44:32 You have gambling in in the army like in in in the military. Gambling is everywhere. It’s disguised
44:40 with pseudocientific jargon and lingo. It’s it’s pseudocience of some kind, but
44:48 it’s gambling. It’s absolute gambling. So I what I’m what I’m proposing is that
44:56 gambling is an organizing principle of our society because we are risk averse
45:02 ironically whereas the typical gambler is a risk risk seeker thrillseker sensation seeker and gets
45:13 aroused by by losing money and selfharming. The rest of society is addicted to
45:19 gambling because they misinterpret gambling as risk management.
45:25 They misinterpret gambling as a way to actually control risk, mitigate risk,
45:31 harness risk. So you have in banks for example, you have something called value
45:37 at risk models, V models. These are mathematical models that predict the
45:44 future behavior of lending portfolios, portfolios of loans and credits.
45:51 These models are a form of gambling and as we have witnessed in 2008 and
45:58 2009 when when bad simultaneously. So yeah,
46:05 these models are useless. They’re complete unmitigated nonsense. their form of institutionalized gambling. So I would make a distinction between individual gambling and
46:16 institutional gambling or collective gambling. We gamble collectively because it gives
46:22 us the illusion that we are reducing risk somehow or making sense of it or
46:29 able to anticipate it or somehow reduce it. You know this is the collective aspect. Whereas individuals are exactly the opposite. They’re gambling in order to enhance the risk, to confront the
46:40 risk, to enjoy the risk, to bask in the risk, to get get aroused by the risk.
46:46 And this is why it’s very confusing to people because that’s that’s not gambling. Like if we
46:53 construct a model in the bank that will predict how loans will behave, what we are doing, we are reducing risk, aren’t we? No, we are not. We are not. We are anastthesizing ourselves. We are putting
47:04 ourselves to sleep because now that we have the model, we say, “Oh, we are safe.” We are not safe.
47:11 Of course, technical analysis is not safe. Risk models in banks are not safe.
47:18 Risk models in the military, which are possibly the greatest nonsense imaginable are not safe.
47:24 It doesn’t enhance. These don’t enhance our safety. They they inc they
47:30 camouflage the risk. They put us to sleep. Theyize us.
47:37 Absolutely. I don’t know if you’re familiar, but there’s a kind of a controversy controversy in the US with
47:43 uh uh US military bases having slot machines and a lot of people think these are, you know, predatory devices to have
47:50 uh for that population. Uh, so that’s a little a little bit of an interesting um
47:56 aside there, but you know, you talked about um in other videos you’ve talked about kind of the rise of of narcissism
48:02 or like where the the world’s being overt the world’s been overtaken by narcissists at uh you know, the highest
48:08 levels uh in in in this world. Do you think there’s any sort of connection there with uh gambling being so
48:15 ubiquitous and um you know whether at the institutional level I know it’s you know woven into the economy um but being
48:22 so normalized maybe at the individual and and group level um with this kind of
48:28 this you know world we live in with with um you could call it maybe peak narcissism in a way um in society. Do
48:35 you think there’s any connection there with with gambling being more popular than ever and and um our world kind of
48:41 being run by by some pretty uh prominent and powerful narcissist?
48:47 I think a bigger problem I’ll come to I’ll answer your question but I think a bigger problem is that we have normalized probability.
48:55 We’ve normalized probability even as we assure risk even as we we we hate risk.
49:01 We are afraid of risks. We are we are actually phobic. We are risk phobic already. We like don’t want to take any
49:07 risk whatsoever. Even the tiniest, you know, opening a can of beer. We don’t want that. It’s risky. So there’s a
49:14 phobia of risk on the one hand. And we believe that probability is the antidote. So we have normalized
49:21 probability. But probability cannot mitigate risk. probability in most cases with the
49:28 exception of the insurance industry probability enhances risks increases risk and we see this in technology as well. Artificial intelligence
49:40 is a statistical tool. It’s a crowdsourcing tool. It is constructed on what is known as large language models which are essentially essentially a collection of billions of texts and so on. And then what what the chatbots do, they use statistics, they
49:56 use probability and and so we have an example of a technology here that people feel safe
50:04 with and bond with and so on. It’s actually a probabilistic technology
50:11 which is a gambling technology. So you’re gambling on the accuracy of the underlying texts. They’re not vetted.
50:19 They’re not curated. They’re not analyzed. They’re garbble garbled up. They’re, you know, so it’s here’s a form
50:28 of gambling, technological gambling that masquerades as certainty and authority and you get
50:35 the answers and you don’t need to feel unsafe or uncertain anymore because we have all the answers for you and so on so forth. We have normalized probability. Now narcissist, psychopaths or they’re
50:47 risktakers as as I said and they’re magical thinkers and probability
50:53 is fits well with both because if the world were um if the
51:00 world were deterministic and certain then magical thinking would be impossible. In such a world, magical thinking is impossible. In a world that is deterministic that is
51:11 utterly predictable and there’s no magical thinking. And in a world that is uh in a world
51:17 that is structured with rigid rules and so on, you can’t really be godlike. You
51:24 can’t be omnipotent, for example. You can’t be all powerful. You can’t change rules. So narcissists gravitate to probabilistic pursuits.
