Refuting the myths of compulsive gambling.

• Author: Vatz, Richard E.

ROBERT TERRY, the Philadelphia Inquirer's chief police reporter, borrowed money from that city's police commissioner and other department officials. Despite the fact that such borrowing creates a blatant conflict of interest, Terry was suspended with pay, with no decision made on a final disciplinary action. His managing editor, James Naughton, accepted Terry's explanation that it was a "disease" of gambling that put him in such dire straits. Naughton stated that he would await the outcome of a therapy program intended to cure Terry's "disease" before rendering final judgment.

In 1992, former "ABC Monday Night Football" producer Chet Forte was given a suspended sentence for bank fraud and income tax irregularities after Gamblers Anonymous testified at his sentencing hearing.

Former Baltimore Colt quarterback Art Schlichter went from object of scorn to one of pity in 1983 when it was claimed that his wagering, which had cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars, was the result of the "disease of compulsive gambling" (sometimes called "pathological gambling"). The late psychiatrist Robert Custer, often referred to as the father of compulsive gambling, stated, "Art has suffered the full effects of his disease."

In mid 1989, it was revealed that baseball hero Pete Rose dropped more than $500,000 through heavy gambling. It also was reported that he had to sell treasured memorabilia because of his debts. After weeks of bad press following a denial that he had a problem with gambling, Rose made a public statement that he had what his recently acquired psychiatrist called "a clinically significant gambling disorder" that rendered him powerless over his gambling. He then went on a media tour, during which he was greeted by a lengthy standing ovation from Phil Donahue's television audience and congratulations for his "admission" from Barbara Walters. Rose had gone from miscreant to courageous victim.

Since then, press attention to compulsive gambling--with uncritical acceptance of its being an illness and uncontrollable--has abounded. It has been heralded as the "Addiction of the 1990s." In the Journal of Gambling Studies (JGS), the major academic journal on gambling and social issues, editor Henry Lesieur wrote quite accurately in 1992 that "Not a day goes by . . . without something appearing in the professional literature or mass media about compulsive gambling."

The groundwork for the successful promotion of the disease model for heavy gambling was laid firmly more than a decade ago. After years of what JGS called his "unflagging advocacy," Custer persuaded The American Psychiatric Association in its 1980 update of the Diagnostic and Statistical, Manual (DSM-III) to elevate gambling to one of its categories of impulse disorders or, more specifically, a "Disorder of Impulse Control not Elsewhere Classified." This act was heralded in articles and media appearances by prominent gambling researchers as establishing that heavy, self-destructive gambling was a disease, the medical identity that was seen as necessary for sympathy for heavy bettors, and status and financial support (third-party payments, grants, etc.) for the researchers themselves, of whom few were--or are--medical doctors. If such gambling were a disease (the manual uses the term disorder, but its "nomenclature" specialist, Robert Spitzer, claims that it may be considered the same as disease), it was axiomatic that it was beyond the individual's control.

The problem is that there is no evidence that compulsive gambling is a disease (a point psychiatrist Thomas Szasz has made for decades) or...