Brazil’s gambling addiction

0:03My name is John. I'm a compulsive gambler. And when I discovered poker, I think I discovered the best thing of my life that will fix all my problems. John works in IT and is in his early 40s. He comes from Rio de Janeiro, but now lives in Brazil's biggest city, São Paulo. Like millions of other people in this country, he has a gambling habit that at times has come close to ruining his life. And perhaps strangely, it's when other things are going well, he feels he's most vulnerable. I have a problem with life being too good. When life is too good for me, it's a little bit dangerous because I think it's the ego.

0:49I think I can do everything. My life is flying professionally, emotionally, and I think I can gamble again. Feeling good is a big factor in John's gambling because it supercharges his self-confidence and makes him feel he's going to win every bet, every time. John's addiction is to the card game, poker. I think I discovered that I was a problematic gambler pretty soon. I just don't want help because if I seek for help, I have to stop, right? How can I stop? I'm Camila Motta, and in this edition of Crossing Continents, I'm finding out how gambling, which until quite recently was heavily restricted, has taken a huge toll on the lives of millions of Brazilians.

1:41And if enough has been done to help them.

1:48John is trying to stop betting, despite his protestations earlier. He's about to take part in a Gambler's Anonymous meeting in a Sunday school classroom attached to a church in São Paulo's financial district. He didn't want us to use his real name because he doesn't want to be recognized. Like all GA meetings, it starts with a short prayer.

2:12There are about a dozen people attending so far, mostly men. There are also two women sitting together. They all have one thing in common. They are desperately trying to stop gambling. John lost his job because of his addiction, and it almost ruined his marriage. So when it got bad, what exactly happened? Did you lose money? Did you lose relationships? I lose everything. I lose a lot of money. I have a corporate car, and I used to travel a lot to the U.S., and on a weekend, I entered there, and I spent$75 ,000 of the corporate car. And this was not the worst, actually, to be honest. I came to Sao Paulo and I spent a lot of money off my wife.

3:00I destroyed her credit cards. I put her name down on the credit. So I was completely out of control. I could not stop. I really couldn't. John's fascination with gambling started at an unusually early age when he found himself in a bingo hall. I was in Rio and suddenly I disappeared. And my mother started looking to me, and after like cops, hospitals, and she found me in a bingo with old ladies, and I have like six years old. You were six? I was six, yeah. After his bingo escapade, he began gambling on video poker machines in bars at the age of 13. Apart from stealing to play, he found an ingenious way of inserting old, worthless coins in the machines in order to win new ones.

3:53These machines accept like 25 cents of realis, you know? And I discovered that the old money in Brazil that I guess was Cruzeiro, it was accepted in the same way. And then I go to the center of the city and I purchase like a bunch of coins. And I was like putting coins in every single machine of the neighborhood that I live. Of course, that the owners of the bars discovered and want to kill me. And then my mother has to be involved. John's been going to Gamblers Anonymous for 12 years. It's helped him to keep away from gambling for extended periods. I do not gamble today for, I guess, almost three years.

4:37But it's not the first time that I reach these two years, nine months. John has come back to compulsive gambling three times. He says addiction runs in his family. My grandfather was a gambler. My mother was addict with alcohol. My father is a drug addict. So my entire family have addiction issues. Most gambling was very strictly controlled in Brazil. It was legalized by President Michel Temer in 2018, but he failed to regulate it, as did Jair Bolsonaro when he became president for four years in 2019. There was an explosion in betting. It was left to the current president, Lula, to finally regulate both sports betting and online casinos at the end of 2023.

5:28That's brought in large tax revenues and somewhat reduced the number of people gambling illegally. But critics argue that the regulations have actually given a seal of approval to an industry which is driving addiction in more and more Brazilians. As well as his long-term membership of Gamblers Anonymous, John has also sought professional help. I'm outside the largest medical facility in Brazil and the whole of Latin America. My name is Hermano Tavares. I'm a psychiatrist and I'm also an associate professor here at the Department and Institute of Psychiatry from the University of São Paulo. What's the difference between someone addicted to gambling and addicted to drugs?

6:11There's none. I mean, these activities are potent triggers of the reward brain system, right? They will deliver lots and lots of dopamine at the specific brain structure. So if you have lots and lots of dopamine delivered, you are facing what we call a habit-forming stimulus. So in essence, Professor Tavares is saying that many people with a gambling addiction cannot always control their behavior. Because gambling is a psychiatric diagnosis since the 80s. But even nowadays, we have difficulty with people saying, this is more of a moral problem. These people really should know better. they can be as severe as and even more severe than substance addiction.