51:35 Because when you say it’s probable, you’re leaving room, you’re leaving room
51:41 for other options. You’re leaving room for magical thinking. You’re living room for grandiosity and so on. It’s only
51:48 probable. Everything is probable. This is probable. That is probable. So a
51:54 narcissist feels comfortable in a probabilistic environment. Narcissists hate determinism. That’s why when
52:00 narcissists go to prison, for example, they lose their narcissism. So
52:06 we have created last 100 years we have we have normalized probability. It
52:12 started with quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is probabilistic. So pro probability has infected
52:20 mathematics infected physics infected and now we live in a total in a probabilistic cloud where narcissists
52:28 thrive. They love it because the more fuzzy it is,
52:34 the more room they have to to enact their fantasies and the more the easier it is for them to convince you that their fantasies are the only reality. The easier it is for them to gaslight you. Although they believe their own fantasies, so it’s not exactly
52:50 gaslighting, but the impact is the same. You’re being gaslit you. So the easier it is for them to compromise your
52:56 reality testing. And so in this sense, yes, the rise of pathological narcissism as an organizing principle of society, something that makes sense of life and of various
53:08 professions and of politics and of show business and so on. And the rise of
53:14 narcissism is an explanatory principle. Uh, and the fact that today
53:21 if you’re a pathological narcissist, you are endowed with a relative advantage, competitive edge. It’s a positive adaptation in today’s civilization.
53:33 Narcissists rise to the top. Narcissists get the girl. Narcissists make money.
53:39 Narcissists are famous and they’re celebrities and so on. It pays to be a narcissist. It’s it’s a great thing. In
53:46 July 2016, the magazine New Scientist, respected magazine, the cover, the cover page, cover story was, “Parents, teach
53:57 your children to be narcissist.” This is a positive adaptation. So when a
54:04 narcissist comes to power for example the first thing he does he destroys
54:10 everything that is secure everything that is certain everything that is safe all the rules all the institutions he
54:17 creates a probabilistic cloud within which he can manipulate you because if
54:24 there’s no reality fixed reality anything can be real and so it’s negotiate reality is
54:30 negotiable There’s truth, your truth, my truth, truth, you know, truthism. There’s your
54:36 truth, my truth, and everything is negotiable. Facts are just opinions. Opinions are facts and and so forth. And
54:42 that is the Disneyland and the paradise of the narcissist. Narcissist doesn’t
54:48 want 70 virgins. He doesn’t want 70 virgins. He wants uncertainty. It
54:54 thrives on uncertainty. And so in this sense gambling is increasing
55:01 uh hand inhand with narcissism uh because everyone is getting used to playing with probabilities as the only organizing and explanatory principle of reality or what passes for reality on
55:13 the one hand and on the other hand as narcissists in power destabilize our
55:19 world make it cra make it crazy. There’s crazy making. It’s fuzzy. It’s
55:26 unpredictable. It’s um uncertain. It’s indeterminate. You try to defend and protect yourself
55:33 by engaging in gambling that appears to amilarate risk or to mitigate risk.
55:40 For example, technical analysis in the stock exchange or value risk models in
55:46 banks or risk models in the army in the military. Uh-huh. These are all desperate attempts to regain certainty, to regain certainty, to counter probability, to harness risk, to kind of
55:59 cage it, cage it, cage the animal. But these people don’t realize it’s these all forms of gambling. So the narcissist wins wins this way as well. No wonder narcissists are
56:12 predominant in these industries. They’re predominant in finance. They’re predominant in politics. They’re predominant in these industries that pretend to mitigate risk even as the as
56:23 these industries enhance risk actually. Fascinating. Yes. It seems fitting that
56:30 the the head of the US is a former casino owner. Sometimes I forget forget that fact. Absolutely. Would you say you know and finance I mean taking loans, credits
56:43 real estate? Real estate is a branch of finance of the finance industry. It is finance
56:51 in bricks and mortar but it’s finance. It’s all about finance. Mortgages, mortgages, you name it.
56:58 Would you say it’s almost become a form of rebellion to resist gambling in this day and age? Um,
57:05 you know, what of rebellion almost to uh to to resist gambling, to to not be a gambler in in this day and age or to reject this
57:16 probabilistic way of thinking and and and interpreting the world to to be, you
57:22 know, maybe you could say more romantic in your way of thinking rather than um the cold uh more brutal way of of of thinking every of about everything in terms of probability. Do you think it’s
57:34 sort of a um an act of rebellion these days to to resist the not only to resist
57:40 the urge to gamble um but maybe to think about the world as or life as as a gamble? So you have uh you have substantial social movements which are which are pushing back against the probabilistic model of the world
57:55 prob probabilistic model of reality. And so you have for example people who
58:01 want to go back to traditional family values or take away take away women’s rights or
58:08 you know this this um nostalgia
58:14 is a nostalgia not to any specific history or any specific past. It’s a
58:20 nostalgia for a period where you felt certain, where things were predictable, when everything and everyone had had its place, where there were clear behavioral
58:33 scripts. You knew what to do in every situation. You didn’t have to ask anyone handed handed over to you. It’s so people miss this certainty. They miss this determinacy.
