Herford, Germany - "Anyone can be lucky!" "Winning is wonderful!" These are the kind of lines used by video arcades, betting offices and casinos angling for customers.

Though most people realize that the operators just want their money, many bite. In Germany alone, there are as many as 400,000 gambling addicts, according to the Gambling Addiction Association (FAGS).

The consequences of the addiction are severe. "Gambling is the most costly addiction of all, often ends seriously and has the highest suicide rate," noted Ilona Fuechtenschnieder, the chairwoman of FAGS, which is based in the German town of Herford and looks after the interests of gamblers and their relatives.

FAGS said that gaming machines, giving players a chance to win money, had the greatest addictive potential. Such devices can be found not only in video arcades, but also in fish-and-chips stalls and corner pubs - typical gateways to addiction. About 80 per cent of the gamblers who wind up in self-help groups, counselling centres or rehabilitation clinics are addicted to gaming machines, followed by casino games and sport wagers.

A gambling addiction is less obvious than other kinds. "You can't smell it on someone's breath. Gamblers change much more subtly," remarked Frank Gauls, a psychotherapist at the Addiction Centre of the Protestant Community Service in Bielefeld, near Herford. Gauls said that gamblers in the early stages of addiction were merely less approachable to close relatives and more irritable when talk turned to money.

"Not everyone who gambles away a few hundred euros is an addict," Fuechtenschnieder noted. But the step from problematic gambling to addiction is often a short one. A gambling addict is under a lot of pressure as they have to find money, organize how and when to gamble, and conceal these activities from relatives, friends and colleagues.

Social ruin generally accompanies the financial, physical and emotional fall.

"Gambling is the only thing that exists for a gambling addict. All other aspects of life - for example social contacts, physical activities and further education - are ignored as secondary," said Frederic Soum, a psychotherapist and director of SwissGambleCare, a gambling prevention programme in the Swiss town of Boesingen, near Bern.

In Soum's view, addicts see gambling as a chance to withdraw from all responsibility. "A gambler believes that luck - chance - can save him," he said.

The unlikelihood of that happening is manifested in unpaid bills and rental debts, which Gauls said relatives should see as signs of possible addiction. He added, however, that once financial difficulties came to light it was usually too late.

Gauls advised people who suspect that their partner is a gambling addict to discuss it with them as quickly as possible. But he said that relatives should not try to relieve the gambler of responsibility by lending money to pay off debts. Rather, they should make their opposition clear by saying things like, "I don't want you to gamble. I expect you to seek help."

Help is available in addiction rehabilitation clinics, addiction counselling centres and self-help groups. (dpa)