7:00And if you don't recognize people who have difficulties to exert control over these kind of behaviors, well, you're just neglecting their suffering and their need for treatment. Professor Tavares is deeply worried about the increase in problem gamblers. For some, it's so severe it's a clinically recognized disorder. These are the people he treats. And we're talking about 2.1 million people needing treatment today. And those are just people with a clinical diagnosis. If you look at people with moderate or severe problems, those who have financial, emotional or relationship problems from gambling, statistics from the Federal University of São Paulo show the number of people impacted reaches 7.5 million.

7:44If you were to put them all in one place, you'd have a city with twice the population size of the capital, Brasília. Do you think there will be enough psychologists and psychiatrists in the world to treat that? I don't think so. Professor Tavares' clinic offers help to 300 people a year. The treatment program is free and lasts for about a year. A lot of the young men he's seeing are gambling on football results. I think that sports gambling is particularly dangerous for young males. You're talking about Brazil, right? So here, everybody is a football coach, and everybody has had some experience with football.

8:23Not like me, because I consider myself as having two left feet, but most people say, oh, you know, in my days, I used to play very well. So I kind of know the game, and I kind of can't predict how the match is going to turn out. Professor Tavares says it's not as simple anymore as just batting on a win, draw, or loss. There's the in-play changes when the game has started. For example, you can bet how many corners there will be, how many yellow cards, and whether there may be a late match-winning goal. The game is about to finish and you enter to play a bet saying, oh, I predict that this team who's losing is going to turn over the outcome.

9:01I mean, this is very unlikely, right? And so the odds will be higher for that one. Well, people who place bet on that kind of outcome have more than five times the risk to be a compulsive gambler or a disordered gambler.

9:18The state of São Paulo has 46 million people and some of the biggest football teams in Brazil, so plenty of fans who might like to bet. There are six currently amongst the 20 in the Serie A do Brasileirão, the top flight league, including Santos, Rupelé played for, Corinthians and São Paulo. But I'm outside the stadium of Palmeiras, which was previously called the Allianz Parque, now called Nubank Parque. The ground is in the upscale Agua Branca area of the city and was opened in 2040. It holds 43 ,000 fans who generate an impressive amount of noise.

10:02Palmeiras was founded by Italian migrants in 1914 and was actually called Palestra Italia for its first few decades. It won the Copa Libertadores, the South American equivalent to the Champions League, three times and the Brazilian Championship a record dozen times.

10:21Today, Palmeiras are playing the Chapecoense, who are way down the league table, so the fans are fairly confident of a win. I've spotted two female Palmeiras fans resplendent in their green and white club tops, so I'm keen to ask them if they've bet on today's game.

10:45So their names are Duda and Cassia. Have you had a bet on today's result? Yellow cards, corner, who's going to win?

10:55I'm always betting, you know. Sometimes I do multiple bets combining, for instance, corner kicks and other things. I'm asking Cassia if she's lost money betting. Many times, many times. Do you think you've made more money than you've lost? I never stopped to count. Have you ever got into serious debts through gambling? No, because I'm aware of what I can and can't do. Can I bet$10 today? I can, so I'll do it. If I can't, I'm not going to bet. No, I've never bet more than$10. It's always$10 maximum. So I'm asking Duda what she bet on today. I bet on the score today. I bet on Palmeiras winning two nails,$3, very little.

11:51Have you lost money? Yes, very small amounts,$10 tops. And that was only one time on Libertadores final, which I also ended up losing because Palmeiras lost. But that was the maximum. I usually bet$2. I've spotted a young male fan who fits the profile of Brazilians Professor Tavares seemed most worried about. Who do you think is going to win? Palmeiras, of course. Did you place any bets on the game today? When I bet on matches, I'm normally watching them at home. Last year, I bet$70, about$14 on a Copa Libertadores game, the equivalent here of the Champions League in Europe. I won 500 reais, about 100 US dollars, which helped me pay for the ticket to the final in Lima, Peru.