58:45 But regrettably, they’re trying to accomplish this by
58:51 eliminating change or eliminating agents of change or eliminating beneficiaries
58:57 of change such as women. Yeah. So people equate probability with
59:03 change. Whereas probability has nothing to do with change. You could have probability in a totally
59:09 static universe with no change whatsoever. Change has nothing to do with probability. changes the dynamic of
59:15 reality. It’s nothing to do with. So, but these people are saying things are not certain. Things are unpredictable.
59:21 Things are capricious and arbitrary. Things are frightening and dangerous. And the only way to prevent all this
59:27 from happening is to freeze change like to freeze. It’s a freeze reaction. we
59:35 have in psychology when you’re confronted with a threat you freeze you
59:41 fight you flight like these are the reactions freeze fight flight and fall
59:47 reaction so these people choose to freeze and they believe that if they freeze the
59:53 rigidity that they introduce into the world is such that the lack of change would
60:00 imbue the universe with certainty and say okay If things don’t change, then
60:06 they’re going to be predictable. If things don’t change, we’re going to have certainty. That’s nonsense. That is confusing change with probability. You could have a system that never changes and at the same time is uh uncertain.
60:22 Could definitely have this. It’s uncertain because, for example, it’s highly complex.
60:28 So it’s a system that never changes but it has so many interacting components that you can never predict the behavior
60:34 of the system. Actually we have such a system it’s called mathematics. In mathematics nothing ever changes
60:43 ever like ever. So there’s no change zero change. However it is so super complex that
60:51 mathematics is always indeterminate. This is known as the girdle theorem of
60:57 incompleteness. It’s a foundational concept in mathematics that if you construct a
61:04 mathematical system, it will be either complete or inconsistent
61:10 or or consistent. You cannot have both. So either you will have a system that is probabilistic, unpredictable and so on so forth but complete or you will have a
61:21 system that is complete like these people want you know it’s complete unchanging rigid system but it will be
61:28 inconsistent they will it will always be unpredictable. So and this is why we are seeing all the
61:36 mess nowadays all over the world because people are confusing these two concepts. They’re trying to arrest change. They’re
61:42 trying to stop change. And this creates added turbulence, added volatility,
61:48 volatility, added risk, added uncertainty. They don’t understand that. They don’t understand. They that
61:55 actually dynamical systems could be completely stable and static systems could be completely chaotic. They don’t understand this. They can’t put wrap their minds around this, you know. Yeah, gambling is uh you can veer into
62:14 politics and philosophy uh with gambling as a launchpad. Um yeah, it’s
62:20 fascinating. Um I wanted to maybe go back to just um it on the individual level and ask you about um you know gambling is called some people call gambling the hidden addiction. I know
62:32 you can hide many addictions of course, but um I I feel like I’ I’ve seen
62:38 gambling sort of maybe get that crown in a way. Some people give it that distinction as being the most uh the
62:44 easiest to hide to hide from your your family and your loved ones or your friends. Um, but can you talk about how
62:51 that might relate to um the self trashing and like with with BPD and NPD and uh the self harm and um maybe the desire or the urge to make your self
63:03 harm uh visible or or um to give people around you the awareness of your self
63:09 harm and and how gambling um maybe uh maybe starts off as you know a quiet
63:15 like a um a convert a a covert form of self harm, but then eventually it erupts
63:22 into something that needs to be displayed to the people around you. So, first of all, I I beg to disagree. I
63:29 mean, anyone who’s worked with alcoholics, as I have, I’ve worked with alcoholics for for years in rehabs and so on. They’re great at hiding their alcoholism. Absolutely great. They’re
63:39 the best in my view. So, I beg to differ. I think many many addictions involve um covert activities, hidden
63:47 hidden activities, camouflage, disguise. Yes. Uh second thing is it’s not true that self harm is a cry for help. It’s not
64:01 true that self harming is ostentatious. On the very contrary, if you talk for example, if you if you observe border lines, they cover they cut themselves and then they cover it with long sleeves and all kinds of things. The minute you see someone with a long sleeved shirt in
64:17 summer, the that’s a borderline disguising her cast, you know, hiding her cast. So self harm is not a cry for it’s a common misconception even among
64:28 professional. Self harming is about feeling alive and a way to self soo or
64:35 self-medicate against underlying depression and anxiety. These are the two main roles of self harming and
64:42 gambling is no exception. Um what happens with gambling is that it
64:48 involves money whereas many other addictions
64:54 they’re not about money mostly. I’m not talking about like um schedule schedule
65:00 one drugs or I mean that are very expensive like but most other addictions process addictions and so on they’re not
65:07 really about money like you could be an alcoholic on a shoestring budget it’s not a big deal
65:13 but gambling escalates this is the process of telescoping it’s a process telescoping process
65:20 behavior process addiction escalates and you tend to double your bets whenever you lose and then double redouble them again. And so it’s complete. So at some point you have to begin to use other people’s money. And that’s where you out yourself.
