What your colleague told you has been bothering him for long and he don't know the right person to share this with until you talked about it. It is true, that most person do not use the money they win from gambling to do something used to. And if you look at i statistically you found out that most gamblers are either drunker, smokers, and womanizers. This is why they get addicted to gambling since the money they have is not enough for them to take care of other responsible expenses and still carry out all these lavish lies. Now in society they have tagged people that are into gambling as a bad activity and irresponsible people not knowing that there are responsible people that still gamble.
To answer your question, only responsible gamblers can ever achieve something through gambling, the irresponsible ones surely have one thing or the other that they are fully addicted to which add to the reason why they gamble.
Society mistakenly believes that all gambling players are gambling addicts.
In fact, among them, only a small percentage of players constantly think about gambling or betting, the rest quite normally perceive casinos or betting as an ordinary hobby. It's just that the cases of gambling addicts cause very heated discussions, and then everyone starts to think that all those who play in casinos have problems with self-control. But this is not the case.
The main thing is to always remember how dangerous this hobby is, and constantly listen to your inner voice. And have full control over your money management.
Yes, that may be true, but what I understand is the opposite, where more of them see and consider gambling as a place to earn income rather than just a hobby, although I don't have statistical proof but I think they always return to gambling, especially when they treat gambling in the wrong way and experience emotions when they lose so I think from that alone we can confirm that they come with the intention of making a profit because of the disappointment response when losing money. In short, I cannot say that the number of gamblers who take gambling as a hobby is more than the gamblers who come with the intention of earning money, there is no real evidence about that, and one of the reasons why I say that there are fewer gamblers who take gambling as a hobby is because Lately, I have seen a lot of news circulating, especially in my country, where the population is increasing in population who are involved in gambling impulsively and almost all of them have the same impact.
Another thing regarding the stigma or bad perspective that some people have about gambling, yes, I agree with you is that this stigma is caused by the behavior of gamblers who are addicted, where they experience many setbacks in their lives due to treating gambling in the wrong way, and I am sure that his actions were based on a wrong understanding of gambling, such as assuming or thinking that gambling is a place to make money.