12:45That day, I have to admit that I didn't even remember that I had bet. It wasn't until I got home and saw the 4-0 score on the bet tracker, I said, wow, let me see how much money I've won. Even so, Gilles says he refuses to get too carried away. I'm pretty chilled. Usually I bet small amounts. And I usually bet on who's going to win. That's why I earned less that day. If I had bet on other things, like the actual score, I could have become rich. But in those cases, I think winning or losing is more about luck, right? So Gilles has his system. I've just bought it what looks to me like a father and son, so I'm intrigued to see if there's much of a generational difference in attitudes to gambling and football.

13:32And you've been Palmeiras fans for how long? How long have you been Palmeirens? I have 60 years. I'm a Palmeirense. I'm 60 years old. I've supported Palmeiras for 59 years. It started with my grandfather, who came from Italy. He passed it on to my father, and I passed it on to my children. So have you placed any bets on the results today? No, no. Oh, no, no. We didn't gamble. I tried once just for fun, but I never followed through more than that. I ended up stopping in the middle. I only bet a little. I was betting around 100 reais, around 20 US dollars on several games. But in the end, I stopped after I ended up losing more money than I won.

14:20I was always out of pocket. And do you know other people who gamble? Lots of people, lots of people play. I also know people who have lost a lot betting on card games. Gambling broke up their families. They even lost their homes. Have you talked to your kid about it? Oh yes, yes, I tell him to be very careful, right? There are a lot of horrible things out there. At first you may win a little, but then you end up losing more than you won. With so much money at stake when people gamble, some footballers have been tempted to do things in games they wouldn't otherwise have done. Players for other clubs have been sanctioned for trying to get yellow cards on purpose in order to win money for friends or family who have bet money on this happening.

15:12As fans, do you trust what you're seeing? Great question. We prefer to believe it, so the game doesn't lose credibility and we start to dislike the sport. Another controversy in today's Brazilian football is that more than half of all top division teams have a betting firm advertising on their shirts. Palmeiras is sponsored by SportingBet, part of one of the biggest betting companies in the world, based in London and with an annual turnover of around$7 billion. Duda says she has had her doubts about this, at least at the beginning. I confess that it bothered me a lot at first. I used to say I wouldn't want Palmeiras to be sponsored by a gambling company.

16:01Nowadays, I see it as something normal. There is not much you can do. The football funding model has changed, and because of this, Palmeiras has had to adapt as well. Duda and Cassia sound like pretty cautious gamblers. I'm intrigued to see if they think there's a difference between the way men and women think about betting. Yeah, I think it's different. I think men end up thinking more about themselves rather than the family. I think women see it as more something to have fun with. I think men tend to bet because they want to win. Not that women don't, but I think that women think more about family than men do.

16:42I think we have a little more control.

16:48Despite what Duda says, there are hundreds of thousands of Brazilian women who've developed a serious gambling problem. And while John, who we heard from at the start of the program, favored poker, many women are attracted by the multitude of online gambling options.

17:09My name is Rosangela. I'm 51 years old. I'm both a lawyer and an accountant. I run my own business. I was struggling with it financially. And at the end of last year, I started to consider betting. But I didn't have the courage at that time. And then one night, I waited for my family to all go to sleep. My children, my husband. And then I decided to gamble. I didn't even know how to register on the app, but it was all very easy. I needed 5 ,000 US dollars by Friday. It was Tuesday, and there wasn't even a week left. And I didn't want to borrow it. I won around 2 ,000 dollars. We drew part of the money and kept playing.

18:07I spent the night doing this. The sun came up and I was still there. I was able to withdraw$10 ,000, which was the limit of what you could transfer from the app to your account. The$10 ,000 Rosangela won was double the amount she needed. The game she played is popular amongst Brazilians. It's called Chigrinho, or Little Tiger. I told my family that I had won money on Chigrinho, the tiger game. and they didn't like it. They asked me not to do it again. I said I wouldn't, but the next night I did and I kept playing. When someone came into the room, I would hide my cell phone and keep watching TV.

18:56I didn't even know what was on. Sometimes I would set my cell phone to wake up at night so I could gamble a little. Then things went wrong for Rosangela.

19:10After the new year, I started losing. I took loans from three different banks and was still hiding from my family. Sometimes they would say something and I would laugh and reply, are you crazy? I am not gambling. Her life effectively fell apart.

