Gambling has many damaging consequences. It can affect the economy of the country by increasing the rate of unemployment, forced selling of homes, and increased consumption of alcohol and drug addiction. It has many social consequences too. The children of the addicted and poor gamblers do not get the proper nurturing they should be getting. They are often abused physically and mentally by the addicted parent. The gamblers also experience emotional and physical abandonment.
In my view, the biggest one is the communication you have with other people. You may not realize this at once but when a gambler gets too addicted all of a sudden all he starts to think about is a way to get back the money he lost. Normally they do not win at all, long term results of gambling is always losing so when they lose they start to find a way to get that money back.
Someone who lost thousands of dollars into gambling can't just leave that at the table and leave, that rarely ever happens. So when you start to gamble and make that your character, your talks with other people starts to shift to gambling as well, you talk about that match you probably will win because of great odds, or you talk about how the poker hand you got must be crooked and so forth. You start to have no healthy relationship with anyone.