65:40 You’re stealing money from people. You’re borrowing money from people. You’reing other people to invest in in a
65:46 gambling venture of some sort and so on. That’s why it’s very difficult to to that’s why the selfharming in gambling becomes evident. But it’s not ostentatious. It’s not like
65:59 the gambler wants other people to know that he or she is in trouble and is asking for help or it’s just that
66:06 gambling is is um a fire. It’s like a fire, forest fire, a bush fire. It’s it
66:12 consumes immediately everything and everyone around it. Whereas other addictions are not telescopic
66:18 addictions. They are not they they don’t proceed that way. They they actually for example in many addictions we have a
66:24 very very long plateau of be behavioral plateau. So for example a typical
66:30 alcoholic escalates over decades over years like a typical alcoholic would drink one glass a day then a year later would drink two glasses a day and maybe five years later
66:42 will will escalate to five glasses a day. And the similar similarly in smoking, people usually end up um on a
66:50 certain level and they keep this level for decades. Like they escalate initially from one cigarette to 10
66:57 cigarettes, but then the rest of their lives they’re going to smoke 10 cigarettes. They’re not likely to escalate to two boxes of cigarettes and
67:04 then to 20 boxes of cigarettes. Like there’s no it’s not. Whereas in gambling, you can start with $1 or $10
67:12 and the next day you are in for a hundred and and the next month you’re in for like a million dollars. And I’m, you know, I’m not exaggerating. You mortgage your home and you steal your wife’s and your college kids
67:24 college funds and what have you and this this could escalate within 30 days. So that’s why uh there is the impression that the the gambler has been hiding
67:36 this. It’s just that the latency in gambling is much nar much shorter much narrower and therefore the shock is much bigger like with an alcoholic
67:48 one glass two glasses 10 years pass three glasses I mean you get used to it you you get as an observer as a family
67:54 member as a friend you get habituated you know he drinks but with a gambler it
68:01 comes as a shock because one morning you get up you wake up and there’s nothing left, no college funds, no home, no car,
68:10 no nothing. And and and so you say to yourself, s you know, this guy was hiding it from me. It was Well, it’s not true. It
68:21 started a month ago. There was nothing to hide. You know, the escalation is is unbelievable in gambling. Unbelievable.
68:28 I’ve seen people come in and lose everything they’ve had, everything in
68:34 one evening. I’ve seen it with my multiple time more times than I can count losing like everything they’ve had in one. Listen, I’ll tell you a story.
68:46 Yeah. Uh a personal story if you don’t mind. One day uh I was sent there was a
68:53 consortium consortium of people. Each one put some money and they collected about a million dollars. That was in the
69:00 late ‘7s. million dollars then is like I I’m not quite sure but I think like seven or maybe eight million today or
69:06 something a sizable amount. So there was this consortium and they collected a lot of money and they gave it to me because
69:14 uh I had a good reputation. I was making 20 30% a year but it was stable and I
69:20 was always making 20 30%. So they gave me this huge amount at the time huge for me. I was a kid and uh but they coupled
69:29 me with a mob figure. They they sent me out to gamble but they send a nanny or
69:36 you know a minder who was a mob figure. He was a mobster, a senior mobster
69:42 actually. And so this guy was traveling with me everywhere monitoring that I’m not steal stealing money or hiding money or
69:48 whatever. You know, it’s difficult. And then one night we made so much money they closed off the casino. It was in Spain. They closed off the casino. They shooted everyone
69:59 out and we continued to gamble. It was only me gambling the entire casino, entire floor. And he was sitting next to
70:06 me and we made a fortune. And then he took the money and he
70:13 gambled all of it. We’re talking millions of dollars. He gambled all of it that single night.
70:22 We finished the I mean the night was over. It was 4:00 in the morning or something. We ordered a taxi. Could hardly afford. On the way he threw up.
70:30 Exited the taxi. He threw up. There was a guy who was cutting other people’s ears and you know making sausages out of
70:36 them. I’m kidding you not. You know I’m not the kind of guy who throws up easily and fright gets frightened easily and so
70:42 on. He said we’re dead. Both of us are dead. I mean that’s our last our last few days on earth. we might as well enjoy them cuz coming back to Israel, we’re dead.
70:53 Um, but I’m telling you this story to to demonstrate the telescopic escal
71:02 escalation in in gambling. He couldn’t he knew that he’s signing his death verdict. We sorted it out. I’m alive as you may notice. So, but he knew at the time he
71:13 he was absolutely convinced that he’s signing his death verdict. And yet he could not stop himself. And
71:20 we’re not talking like 2,000 bucks or $20,000 or whatever. We’re talking millions of dollars alone in the entire
71:26 casino surrounded by half naked, half clad girls with with drinks. I mean, they want to get you drunk and you know, and uh I I didn’t drink at the time, of
71:37 course, as a program. You don’t drink. You don’t smoke. You don’t you don’t do anything any of this, right? And uh but he couldn’t stop himself. It couldn’t.
