Could psychedelic drugs be the answer to gambling addiction? That’s what Pedro Romero is aiming to find out. 

In the latest episode of iGaming Daily, BetBlocker’s Chief of Safer Gambling Partnerships Romero spoke to SBC Media’s Charlie Horner about his research into psychedelic drug treatment for gambling addiction.

The unorthodox method to deal with addiction has been an interesting scientific hypothesis for Romero, who took inspiration from other areas in psychological treatment, such as therapy. 

“I thought that if psychedelic-assisted therapy works really well in all these concurrent disorders and also in a lot of addictive disorders, it may work well for gambling,” he explained. 

Having spent five years applying for ethical and funding approval, he is set to host his first psychedelic retreat for people affected by gambling related harm in Okinawa in October. 

While there have been unofficial reports of the treatment working, official empirical data will come in the aftermath of the retreat and across the next 12-18 months as he works alongside London’s Imperial College. 

A testimonial for the treatment read out by Horner revealed one person’s journey to removing addiction from their life. “I was a gambling addict for most of my life and took the opportunity to try a psychedelic retreat in Cape Town, South Africa with the intention of curing my addiction. 

“The results have been unbelievable and I have been clean for five years. I gambled from the age of 12 and I’m now 61. This is the only time that I have managed to overcome the addiction and I now live with no fear that I will ever relapse.”

Safer gambling regulation 

In his role at BetBlocker, Romero’s goal is to help people manage their addictions by promoting safer gambling. 

That mainly comes in the form of a self-exclusion tool that helps players to manage their gambling, but his focus during the podcast quickly turned to regulation and how to improve the landscape of safer gambling.

He said: “I think it’s about having open conversations with all parties. You need to talk with researchers, not-for-profit organisations and charities. 

“You need to talk with experts with experience, operators and everyone and say, we have this issue. How can we solve it? Because what we’ve seen for many years is that if a market is over-regulated, the black market takes those people who sometimes are particularly vulnerable. 

“How can we make it? How can we find a balance where regulation is not excessive? Investing more in education, player education, also investing in support services, so people don’t migrate to illegal markets where they don’t have any protections.”

You can catch Romero at the SBC Summit in Lisbon. He’ll be participating in a panel on September 17th titled, “Debate: Who’s Really Responsible For Gaming?” on Stage 5 – Player Protection – Research.