33: Double Or Nothing - Gambling Addiction with Colleen Koncilja

The Addicted Mind Podcast

Duane Osterlind, LMFT

Health & Fitness, Medicine, Mental Health

4.8 • 621 Ratings

🗓️ 29 March 2018

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Our guest on this episode of the Addicted Mind podcast is Colleen Koncilja, a counselor based in the Chicago area who specializes in gambling addictions. Shortly after a casino riverboat became a permanent fixture just blocks away from her practice’s office in Elgin, Illinois, the town recognized that compulsive gambling would become an increasing problem and they gave Colleen’s team funding to assist the population who would suffer from this behavioral addiction.

Problematic gambling, also referred to as compulsive or pathologic gambling, can begin when there is a progression in the amount and/or frequency of the gambling, gambling becomes consuming of other aspects of life, the individual does not do it for recreation anymore but to fulfill a need, and the individual has to start lying about where they have been and what they have been doing. Action gamblers become addicted to the euphoria or high that they feel when they are performing well and other people at the casino are recognizing their success, while escape gamblers are seeking to numb or escape anxiety, depression, grief, or loss by disconnecting with the real world. Much like substance use disorder and sex addictions, problematic gambling provides a behavior for the individual to process their emotional traumas or anxieties.

Though most insurance companies do not recognize gambling addictions as something that their plans should cover, a significant portion of gambling addicts reach out for professional help at the urging of their family members, the criminal justice system, or out of sheer desperation. During this process, the counselor can help the individual process what benefits they feel that they gain from gambling and determine alternate ways to achieve these goals, such as coping skills, accountability relationships, or other resources available.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Addicted Mind podcast. This is episode 33.
0:11.7	My name is Dwayne Austerlund and I'm your host. I'm also the co-founder of Novice Mindful
0:17.5	Life Institute Family Counseling and Recovery Center in Long Beach, California.
0:22.2	If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction, please go to our website at novicemindful
0:29.1	life.com and reach out for help. We have a wonderful guest today. Her name is Colleen
0:36.0	Consilla, and she is going to talk about gambling
0:39.9	addiction. Now, I was really looking forward to recording this episode, because I specialize in
0:44.7	working with people who are struggling with sex and porn addiction. So this is in that
0:49.8	behavior addiction area, and I wanted to talk to her about gambling addiction because I see that a lot
0:56.6	with sex addiction and porn addiction, those two kind of seem to go together a lot of the time.
1:02.4	These behavior addictions kind of work together to regulate affect. So I was very excited to talk to
1:08.9	Colleen about it and get her insight into this issue and to talk about her specialized training in this area.
1:16.6	So I think it's a great episode.
1:18.3	Colleen gave us a lot of really great information and I think you guys are really going to enjoy it.
1:23.7	So let's start this episode.
1:25.9	But before we do that, if you are really enjoying the
1:29.7	Addicted Mind podcast, please go to iTunes and rate and review us. That really does get the word
1:36.9	out about the addicted mind and it allows people to find us and allows us to get noticed
1:42.5	and get this information out there. So if you're enjoying it, please rate and view us in iTunes.
1:47.2	Okay, let's start this episode.
1:55.1	Okay, everybody, welcome to the Addicted Mind podcast.
1:58.1	This is episode 33, and my guest today is Colleen Concilia.
	...

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