The game may soon be up for fruit-machine addicts. Men and women who spend hours gambling may be medically unwell rather than simply indulging in bad habits; at least that’s what the Centre for Addiction in Toronto, Canada, is telling us. It has just started recruiting one-armed-bandit addicts for a clinical trial of a new drug to cure gambling.

Gambling is one of scores of behaviours, traits and habits that are being regarded as treatable illnesses. Soon you’ll be able to cure your worst habits with a pill. Road rage, kleptomania, sex addiction, drinking, teenage tantrums and domestic violence are all being treated with drugs. And more could be in the pipeline, with new trials designed to define the symptoms of workaholism and acute boredom.

With more than 1,000 trials under way worldwide on therapies for behavioural problems, there is growing concern about this process of “medicalisation”. Dr Derek Summerfield, a psychiatrist, writing in the British Medical Journal, has questioned the numbers of people being treated for such traits. Post-traumatic stress disorder, he says, exemplifies a growing obsession with turning emotions into conditions.

“Originally framed as applying only to extreme experiences, it has come to be associated with commonplace events: accidents, muggings, a difficult childbirth, verbal sexual harassment,’’ he says. “Once it becomes advantageous to frame distress as a psychiatric condition people will choose to present themselves as medicalised victims rather than as feisty survivors.’’ There are also concerns that prescribing drugs for unacceptable activities gives disease status to simple bad behaviour. Others argue that if medication works, and can change lives for the better, it should be tried, and that any approaches that stop domestic violence, gambling and road rage are welcome. A number of studies have found that the impulsive aggression may have a link with serotonin levels in the brain and that antidepressants therefore may have some effect.

“Recent studies have shown that fluoxetine — a drug commonly used to treat depression and panic disorder — can decrease acts of aggression,” say the researchers carrying out the domestic violence trial.

As the gambling pill trial gets under way in Canada, results from an earlier pilot study indicate that most of those taking part are going into remission. But the message for problem gamblers is that though it’s possible that the drug will be a cure, please don’t bet on it.

Meanwhile, here are some of your bad habits that may soon have you popping pills.

ROAD RAGE Intermittent explosive disorder, including some cases of road rage, is believed to affect 7.3 per cent of people at some time. Main symptoms are failure to resist aggressive impulses that result in assaults or damage to property.

Treatment Anger-management programmes and counselling were the main strands of treatment, but a new trial, sponsored by the US National Institute of Mental Health, is looking at the use of two antidepressants, fluoxetine and divalproex, in 144 men and women.

“It is a vaguely defined condition for which effective treatments have not been identified. Research suggests that serotonin, a chemical that helps regulate mood and emotions, may play a role,” say the researchers.

SHOPPING Between 2 and 8 per cent of us have symptoms of a compulsive shopping disorder, according to researchers. Symptoms include a preoccupation with shopping and buying unnecessary items. “Shopaholics, when they are feeling out of sorts, shop for a pick-me-up. They go out and buy to get a high,” say Indiana University researchers. Although some question its status as an illness, Dr Lorrin Koran, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, says it’s a real disorder. One shopper in his study had amassed 2,000 wrenches for no apparent reason.

Treatment Sixty-three per cent of people who took the drug citalopram for seven weeks in a small trial at Stanford University were much improved and had a 50 per cent or greater reduction in symptoms. The drug is an antidepressant, which works by increasing levels in the brain of the feel-good chemical serotonin.

SEX ADDICTION This is defined as an excessive engagement in conventional sexual activities, including extramarital affairs, prostitution and pornography. Prevalence is unknown since most addicts prefer to keep their affliction, if not their desires, to themselves.