Ludomania

Ludomania, is the name given to Gambling Problems. Problem gambling is characterized by many difficulties in limiting money and/or time spent on gambling which leads to adverse consequences for the gambler, others, or for the community (wikipedia).

Who hasn't felt the need of being 21 years old just to go to Las Vegas and gamble at the casinos? Well, I have. This feeling can be either good or bad. Good because maybe I just wanna have fun and party. But on the other side, bad because maybe I want to bet all my money. Millions of americans have this problem, ludomania, and only few people recieves treatment. This people can't control their obsession with gamblin and this affect themselves, their family, and their wallets!

We don't have to go far away to Las Vegas. Here in Hermosillo we have several casinos where there is pople who spend half the day in there. That is NOT cool at all. I heard in the news, a story of a woman who had this problem. She went for the first time with her friends in her birthday and she won a big amount of money, arount 5000 pesos. So next day she went to see if she was that lucky again, but she had no success. Then next weekend she came to the casino again to see if she got he luck back, but she lost more money than last time. She kept going everyday after work, she hoped she woud win back her money, but she never won. Then she decided to work more hours, to gain more money to bet in the casino. After the 2 jobs, she went to the casino to lose her salary. Time kept passing and the women emptied her bank accounts. With no money and no time, she lost her children because she didn't paid their school and there was no food in the house, etc. When she saw that her biggest son selling drugs to gain money, her world went down and she started realizing what she was doing to her and her family's life. So she decided to have help from a psychologyst, stop going to casinos, and pay more atention to her children.

This is an example of ludomania, a problem that we as teenagers are facing. We can see this just as a game in Facebook, or just to have fun and win/lose a little amount of money with out friends, but later on, this could be a serious problem. We should be aware of the consequences gambling has and have control over it.

Day to day..

Messenger, Facebook, myspace, twitter and a more websites and tools are used nowadays around the world. They say that internet can help us in a lot of things, such as in business and for education. But a lot of people use internet for other behaviors such as watching pornography, inappropriate blogging and also can lead to a shopping addiction. This is behaviors that only several people have, but a behavior that a lot of people are having is the internet addiction. They think that their life is the computer and the internet, having a computer without internet is like having a human without breathing. Now teens and even adults, have their life around the internet, if they don’t enter to the computer, messenger and Facebook, they say that they feel incomplete and anxious.
Yesterday I was with several of friends talking, and most of the time they were relating thing to things in Facebook, that’s when I decide to write a blog about the addiction to the internet. Facebook and other tools aren’t more an optional website is like a rule.

Shopping, an addiction

I remebered a trip me and my mom made to Paris. We were walking in the city when we decided to go looking at the big fancy shops. So we started looking and we found Louis Vuitton, it was big and really pretty. So we entered just to look and the first thing I noticed was that there were 2 kind of girls in the store; Asians and Indians.

The Asian girls looked fancy, well dressed and like businesswomans while the Indians (which were like 6 together) were normal, they were wearing a dress and underneath jeans and of course their head covered. The other thing I noticed was the huge amount of different scarfs and they were the perfect size to make headscarfs for the Indians, so it is very common for them to come here and buy this type of product.

The Asians bought bags the biggest ones they could find, I was almost next to one and the girl at the counter showed her a very big bag and the Asian said that it wasn´t big enough, so it didn´t matter the design just the size and the label. The Indians were happier and they looked at everything.

So we were tired of looking and we went outside and we saw a disgusting thing, a woman was asking a man if he wanted some services. And it was just outside the store! Then days later when we were at the plane, next to me was seated a woman, she had traveles everywere and knew a lot of things and I told her about the thing I saw outside the store and she told me that it was common. That Asian come to buy label things, they have their savings just for this and if they didn´t had enough money they will go outside and sell themselves.

How can a woman denigrate herself to that extent. Bags and all that are just material, how has society made us need this objects and it is just for the appearence. Also things get old and then you buy new things and its a never ending cycle that creates huge debts and makes people waste a lot of money. I don´t say buying materials thing is wrong, because I like to buy too, but you have to know your limits if you have your especial saving for that, ok but if its not enough just let it be.

Internet addiction killed a baby girl

Yesterday an interesting new was published. This sad new was about a corean baby girl that died of innutrition because her parents were internet addicts. Her parents were desemployed adults of 41 and 25 years old who played a virtual game named “Prius Online” for about 6 to 8 hours a day and didn’t give the enough attention and food to their daughter. This internet addiction took them to have a dead daughter and took them directly to jail.

With this article we can see what an addiction can do, the consequences of addictions, why should we avoid them and in the case of having an addiction the answer to “what should I do?” is: ASK FOR HELP!... to get attention and be able to get out of this addiction you have to first accept you have a problem and then ask for help so you can get through it without hurting so much yourself or other people.

We must be carful with the people you hang around because they may be bad people and it’s not good for you to hang around with people that can take you to an addiction or to do bad things.

Here is the link of the new

http://www.elimparcial.com/EdicionEnLinea/Notas/Internacional/06032010/433973.aspx

Drug Addiction Impact on Society

Acorrding to NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse), drugs and alcohol has an impact of $67 billion per year. This includes costs related to crimes and incarceration, drug addiction treatment, medical costs from overdoses and drug related injuries and complications, time lost from work and social welfare programs. Because drug addiction and alcoholism are diseases of the brain, which is the center of judgment and behavioral patterns, drug addicts and alcoholics have a disturbingly high propensity to commit unlawful and immoral acts to obtain these substances because of the feeleing of power, indestructability which leads to aggressive and impulsive behavior.


Drug Addiction is on of the fastes ways to spread AIDS, by the sharing of needles and using drugs may lead a person to make bad decisions and participate in sexual activities with an infected individual. According to NIDA, drug addictions is now the single largest factor in the spread of HIV in the U.S.

Although there are millions of organizations and programs to prevent drug abuse and thousands of pages about this topic, it doesn't compare anything to the feeling of devastation and hopelessness felt by drug addicts and their families. The emotion of failure, anger, depression, confusion, and hundred more emotions can't be described in stadistics.



With special programs, treatment centers, rehabilitation, and most important, INFORMATION, we can do all we can to educate people about addictions and their consequences, not just physical consequences, also including social consequences. Until you go through it or watch a loved one going throught it, there is no other way to feel the true effects of Drug Addiction.