Italian Man Claims Medication Caused Compulsive Gambling

January 20, 2011 | News Category: Online Casinos

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Dopamine agonists are a medication that has been used for those suffering from Parkinson's disease. The medication helps to reduce the symptoms in those suffering from the shaking and jerking movements that the disease is often associated with. For those that take medication for their symptoms, it often makes the diseasWQe more manageable, and for sufferers to continue with more normal daily life.

However, it seems that the side effects of the drug were not fully disclosed or discovered, when it was first being used. One such side effect is that it can lead the Parkinson's sufferers into various forms of compulsive behavior, such as compulsive gambling.

Recently, the case of Paolo Chisci, a 70 year old Italian man from Carrara, has come to light. Chisci began to use the dopamine agonists over 10 years ago, in 1999, and he took it continuously until 2005.

In this time, soon after taking the dopamine agonists that had been prescribed for his condition, Chisci regularly played slot machines, and large numbers of scratch off lottery tickets. While using the drug for a six year time period, Chisci said that not only did he lose his social standing, but he lost about $514,000 while gambling.

Ricardo Lenzetti, Chisci's lawyer, noted: "We have carried out a thorough examination through psychiatrists on our client, which show before he started taking the drugs he was a regular saver. However, he then started spending almost all his monthly pension on gambling, and then also began borrowing from his friends and was unable to pay them back, which has resulted in his social standing being affected."

Interestingly, Chisci was taken off the drug around the same time that compulsive-type behavior was listed as one of the possible side effects of this kind of drug. Chisci's lawyer will be suing the doctors that prescribed the medication. Although it is unclear what the outcome of the case will be, it is certainly not the first of its kind. In the United States, Gary Charbonneau won his cate when he sued for $8.2 million in damages, because the dopamine agonists resulted in him gambling compulsively.

One of the ways that someone like Chisci could have helped himself would have been to ask the casinos at which he played to block him from gambling. Of course, he would have needed to be aware that compulsive gambling was one of the side effects of the drug in order to ask to use the self-exclusion facilities that are provided by some casinos and online casinos.

Self-exclusion policies are available for those with gambling problems, although they have been known to have glitches in which compulsive gamblers manage to place wagers even after being excluded. For this reason, it is extremely important that both land based gambling facilities, and online casinos, should make sure that when a player has chosen the self-exclusion option, that it will be effective.