The Escalation Cycle: Recreational to Disordered

How play can slide into harm — a spectrum, not a switch — and why chasing losses is the red flag to know.

Domain

Overview

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4 pages6 question check

Gambling harm develops on a spectrum. This lesson maps the stages, names the engine (tolerance and chasing), and shows why early drift is easy to miss from inside.

Outcomes

What you'll learn

Name the four stages of the escalation spectrum.
Identify tolerance and loss-chasing as drivers of the slide.
Label a scenario along the gradient without binary thinking.

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