Dear Fr. Vadim!
Bless you!
I am grateful to God that I am in Brooklyn and that I live ten minutes away from the Church you built and named in honor of the icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary “The Irreplaceable Cup. This is a miracle, because this icon is the most important thing for me in my life.
You know better than I do that the icon of the Mother of God “The Unopenable Cup” helps to fight various passions and addictions - smoking, alcoholism, fornication and drug addiction. But few people know that it helps to fight against ludomania (from the Latin word “ludo” - “playing”), i.e. gambling addiction.
...Gambling addiction is an emotional (not to say “mental”) disease recognized in all medical systems of the world ...
Because of this severe addiction, life becomes an agonizing existence.
Gambling devours everything: relationships in the family, work, relationships with loved ones and friends. It is difficult for a person to be alone with himself, and his whole life goes downhill at a rapid speed!
I have never heard that in our temple they pray for those who are sick with gambling addiction (it is also called “ludomania” and “gambling”) - it is a very real and very serious disease. People who have caught this disease need the help of psychiatrists and psychotherapists, only a few can make it on their own, and not without God's help. This disease, in the opinion of almost all doctors dealing with it, is heavier than drug addiction....
...First of all, this disease is exploited by halls with slot machines (“one-armed bandits”, as they are called). They breed players who are unable to pay off their debt without playing again and again. But with the help of the game it is even more impossible to pay it off! We get a factory of pathological addiction and criminogenic worldview. It is no exaggeration to say that game addiction is a social phenomenon and a very dangerous one.
(www.орепеуеѕ.ги/іgгоmапіуа.html)...
This problem needs to be talked about more. If even one soul is saved by my experience, that's a lot.
In the United States, 15.4 million people are pathologically addicted to gambling. 3 million gamblers seek help from psychiatrists. It is established that in the USA avid gamblers lose more than 20 billion dollars annually. In small Sweden there are more than 10 million avid gamblers, whose life is completely subordinated to a painful passion and its name is gambling addiction. The course of treatment with the diagnosis of “gambling addiction” in a Swedish clinic costs 200 thousand dollars and is successful only in half of cases.
Someone said: “There is no greater misfortune than not knowing the limits of your passion.” I've been studying this addiction for a long time, I've seen different players, in principle, there are 2 types of gamblers:
The first is people who run away from reality into the world of the game, in a difficult moment in life, say after dismissal from work, loss of a loved one, or after a divorce, a person accidentally finds himself near a machine or in a casino, starts playing and suddenly notices that there is peace. Sometimes such people deliberately go to play in order to get extreme emotions, something “hotter”, lacking in the gray everyday life.
...To put a person on the game, as “on the needle”, - do not need serious spending on advertising or any special techniques of enticement. 8-12 hours of playing with a “one-armed bandit” is enough to form a pathological addiction. This is a big time. No one can play 12 hours at once, but the machine does not need to hurry. Today half an hour, tomorrow - an hour. The victim will not go anywhere. Gambling knows how to wait. The temptation to flip a coin and win a huge sum can capture everyone...
(www.орепеуеs.ги/іgгоmапіуа.html)...
The other type of players are people of action: gambling, daring, energetic, valuing power over the situation, wanting to win easy money. Their main motive - the desire to win back, because for such people the idea that they are forced to submit to fate, intolerable. They see the way out as the same place as the way in, which means, they believe, the debts formed in the game should be paid from the winnings. But this wrong idea leads to new vicious circles. As a rule, luck accompanies only beginners. And by the way, the worst thing is the first win, it is the hook. A person thinks that he will always win.
....The popular opinion that “a beginner always wins” is not just a gambling myth. In most cases, this is exactly what happens. However, a beginner cannot be “always lucky” just because he is a beginner. It cannot be the reason that his game outcome suddenly ceases to coincide with the mathematical probability of a random result. The reason for the beginner's luck is different. GAMBLING HAS A DEMONIC NATURE, and the fallen spirits (read “Satan” - Ed.), who can influence the events of the sensual world, easily make the beginner swallow this fatal hook....
(Hyeromonk Job, Ргаvoslavie.гu).
...When this diabolical disease begins to develop, the thirst for thrills grows, and it becomes almost impossible to walk away with the winnings.....
... The gambler anticipates a new triumph and feels a sense of risk. This mixture of euphoria and fear serves as a drug. As a result of the addiction, it becomes necessary to play “big”, in which the player risks everything, even his own life. To facilitate the experience of fear of death, the brain secretes the internal drug endorphin....
(www.орепеуеѕ.ги/іgгоmапіуа.html)
...Debts appear and grow, but the borrowed money is also lost. Suddenly a person realizes that he cannot get out of these satanic web....
...Gambling is very insidious: the danger for a very long time remains unnoticed not only for others, but also for the victim ... The first sign of the emergence of the syndrome “game addiction” is the loss of a sense of time. It seems that - “so, just try and that's it!”. But an hour, two hours pass, and the person is still playing.... If it is difficult for him to leave the hall with slot machines - we can safely talk about the emergence of “pathology” - game addiction has already clung to him with its terrible teeth.
(www.орепеуеѕ.ги/іgгоmапіуа.html)...
