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Soft White Underbelly interviews Archie Karas, a gambler who came to Las Vegas in 1995 with $50 and turned it into 40 million in three years from gambling, only to lose it all in three weeks.
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Bilal is struggling in silence with university, family life and money. As he desperately looks for a way out, the devastating impact of a hidden addiction takes over all aspects of his life. Gambling has taken over his life, and threatens everything that has ever been important to him. Now…
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Teenager Brady Thornhill takes out a loan from an online PayDay Loan site in order to fuel his gambling addiction. However, he loses all his money again and Bailiff Liam is sent to collect on the debt. This causes Brady to spiral into a cycle of short term loans and…
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When Phillip Wong died by suicide, his family thought that silence would end their pain. But his sister, filmmaker Michelle Wong, needed to make sense of her brother’s death. What drove him to end his life at age 36? Weaving together intimate conversations with those closest to Phillip, as well…
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Understanding Joy enters the mind of Joy, a 57-year-old woman whose gambling addiction has overcome her sense of morality and driven her to embezzle $700,000 from two employers. As she awaits sentencing for her crime, Joy struggles to explain her disease to her children, to the world, and to herself.
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After struggling with gambling addiction, Ike Dweck slowly turned his life around. He has gone on to help others in need. He created the SAFE Foundation, an outpatient treatment program located in Brooklyn, New York. They serve as a reliable haven for those experiencing difficulties with cigarettes, vaping, prescription drug…
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Michael Mooney remembers throwing coins up against a wall with classmates to win lunch money at 10 years old. At 17, he spent a year behind bars for heroin possession, while his family moved to Las Vegas. Given the choice between prison and substance abuse recovery, Mooney committed to a clean…
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Anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll, the author of Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, spent 15 years studying how casinos and slot machines are designed to pull users into a trancelike state called the “machine zone” where social demands, worries, and bodily awareness fades away. While in this zone, gamblers…
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In this presentation, Dr. Luke Clark, Director of the Centre for Gambling Research at UBC, will consider the modern conceptualisation of pathological gambling (or Gambling Disorder) as a behavioural addiction. After briefly reviewing diagnosis and prevalence, the talk will focus on the distorted styles of thinking that occur during gambling,…