What do you do when your best friend...

Does nothing but gamble all day and spend all of his money on gambling?? Literally he locks himself in a room and play slots all day online. I'm super sad because I feel like I've lost my best friend any suggestions?

How sad, hopefully he recovers. Could you talk to the family? Or bring it to other hobbies, go to concerts, to the theater ... if it is something more serious he should do a treatment as would any other addiction. I send you a hug.

You should encourage him to seek immediate help, this has all the signs of an addiction. We have a dedicated page for that, please check it out: Gambling Help. 

Buy a paysafecard for your friend and yourself en play both in the same room.

Drink a beer, smoke some tabak, listen to good music and the day is fun and relaxed.

When that game / gamble day is once in the seven days then it's nothing to worry about.

So have fun together.

Well. You cant force him to quit so lets take things slow, start by asking him about his favorite slots and online or landbased casinos and from There you can go deeper and deeper Into the discussion. If he/she dont listen to you might have to choose to stay as a friend or not but that is the worst case scenario for you and your friendship relationship. In this way you can ask him/her if your friend really think gambling is the best thing for your person but i Think this is very sad though. In some way i really do hope your friend gets help for the gambling issues. I hope this was helpfull. Good luck!

SuitedDutch:   it is a beautiful plan, We could do that ... but in this case we need something stronger it seems to me.

I read that if a person has a Gambling Addiction, in order to stop you need to find something that you like, or in your case something that your friend likes more then Gambling. What did he/she do before Gambling? Try to get this person to tell you, or you could do some checking on this.
I read this in an Anne Landers Book, it was the A-Z Encyclodedia that was written in about 1975 - although an older book it has great ideas.

You can also Pray, I am totally all for Prayer, with Addiction sometimes it is so tough to stop on your own, but with your intervention, you can pray for this person, there are many prayers online at YouTube for this, I am a Christian, I am not sure if you are, but I can say Christian Prayers work wonders, you can pray the Gambling Prayer online at YouTube, look to find one and pray for them each day, not even telling them, God/Jesus Christ  works wonders, you can then watch how your friend is doing. Keep praying, it can break this habit of addicition they have, and do not give up. MIRACLES can happen, I have had Miracles in my life, so can you and your friend! :)

Either get him counseling, or get friends/family involved or just let him make his own mistakes. It sucks but at the end of the day personal responsibility is a thing, so do your best, but then let the rest happen as it must.

Try to offer him something more interesting than the game. Go travel for example.

Something is broken in your friends life... they need to remember what hope feels like... Redirection as suggested is a good start- if you come at your friend suggesting they have a problem you will more than likely catch hell for it. The video posted below I believe will explain better. 

Here is a video that anyone dealing with and especially if anyone you know is dealing with addiction should watch- whether it be drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc. 

Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong | Johann Hari

eeek It said my reply cpouldn't be posted, didnt mean to duplicate it....

can anyone tell me how to post a video in a reply?

Thank you!!

Just paste the YouTube link and it should display just fine. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9DcIMGxMs

I think you need to talk to him and if he is aware of the problem, then offer him help.

Find him a female to go out with. But in all seriousness if this person is your best friend you would do something or anything to help. If not you don’t seem to be such a good friend yourself. 

Its very hard to see your friend like that. They say gambling is a bad habit as drugs and alchahol. i have many drug addicted and alchoholics in my family and friends. My daughter died at an early age from drugs, so did my nephew, 2 sister-in laws and a sister. It seemed like the more we tried to get them to stop the worse they would get. One of the last things my daughter said to me was "mom i know what im doing, I've lived this long, have"nt I?" now she is gone.

It's really awfull. I've faced the same case with my friend. One day he started joking about playing a casino. And he finally started. From the very beiginning he played maybe once a week, just for fun. And finally it resulted in total gambling addiction. Yeah, it may sound like story from a TV show. But he lost all his savings as well as job just in half a year. Now he is he is undergoing treatment.

There are some keys for it and you have to think about all of them and make a plan of actions . The keys are 1) money (without money he can't gamble), 2) time (you need to spend more time with him in order to distract) 3) a game (without a game or activity to bet on there is no opportunity to gamble

The problem of addiction is given by the frequency with which this habit is fed, whereas a problem related to gambling can be only an isolated case, without following a repetition in this respect. If i would realise that a friend of mine has this addiction, i would advice him to ask help to a specialist in addiction.