Anybody who is a chronic addict to gambling and instead of seeking for help, decide to hide it and pretend all is fine, is only hurting him or herself, gambling addiction is like someone who is sick, depending on the level of the addiction, the gambler might require a treatment of some kind of therapy, I myself having had a gambling addict as a friend, I can honestly tell that its not something anyone should be proud of, trying to manage addiction in gambling is very risky, My friend lost everything he had, including his wife and kid, who left him when his addiction become unbearable for them, so my personal note or take on this is that, anyone addicted to gambling should seek help, don't try to manage it because, as long as the gambler is still gambling, there is every chance that the addiction will also become worst .
Addiction to gambling is same as addiction to drugs and other substances, The first solution to this is for the individual to be ready to come out of their addictions and this could be done by having some changes in the daily habits characters and activities that could settle all the possibilities of sliding back into the addictions.
So for that, we have to monitor all our activities, to make sure that we are not overly getting involved in gambling and other vices that could possibly negatively affect our well-being.
Well spoken brother, idle mind they say is the devil's workshop, even though the mind of a gambling addict is idle, to come out from addiction on gambling, the gambler might have to first reset their mind, by making a well determined decision to quit gambling for the time being until he or she is totally healed from the addiction..
And one process I think is very important for achieving such a target, which I believe you partially mentioned, is to get the mind occupied with other activities , and utterly reduce their gambling activities, if we check well, most gambling addicts are people who have nothing else doing, or people who have already been addicted to gambling before they found something doing, but then , have not utterly made the decision to try coming out from that addiction, so for this reason , the gambler is still addicted to gambling , even while working ..