71:48 That’s That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Wow. Yeah. What do you uh you make of this
71:54 idea? You know, there’s kind of a conspiracy a conspiracy theory around it where the casinos want you to win it
72:00 first so you’re more uh easily hooked on it. Um you know, obviously there’s no there’s no one of the attempts one of the attempts to crack the code. Like they want you to win it first. So
72:11 you win and you walk away and so on. Listen, casinos are highly regulated. They’re they’re everything is inspected multiple times. Yes, they bribe people and everything, but they don’t need this
72:23 No, they just don’t need this. They really don’t need this.
72:29 The inherent advantage in a European roulette is 3% more or less. The inherent advantage in an American
72:35 roulette with two zeros, you know, it’s it’s like five, six. They don’t need this. There is no game and that includes
72:43 Bakara and blackjack and you name it. There’s no game which is inside the casino and where the casino doesn’t have an advantage. Casino is is not a nanny state. He’s not your sponsor. He’s not in love with you. He’s not your family member. They want your
73:00 money. All the games in the casino, not a single exception. Dice, you name it. All of them have an inbuilt advantage. And this advantage is no less than 2%.
73:11 No less than 2%. End of story. Why? Why would they engineer or reverse engineer
73:18 the roulets and and let you win? Who the who are you that they would let you win? What are you a Saudi prince with 100 million bucks? They monitor. I mean
73:29 there is the there is a desk supervisor the guy who and yeah they’re monitoring whether you’re doing things you shouldn’t be doing you know stealing money the cameras everything. Um if you if you sit and visibly and
73:43 ostentatiously scribble all the time on a notepad and
73:49 something they’re going to throw you out because they don’t want to take any any
73:55 chance or any risk with you. Not because you’re going to win, but because you may erupt or you may go crazy or you may
74:01 influence other people or you may even co-opt other people to invest in your alleged system and then there will be a
74:08 mass mass riot. It’s trouble. Someone like that is trouble, you know. So they throw you out and yeah, they blacklist you. They’re blacklist definitely. I’ve been on them. All this is true.
74:19 But why would you risk your license, your livelihood, and um just when when
74:26 you have a guaranteed return on investment of a minimum of 2% per night? Why would you do that? Doesn’t make any sense. So, it kind of ties back into the grandio thinking
74:37 where the universe kind of revolves around you or the casino to have a special,
74:43 you know, you have a special place in the casino. Um yeah, that makes sense. Um, you know, some people, um, you know,
74:50 talk about the the lack of clocks in a casino, the certain designs of the the
74:56 floor. Um, do you have any thoughts on on on that kind of in a way that disorients people and might exacerbate
75:03 the self harm by the fact that you maybe don’t feel that connection to the outside world, no windows, no clocks. That part is true. But it’s the same
75:14 designers who who advise supermarket chains, the same people.
75:20 Yeah. There’s a psychology of psychology of of increasing consumption
75:26 in in physical spaces. So the same principles applies apply to supermarkets and to to you know shopping malls and to
75:34 casinos and what have you. When is the last time you’ve seen a clock in a shopping mall? So right,
75:42 so yeah that part is true. The whole thing is psychologically or psychosoccially engineered to to number
75:50 one enhance your consumption. Number two alleviate or mitigate your risk perception. Number three number three uphold and enhance and butress your magical
76:02 thinking. Number four disinhibit you. There’s a lot of disinhibition. For example, there are half naked girls. There are drinks. The restaurant is not far away because,
76:14 for example, people who eat just eat. They don’t drink anything. They’re much more sleepy afterwards.
76:20 They’re sleepy. They’re less alert. So, they encourage you to eat. They even give you coupons or, you know, to go to
76:27 the restaurant. Cheers. Yeah. They create the illusion of freebies
76:33 like a room. You know, if you’re big enough, you get a So, this caters to your ego. Look at me. I have a room. I
76:40 have special treatment. I have So, they cater to your grandiosity. Absolutely. The color scheme is very selective. And
76:49 each of the color colors is coded and each color has a highly specific psychological impact. There’s a there’s
76:55 a discipline in there. There’s a field in psychology for this. So, all this is is true. That is not that is not
77:02 conspiracy theory. That part is true, right? And then with with uh the gambling apps, you know, a lot of people
77:09 uh especially in the US are moving to gambling apps uh rather than uh the actual brickandmortar casino. You know,
77:16 obviously the younger generations are moving to uh you know these these various uh websites and apps for gambling. Do you obviously those those uh apps lack some sort of social element
77:27 to them that they you know you might experience in the casino with the people around you and the drinks and all that.
