In which our hero moralises some more

'You are all healthy people,' Dostoevsky once said in a conversation, 'but you have no idea what joy that joy is which we epileptics experience the second before a seizure... I do not know whether this joy lasts for seconds or hours or months, but believe me, I would not exchange it for all the delights of this world”

Dostoevsky was also a compulsive, obsessive, degenerate and addicted gambler. Ultimately, I think we can say that he was hooked on catharsis, on the moments of the crucible, of the cusp, of the extremes of experience. On revelation.

Unfortunately for Dostoevsky, and for catharsis junkies everywhere, the crucible forges meaning from crisis. Put bluntly, choose carefully the context in which you choose to change your life. Because the context, unwisely chosen, will kick back.

A common thread in catharsis junkies is control. Shrinking the world down to a smaller set of circumstances which are easier to understand and control. Theres another impulse at work though, and that’s pushing these conditions to a critical mass and trying to work through what happens to the other end. Dostoevsky was a roulette fiend. The context he chose was chance. Impersonal, apolitical, non religious chance. “If god did not exist, everything would be permissible”. Sounds like a roulettes players mumbled prayer, as the ball rattles around the spinning wheel.

"please god don't exist, please god don't exist, please god don't exist...."

He describes gambling in similar tones to his epilepsy, like waiting on the brink of something, standing at a dizzying precipice. And it is this feeling, this singular point, this uncertainty, expectation, freedom, this suspension which hooks him. I wonder if it lasted seconds for him. Or months.

He wrote the gambler in 27 days to pay off his debts. Later, he notoriously made a wager with his publisher, betting the rights to all his previous works that he could finish and present a novel in one month. And he spent most of his life broke, debt ridden, and hounded by creditors.

Catharsis junkies. Action junkies. Losers in love with misery. They all share the same thing in common. It is not the result. It’s the process. Its not the winning. Its not the losing. Its that epileptic moment that hangs in the air, when anything is true, when god is dead, and the rules are suspended, and any possible outcome is possible. The world is reduced to a smaller set of rules, to a shadow theatre of itself, and in the crucible of the game, the player wages part of his identity in the throw of the dice. The game is not about the money, about winning or losing. Its not about action, or beating the house. War’ll give you all the action you can handle. So will holding up an off licence. And you’ve a better chance of beating the house. Its not about walking away with double your money. If it were, why choose a ganme where the odds are stacked against you. Why choose to lose from the outset when the odds are inescapably rigged. Junkies in gambling don’t play to win. And a win, when it comes, just buys more single, solitary, dizzying moments when everything is in the air and anything seems possible.

If the aim was to win, any addict could quit while they were ahead. And they wouldn’t begin anyway.

God, so to speak, isn’t dead in that moment. Its like the seconds before a car crash, when time seems to stretch out and become elastic, motion moves more slowly, and the world is waiting to kick back in. Physics kicks back in with a bang, no matter how infinite the space between seconds seems. Bones break, bonnets crumple and glass shatters just like physice said it would. Probability. Its just a matter of time. Anything else is just the lie any addict tells themselves to fill in the uncomfortable, nervous silences between fixes.

And even the catharsis, the crisis, they may claim to be in love with, is nothing like the real world deal. Gambling provides for many people, a smaller, easier to understand version of the real world they are living in. The rules are simple. Decisions are unclouded, unmurky, and rest entirely with the individual. The power, insofar as there is power, rests entirely with oneself. The ability to risk, and to carry through that decision, can give many people a responsibility missing from the rest of their lives. No boss. No legal restraint. Its entirely out of ones hands if it is a successful venture ir not. Theres no hard work required. The odds are the price willing punters are willing to pay to make their world more simple than it really is.

And I think this is the kernel of the ego and gambling. It’s the kernel of the ego and many things. I lost? Its not my fault. I was unlucky. Lady Luck didn’t smile. Bullshit. You lost because the second you put down your money, you chose to. You lost, because you’re asking the wrong question. You lost, because you’re looking for the wrong answer. You lost because you wanted to lose. Because its easier losing than working out why you’re in love with it. You lost, because you wanted probability to tell the world something about yourself that nothing else in the world you can control will say. You lost, because you’re unhappy, and in that cathartic moment, that moment of suspension, that time when none of the rules which you think keep you hemmed in seem to apply, you don’t feel unhappy.

You lost because you want your head fix. You lost, because, no matter what you tell yourself, the winning or the losing doesn’t matter. You lost because you’re a junkie, my friend. Most of the gambling addicts that I know are alcoholics. Some have problems with habitual violence in their lives. Most have at least one oter addiction, and they talk about it, lie about it, and live through it in exacly the same way as their gambling. With alcohol, though, the moment is more obvious. Caught, like a rat in a trap. That single moments of silene? Thats the sound of the hammer coming down, my friend.

Now lets sit down and play some poker.

Thanks for listening.