Indonesians struggle with growing gambling addiction: ‘this is wrong and forbidden’

When the wife of Indonesian snack seller Surya asked why he stopped sending money home to his West Java village, he broke down, confessing to a gambling addiction that had cost him more than US$12,000.

“When I lost big, I was determined to win back what I lost no matter what – even if I had to borrow money,” the 36-year-old father of two said, declining to use his real name.

Some VPN services, which gamblers use to bypass firewalls on foreign sites, were also blacklisted, but diehard gamblers are still able to bet from their phones or through illegal bookies, and it is easy to borrow money from loan sharks.

Surya was earning up to four million rupiah (US$250) a month in the West Java capital Bandung, but once he started gambling, he was only sending a million home.

He would play mobile gambling games until dawn and squander away his hard-earned money.

“Even when you’re winning, the money will be gone instantly. Now, I’d rather give money to my wife,” he said.

Eno Saputra, a 36-year-old vegetable seller in South Sumatra, started buying lottery tickets five years ago but is now addicted to mobile gambling.

He spends at least 100,000 rupiah (US$6.45) a day gambling and once won eight million rupiah, but usually suffers losses.

“From the bottom of my heart, I want to quit, for my children,” the father of three said.

“I know this is wrong and forbidden by my religion.”

There is hope for some in Bogor, south of the capital Jakarta, where a clinic at a psychiatry hospital has been treating patients struggling to break their gambling addiction since the beginning of the year.

So far 19 addicts have received counselling and therapy for anxiety, paranoia, sleep disorders and suicidal thoughts, said Nova Riyanti Yusuf, director of the