77:33 Um would you say that you know these apps are just kind of piggybacking on the addictive designs that have already
77:40 been uh developed well-developed from you know social media apps which I think were also developed from kind of the slot machine mechanics with like pulling down on your screen to refresh all your
77:52 notifications and whatnot and see what’s what’s happening is sort of like a you know a reinforcing thing where you know these gambling apps are are learning from the the social media apps
78:02 learned from the gambling uh companies in the first place. Do you have any thoughts on on this?
78:08 Yeah, we are transitioning to an age of automization, an age of self-sufficiency.
78:15 We’re transitioning to to an age, the new age that is upon us. Is an age where
78:22 we gave up on reality and we have adopted fantasy as the organizing principle. And so now everything is
78:28 fantastic. Political parties are fantastic. The metaverse is going to be a fantasy. Social media of fantasies.
78:34 It’s all fantasy. So that’s one thing. And the second thing, we’ve given up on other people. We’ve even given up on other people when it comes to sex where theoretically people are indispensable. At least their
78:45 bodies are. But we’ve given up on that as well. The frequency of of sexual activity has
78:53 precipitously collapsed. So even this is not sufficient a sufficient incentive to spend time with
78:59 another person. So the new age is going to be atomized. You’re going to be all by yourself.
79:05 You’re going to be self-sufficient technologically and otherwise. And you’re going to be immersed in fantasy or other people are absolutely unnecessary. There even I would say obstacles or hindrances.
79:17 And I think dating apps and gambling apps and they all they all cater to this newly emergent world.
79:24 And if you want sex, you’re going to have a sex doll. Or if you want romance, you’ll have an AI companion. And you
79:31 know, that’s a world we we’re gravitating towards. I think people have discovered that
79:37 other people uh are a burden that it sucks to be with other people. Other people are difficult. They’re burdensome. you know the the juice is not worth the
79:48 squeeze. The price is price is not the not worth the price. I mean you choose
79:54 any it’s not worth it. People discover it’s not worth it. And now for the first time in a long time technology allows
80:01 them to be all alone all by themselves and feel self-sufficient and gratified. Dopamine hits, adrenaline hits, you name
80:08 it. And everything is is you can turn it off at any minute. You don’t pay a
80:14 price. is cost free in emotional terms and social terms. It’s cost free. You
80:20 pay a monetary price from time to time, but even that is completely controllable. And so why why would I why would I spend time with other people have to accommodate them, smell them, talk to
80:32 them, be aware of their vulnerabilities and sensitivities? Who needs this You know, it’s uh
80:40 so I think that’s the future. I think places where people human warm bodies
80:47 places where warm bodies congregate are a thing of the past and gambling therefore we lose many many
80:56 dimensions and aspects which were essentially psychosocial and gambling will be reduced to the core
81:04 will be bare bones gambling future gambling will be bare bones and what’s the core magical thinking you
81:12 entitlement, grandiosity, fantasy. That these would be the the cornerstones
81:19 of future gambling. Not human interaction, not drinking, not socializing, not you know ostentatious
81:27 displays, not none of this. You will go on a gambling app because
81:33 you want to feel godlike, because you want the thrill and the arousal of the unexpected,
81:39 because uh when you lose, it’s it’s pathetically and crazily and
81:46 pathologically gratifying because when you win, you you feel divine because you believe you can
81:53 somehow influence the outcome magically. And it caters to the extremely primitive
81:59 extremely primitive layer in our brains the reptile brain if you wish or the infant brain and uh it’s therefore irresistible
82:10 future I mean gambling apps are infinitely more irresistible than the casino infinitely. And so it might become a pandemic.
82:22 Might become a pandemic. Especially if gambling apps link themselves to social media, to the financial industry, to crypto, to crypto assets. Mhm. Imagine network where for example
82:36 you can X Twitter and you can gamble through X
82:42 and in order to pay your losses you can tap into your wallet your Bitcoin wallet
82:48 and it’s all integrated and finally your winnings are credited to your bank account and you don’t see a human face
82:55 you don’t hear a human voice it’s all anasttheasicized and and so imagine such
83:01 a world I think that’s the future of gambling. Gambling is going to become integrated with multiple other platforms
83:09 that are all intended to isolate you, automize you, and convert you into a
83:15 th000% consumer, no other dimensions. If you’re on Facebook, if you’re on
83:21 Facebook, on Instagram, on Tik Tok and you have a wife, that’s bad for business
83:28 because the time you spend with your wife or the time you waste with your wife is a time that could have made Mark
83:34 Zuckerberg much richer. Is not going to let you spend time with your wife. Is not going to let you have children. Is
83:40 not going to let you experience intimacy. is not going to let let you waste your time outside the immersive
83:47 confines of the fantasy that he’s building for you. And trust you me in the metaverse there will be virtual casinos. Yep. For sure.
