Behavioral Addictions: How Loved Ones Can Help

When someone close is deeply caught up in gaming or gambling, the instinct is to ban, restrict, or take things away. Dr. Saulitis cautions that prohibition alone does not work. The gaming environment is designed to offer what people feel they lack in real life: excitement, belonging, a sense of achievement. To leave it behind, a person needs not emptiness — but something better.

Why "Just Banning It" Is Not Enough

Gaming and gambling environments are, in the doctor's words, a "predatory platform" — they draw out everything a person has and offer surrogates for genuine emotion in return. Remove those surrogates without offering anything in their place, and the person is left in an emotional void. This is why restrictions alone — and medication alone — cannot solve the problem.

What Actually Helps: An Emotional Alternative

The core task for loved ones is to build a life around the person that is rich in real emotions: genuine connection, friendship, joy, support, and opportunities for self-expression. Not formal activities done for the sake of it, but authentic experiences that can genuinely compete with what a screen provides. The earlier this begins, the better — a younger brain is more plastic, and new patterns take hold more readily.

If You Are Concerned About a Child or Teenager

Dr. Saulitis is particularly emphatic: act while there is still time. If a person has already spent many years in the gaming environment, recovery will take considerably longer. At the first signs of deep involvement, do not wait — offer a vibrant, loving, emotionally full alternative now.

What Loved Ones Should Avoid

• Relying solely on bans and conflict.
• Expecting medication or a single conversation to fix things.
• Waiting for the addiction to "go away on its own."

Supporting a loved one is a long-term commitment — recovery, in the doctor's observation, takes years even with active effort. But genuine warmth, real emotions, and a living human presence are precisely what can make the difference.