The things I have seen in the last 10 years would have shocked even a former player like you. I will not name names, but among the players I know there were very interesting, educated and intelligent people. Some died, others lost everything, a few were saved by God's grace....
I remember one young guy, an immigrant from Eastern Europe, who for a long time, several years managed to hide his illness from his relatives, from his wife and gradually brought his debt to several hundred thousand dollars. He was playing poker. He couldn't stop. His wife and children did not support him, she just left. He lost his prestigious job in his specialty. He got a job in a cab and slept in the car: he had nothing to pay for rent. Friends turned away, tired of helping and constantly pulling him out. His parents were far across the ocean, but they sold everything they could, including their home. It wasn't even enough to pay off half the debt. His mother died of a heart attack. He was left all alone. Eventually, this guy threw himself off a cliff into the ocean.
...The road to ruin begins simply with unbelief. A gambler doesn't believe in God, but in chance, in fortune, in luck, in fortune. This is used by the devil.....
(Hieromonk Job /Gumerov/, Pravosiavie.ru)
I knew a very wealthy and successful Russian woman who held a large executive position, but got hooked on sports betting, then on “one-armed bandits”, then on roulette, then on Internet casinos. Didn't get up from her computer for weeks. Degraded herself completely. Started drinking, and female alcoholism, you know, is terrible. Got into terrible credit card debt. Started stealing from her own firm. I barely avoided jail, but I lost all my family and friends. Ended up on the street, literally homeless. I don't know where she is now or what happened to her.
Satan destroys the one caught in this net gradually If he is a believer, he becomes cold to spiritual life, stops going to the temple. Prayer labor becomes a burden to him ... Character becomes irritable and unpeaceful, he often falls into despondency. Extortion of relatives and friends begins - constant requests to lend money with the typical “I'll give it back tomorrow!” ruins the way of life...
(Hieromonk Job / Gumerov/ , Provoziavie.ru)
A former American engineer friend of mine was addicted to card games for many years. He lost everything - his job, his money, his house, his friends. He was left with only his wife, who realized that it was a disease and did not leave him. That's what saved him back then. He hung in there for many years, counted the days since his last bet, I even remember saying that he hadn't played “for 3455 days already”. He supported a lot of pathological players and helped them in the GA associations by talking about his experiences. And everything started to go well for him, he had kids, money, a job. Life, as they say, got better. But it was a life like a volcano. One day he had a drink and snapped. He snapped in such a way that in a few days he lost everything he had saved for the last 10 years. But that wasn't enough: he got into massive debt! When he woke up, he was climbing over his veins. But the Lord saved him this time. He survived, and his wife did not leave him again.
We need very much the fervent prayer of those whom the Lord has put in love for a close person who is in such trouble...
(Hieromonk Job /Gumerov/, Pravoziavie.gi)
For all the misery of the situation. relatives and friends should not show little faith and lose hope. Christianity is the religion of resurrection...“ for the faith alone he (the robber - Ed.) entered Paradise before the Apostles, that you may know that not so much his righteousness meant here, as the humanity of God accomplished.”
(St. John Chrysostom).
This shows that gambling is incurable and although one can resist it for thousands of days and get rid of addiction for many years, one day one can lose his vigilance and return to this pernicious passion, losing absolutely everything in an instant. The devil is always setting his nets and waiting for a person to fall into them again. It is very difficult to convey all the feelings that an addicted player feels, especially waking up in the morning after another loss. These sufferings cannot be conveyed in words. I myself at the age of 30 lost absolutely everything: my job, family, friends and just the joy of life ...
...When the devil holds someone in bondage to sin, he is constantly taking care to darken him more and more with spiritual blindness.....
(St. Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain)
To God, as to a doctor, most often turn, those who are already in a hopeless situation.
Before that, no one wants to be called sick. And doctors have not really helped me and my many acquaintances
...Blinding this entrenches in him the skill and incessant urge to sin and sin, so that he, the unfortunate, drawn from sin to greater blindness and from blindness to even greater sin, spinning as in a water gate, and will spin like this all his life until death, unless God's special grace to save him....
The only thing that has helped and helps me to hold on and still be alive, to believe in the future and to preserve my soul, is God's grace and help, as well as the icon of the Theotokos 'The Inexhaustible Cup'. She is truly a miracle worker. Neither doctors, nor “GA (Gambling Addiction)” organizations, nor relatives, nor friends - no one could help me! No one but God and the Mother of God can help a person here. Man himself is absolutely powerless to do anything without His help ...
...We are Thy people, We do all things by Thy hand, and call upon Thy name...
(Prayer)
When I lived in another, also very large city on the East Coast, I could not pray to the icon “'The Inexhaustible Cup”: it was just physically nowhere to be found, even in such a large church as the one I went to. And so a year and a half ago, in November 2008, I ordered the icon of the Mother of God “Irreplaceable Cup” in Belarus in the Elizabeth Monastery. I myself went and brought it to America as a gift to this church. It was painted by a very talented Belarusian monk-icon painter. The eyes of the Mother of God still stand before me every day.
I am sure that now, in our terrible time, this icon helps many people who need it. Last year it helped me to save myself from imminent death. Unfortunately, as you know, Father, I fell off the wagon again last month.... But with God's help I made it through and am still holding on....
Your brother in Christ, N.
コメント