83:58 Absolutely. Do you have any thoughts on on kind of general uh sports fanaticism? you know,
84:05 sports, people get heavily invested in sports outcomes even when they’re not gambling on them because it’s tied to
84:12 maybe, you know, their country or their city or their uh certain cultural elements. And then when you add gambling on top of that, it becomes even more explosive. You know, I think the the global pandemic for gambling is would be
84:23 with sports betting because it’s sports is um you know, widely globally um you
84:29 know, cherished uh pastime or activity for people and then when you add gambling to it, it it be can become even
84:36 more um more insidious. Do do you have any thoughts about you know this the fanaticism around sports which is
84:42 existed for a long long long time? Um, sports is a form of sublimated
84:50 aggression. Sports is about violence. All sports, even chess, even chess, it’s about violence. We are not allowed to express violent violence openly. We may end up in in prison. And and so what we do, we take the
85:06 aggression and we convert it into something which is so socially acceptable with rituals and ceremonies
85:12 and and rigid rules and and so on, but we’re still aggressive. You can see it openly in in boxing and WWPF WWF and and you can it’s a lot more
85:25 hidden and sublimated in chess. But chess is a violent sport.
85:31 Absolutely. And the language used in chess is absolutely the language of warfare, the language of war. It’s a
85:38 military language. So sports is about aggression and only about aggression. It’s aggressing against the opponent. It’s one upmanship. It’s obliterating,
85:49 eradicating. You listen to sports hooligans in in United Kingdom and you understand what I’m saying. It’s about
85:55 aggression. What is what is gambling? Gambling is about risk. is about um
86:02 excitement, is about arousal, is about the reason sports and gambling go hand
86:08 in hand is because to start with sports is probabilistic and
86:15 it legitimizes aggression. So it allows you to experience arousal and risk and danger and so on in a way that cannot be castigated or chastised
86:26 or criticized by society, by your family, by your friends, by anyone. And so it’s a perfect perfect storm because one of the parties brings the
86:38 aggression to the table and the other party makes use of the aggression and so they cater to they complete each other. It’s it’s a holistic yinyang kind of of collusion or collaboration. Ultimately the the sports bettor the guy who bets on sports he brings into the g the issue
87:02 the the activity he brings the aggression of the sports and then this is legitimized aggression
87:10 and then he uses this aggression to create a risky or adventurous or dangerous situation which could yield profits or losses which are equally
87:21 okay. Loss is also fun. Could yield uh either either outcome.
87:29 The the reason this is terrifying is because sports is a social activity. It requires living breathing bodies at
87:41 this stage. I know been 100 years but at least whereas gambling is fast becoming an
87:47 impersonal auto atomized pursuit in the comfort of your living room.
87:53 So I think the interface between them is abnormal unnatural interface
87:59 and I am not quite sure what’s going to happen in the future because gambling and sports went hand in hand because
88:06 they were both social activities but now one of them is becoming a technological activity whereas the other remain has remained social is the other is neanderal it’s a
88:17 neanderal activity whereas gambling is high-tech is cutting edge. So I I am not
88:25 quite sure how this how how whether it’s going to sit well in the future. I’m not
88:31 quite sure and I I think what something will have
88:37 to give either sports would have to be converted into a technological
88:43 enterprise fully technological but I don’t know AI players or I don’t know cheap embedded chip in the brains of athletes something it will have to acquire a predominantly technological
88:55 aura gambling will revert to a social activity, football clubs and which I don’t believe
89:06 I think gambling is going to change the nature of sports because gambling is the main financing arm of sports. Sports is
89:15 financed like a huge percentage by gambling gambling is a financing infrastructure
89:22 of sports. Yeah. So sports sports has has to accommodate gambling. as gambling the nature of
89:29 gambling changes sports can’t remain the same cannot remain the same and so for example I don’t know what’s the future of stadiums I don’t know what’s the future of
89:40 stadiums I don’t know what’s the future of flesh and blood players I don’t know how whether gambling the gambling industry will continue to underwrite sport the way it is now
89:52 the way it is now sports is also very limited because you have a limited number of players limited number of viewers I mean It’s a very limiting
89:58 proposition paradigm. Y and so if you technologize it, it opens
90:04 enormous vistas. For example, you could have games taking place taking place in
90:10 front of 100 million viewers. Why not? You could pit your your
90:18 technological team against someone else’s technological team in real time or across continents or multiply
90:25 multiple times. You could change the parameters of the game, not the rules, but the parameters of the game, who is participating and
90:32 kind of technological level. You could change the parameters on the fly. It’s it if you if you convert
90:40 athletics and sports into an 100% technological pursuit, this will multiply the industry dramatically. Open vistas, which are unbelievable.
90:52 I think this is an irresistible proposition to the as far as the gambling industry is concerned and it is the main finance year and ultimately money talks sport walks but money talks I think.
91:04 Yep. I think that’s the future. I agree. Yeah. There’s already been some
91:10 efforts to debut uh what they call virtual sports in the US which are you
91:16 know computerenerated renderings of games and you can bet on them year round. There’s no offseason. Uh your
91:22 favorite players can you can at any time of day, any time of night, you can wager on your favorite uh virtual athlete.
