Introduction

Gambling has grown, as has gambling addiction. With technology improvements driven by behavioral science, gambling is more addictive than ever. While it may be your choice to gamble, the cards are stacked against you, and more gambling addicts commit suicide than any other addiction group.

Exactly how do we get addicted, why do we begin gambling in the first place, and if it is a flaw in our society why do we persist in thinking of it as a personal psychological failure? How does our culture’s decree to find your “individual freedom” lead to a circumstance where the only path seems to be death? And perhaps that niggling doubt you have about libertarianism choice and free markets at the heart of the Las Vegas experiment is key to understanding how we got here.

We look at Matthew Crawford's "The World Beyond Your Head" and Natasha Dow Schull's "Addiction by Design."