19:32Then I came to a point where I was already becoming very apathetic. I stopped cooking, and I loved cooking for my family. I couldn't work. My business was suffering. I didn't eat properly anymore. I didn't shower. I went so far as to say that I had a constipation problem to justify why I was spending so much time in the bathroom. In fact, I was gambling. At the end of February, my family began to notice that something wasn't right. I started to borrow money from people who trusted me. But then one day, I borrowed$2 ,000, went straight to the gambling app, and lost everything in 20 minutes. And then I panicked.

20:20I really thought about doing something crazy that one Tuesday morning in March. I was desperate. And even though my marriage was sort of shaky, I decided to tell my husband. Because I didn't have the courage to tell my children. I was worried my eldest daughter particularly would judge me very harshly. As they all did, they judged me, but they also supported me. And then my niece, who's next to me here, brought me to Gamblers Anonymous. A new law means gamblers can register their ID cards with betting companies to block themselves from sites if they're becoming addicted. The Brazilian government is also restricting gambling ads and trying to reduce their exposure to children.

21:02Rosangela has asked to be blocked. She's made good progress, but she doesn't feel yet in control of her addiction. I ask her why she thinks gambling online is so addictive. Because it's easy and you make a lot of money in the beginning. When you register with an ID that's not been on the platform before, the app rewards you more than other players. I can't explain how much it dominates your mind. Rosangela, thank you, and I wish you well with your recovery. I'm interested to know how many Brazilian women are addicted to gambling. So I'm back at the Institute of Psychiatry to find out. My name is Bruna.

21:47I am a psychologist and a neuropsychologist. I am a researcher, and I am currently in my doctorate, and I am a supervisor of the outpatient clinic. You said that you've been doing this since 2012. How frequent did you see women coming in here from when you started to now? Has that changed when gambling became legal in Brazil? There has always been a demand for women to undergo treatment. But the profile was older women who played more bingo games. A bit of slot machines, but mainly bingo games. After the legalization in 2018, we observed a change. Then we started to have a large number of women seeking treatment.

22:30So 10 years ago, 25 % of our patients were women. Now it's around 40%. And that's a very significant increase. Before smartphones, a lot of gambling was happening in bars, race courses and poker rooms, places many Brazilian women didn't feel particularly comfortable going to alone. Then came the arrival of gambling apps and influencers. They follow many influencers who are very famous and tend to publicize the type of game they play. Women generally like games like online slot machines. And it is precisely these games that influencers usually promote. Some even said that it could be a source of income.

23:13This brought many women to play this type of game, but that sort of promotion has now been banned. But it took five years to have this type of change and many women were already having problems with gambling. So when the person is playing, the focus is totally on that and sometimes they're not even thinking exactly how they're playing. She's only pressing the button because it's so automatic. You just push the button and see if you've won. Bruna says many of the women are suffering from mental health issues brought on by different sorts of abuse. Most of the time, these are patients who already have a diagnosis of depression and anxiety.

23:56They are people who are vulnerable. What are we talking about when we're talking about vulnerability? What exactly? It can be physical, verbal or sexual violence. In the past, Bruna says, it's taken longer for women to start gambling. But once they do, they get hooked particularly quickly. It's what we call the telescope effect that women take longer to play perhaps because of the barriers for women that exist in the gambling culture but when they start the progression to gambling disorder is very quick In order to enroll patients need to reach out to us by themselves but what we observe here is that often it's a family member who gets in touch and we see that that happens a lot with men So men tend to deny more than they are having trouble.

24:47They say that everything is fine and that they'll solve the problem. Women are a little more aware that they're in trouble. It's also very common that divorce happens when people get involved with gambling, especially men. Sometimes because of the lies related to their gambling habit and all that. We see a lot of divorces. Is there a difference between the stigma for men and women, you know, when they have a problem gambling, controlling their impulses, as you put it. We see a lot of guilt among women. Women feel guilty because they are often heads of families, single mothers, and suddenly they try gambling as a possible source of extra income.

25:27So they feel really bad about that. Even if Professor Tavares, Bruna, and their colleagues are only able to treat a small fraction of gambling addicts, Professor Tavares says many see very positive results. Out of each 10 cases that we receive, 7 complete the treatment and 5 achieve remission. It's a 50 % remission rate. That's already above what we usually obtain with substance addiction. But if we manage to keep them in treatment from first to second intervention, then this figure jumps to 70%. He has this advice for anyone who thinks they may have become or are addicted. If you want to get away from any kind of gambling, just go on for the self-exclusion program.