91:30 Yeah. But I’m thinking more along Second Life. I’m I’m thinking about a complete ecosystem. Not not not you have a
91:37 virtual version of the social. Right. Right. Right. But like you have a another
91:44 reality, another universe. Yeah. And you as a gambler, you enter this universe.
91:51 And for example, for example, today there is a clear distinction between the players and the team and the manager and so on. They do their thing and the gambling is a derivative. It
92:03 piggybacks on the action. Yeah. But in the future, I think gamblers will dictate the games.
92:10 gamblers would be able to design the games and would be able to it’s it reminds me that today for example you
92:16 have books where you can write the ending of the book they sell you a book it’s an electronic
92:22 electronic book and you write the ending you the ending you like some of them
92:28 give you like a repatory they give you like 20 30 50 endings you could choose or they let you go wild go free if you
92:36 write the ending so why not gamblers who determine the the game, who kind of, you know,
92:44 intervene, micromanage the game, who says if it’s a technological endeavor
92:51 enterprise, it can be done easily. It reminds me of custom medicine where the future of medicine is that the medicines will be tailored to your genetics.
93:03 Not two people will be taking the same medication. So imagine that you’re a gambler. You’re gambling on a football game. I’m gambling on a football game. It’s not the same football game.
93:15 I’m going to have my private football game. You’re going to have your private football game. Yeah. And we’re going to tailor it any way we
93:21 want. You know, it’s endless. Endless. You convert sports into a technology, a
93:28 total technology. I mean, this will become the greatest hugest industry imaginable. like it would dwarf the
93:35 military, it would dwarf pharmaceuticals, everything. It’s nothing. But no one is doing this because they’re still addicted to the paradigm, the paradigm of of the ancient Greeks that
93:47 people who engaged in sport must be flesh and blood. They can’t be silicon, they can’t be virtual, they have to be flesh and blood. I don’t know why, but that’s we have we have transcended the patience
94:00 of our viewers. I’m I’m convinced it’s 1 minute 34 minute 1 hour and 34 minutes.
94:07 Yes. Um just uh yeah, I won’t I won’t keep you too much longer. I just have a a few more things I wanted to circle
94:13 back on. Um well, yeah, the piggybacking concept is is really uh great and I
94:19 think it touches on a lot of things here. May ask you may may I say something? If you have a few more things, I would be delighted to talk to you again, but but I think it would be counterproductive to do it now. Okay,
94:30 it’s one and a half hours and no one no one in his right mind would survive this. That’s true. But I’m perfectly perfectly willing. I’ve enjoyed this. I’m perfectly willing and and to to engage again. So, just
94:43 write to me and we’ll set up another date. Part two sound part two sounds good. I think we’ve Yeah, it’ll be good. I’ll
94:49 I’ll have some uh more follow-ups to to what you uh because you said I have a few more things, not like Okay,
94:56 that’s true. Yeah. Yeah. And I I yeah, I wanted to uh to ask you about, you know, the hope at the the light at the end of the tunnel for people with gambling disorder and maybe BPD and MPD and like
95:07 how you could treat these potentially how you could improve your That requires part that requires part two. That alone requires part two. Yes. Okay. So that sounds good. Um
95:18 so let’s call it a day. Get in touch and and we’ll schedule something if you want. Sounds good. Absolutely. Thank you for having me and for the opportunity. I think we’ve had a a pretty amazing exchange because many of
95:30 these ideas I think are I’ve I’ve never heard them anywhere. So, we’re going to have quite a feedback. Absolutely. I think this was a Yeah. a groundbreaking uh conversation. I hope
95:41 people feel that way. Okay. Sounds good. Thank you for having me. Thanks, Sam. Take care. You too. Bye. Bye.

Summary Link:

https://vakninsummaries.com/are-all-gamblers-narcissists-sports-betting-gambling-disorder-with-brian-pempus/

https://vakninsummaries.com/ (Full summaries of Sam Vaknin’s videos)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html (My work in psychology: Media Kit and Press Room)

Bonus Consultations with Sam Vaknin or Lidija Rangelovska (or both) http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/ctcounsel.html

http://www.youtube.com/samvaknin (Narcissists, Psychopaths, Abuse)

http://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings (World in Conflict and Transition)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/cv.html (Biography and Resume)

Summary

The discussion explored the complex psychological dynamics of gambling disorder, distinguishing it from professional gambling and emphasizing its nature as a process addiction linked to reward systems rather than impulse control or compulsion. The conversation highlighted strong associations between gambling disorder and personality disorders like narcissistic, antisocial, and borderline personality disorders, focusing on shared traits such as grandiosity, defiance, and magical thinking. The dialogue also examined the evolving landscape of gambling through technological advances, its societal normalization, and the symbiotic relationship between gambling, sports, and narcissism, setting the stage for a follow-up on treatment and recovery.

Tags

Abuse, it's, Meaning, narcissism, narcissist, Personality, Psychology, Reality, Sam Vaknin, Vaknin Summaries

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