question: What character created by Jane Austen had an urge to gamble continuously despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop?
answer: George Wickham
context: Title: George Wickham
  Passage: George Wickham is a fictional character created by Jane Austen who appears in her novel "Pride and Prejudice", published in 1813.  George Wickham is introduced as a militia officer who has a shared history with Mr. Darcy.  Wickham's charming demeanour and his story of being badly treated by Darcy attracts the sympathy of the heroine, Elizabeth Bennet, to the point that she is warned by her aunt not to fall in love and marry him.  It is revealed through the course of the story that George Wickham's true nature is that of a manipulative unprincipled layabout, a ne'er-do-well wastrel, compulsive liar (talking out of both sides of mouth, and using the truth to make his falsehoods very believable) and a degenerate, compulsive gambler, a seducer and a libertine, living the lifestyle of a rake.  Lacking the finances to pay for his lifestyle, he gambles regularly (not just because he is a degenerate compulsive gambler and has no sense of economy) and cons credit from tradesman and shopkeepers and skips out on paying-up.
  Title: Problem gambling
  Passage: Problem gambling (or ludomania, but usually referred to as "gambling addiction" or "compulsive gambling") is an urge to gamble continuously despite harmful negative consequences or a desire to stop.  Problem gambling is often defined by whether harm is experienced by the gambler or others, rather than by the gambler's behaviour.  Severe problem gambling may be diagnosed as clinical pathological gambling if the gambler meets certain criteria.  Pathological gambling is a common disorder that is associated with both social and family costs.
  Title: Miss Austen Regrets
  Passage: Miss Austen Regrets is a 2007 BBC drama film directed by Jeremy Lovering and written by Gwyneth Hughes.  It stars Olivia Williams as Jane Austen, with Imogen Poots, Greta Scacchi, Hugh Bonneville, Adrian Edmondson and Jack Huston.  It was first aired on 21 August 2007 in the U.K. and on 3 February 2008 in the U.S. by PBS Masterpiece drama anthology television series as part of "The Complete Jane Austen", the United States version of The Jane Austen Season.
  Title: Timeline of Jane Austen
  Passage: Jane Austen lived her entire life as part of a family located socially and economically on the lower fringes of the English gentry.  The Rev. George Austen and Cassandra Leigh, Jane Austen's parents, lived in Steventon, Hampshire, where Rev. Austen was the rector of the Anglican parish from 1765 until 1801.  Jane Austen's immediate family was large and close-knit.  She had six brothers—James, George, Charles, Francis, Henry, and Edward—and a beloved older sister, Cassandra.  Austen's brother Edward was adopted by Thomas and Elizabeth Knight and eventually inherited their estates at Godmersham, Kent, and Chawton, Hampshire.  In 1801, Rev. Austen retired from the ministry and moved his family to Bath, Somerset.  He died in 1805 and for the next four years, Jane, Cassandra, and their mother lived first in rented quarters and then in Southampton where they shared a house with Frank Austen's family.  During these unsettled years, they spent much time visiting various branches of the family.  In 1809, Jane, Cassandra, and their mother moved permanently into a large "cottage" in Chawton village that was part of Edward's nearby estate.  Austen lived at Chawton until she moved to Winchester for medical treatment shortly before her death in 1817.
  Title: A Memoir of Jane Austen
  Passage: A Memoir of Jane Austen is a biography of the novelist Jane Austen (1775–1817) published in 1869 by her nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh.  A second edition was published in 1871 which included previously unpublished Jane Austen writings.  A family project, the biography was written by James Edward Austen-Leigh but owed much to the recollections of Jane Austen's many relatives.  However, it was the decisions of her close friend and sister, Cassandra Austen, to destroy many of Jane's letters after her death that shaped the material available for the biography.
  Title: Jane Austen fan fiction
  Passage: Jane Austen fan fiction is the collection of numerous sequels and spin-offs produced by authors who have either used the plot of Austen's original novels, or have extended them, to produce new works of fiction.  Austen's posthumous popularity has inspired fan fiction that runs the gamut through numerous genres, but the most concentrated medium has remained the novel.  According to Pucci and Thompson in their 2003 survey on the contemporary evolution of Jane Austen's work, at the turn of the 20th century (over 150 years after the final publication of her first collected works), over one hundred sequels, rewritings, and continuations of her novels had been published.
  Title: Deborah Yaffe
  Passage: Deborah Yaffe (born 1965) is the author of two books, most recently and prominently the book "Among the Janeites: A Journey through the World of Jane Austen Fandom " (Houghton Mifflin Mariner, 2013).  The book describes Yaffe's lifelong love of Jane Austen, as well as the lives and ideas of many other Jane Austen fans or "Janeites." Yaffe's book has been featured in the "New York Times", the "New York Post", the "Christian Science Monitor", and "O!  Magazine", among others.  Yaffe has been a reporter in New York and California and is also the author of "Other People's Children: The Battle for Justice and Equality in New Jersey Schools."
  Title: Alcohol abuse
  Passage: Alcohol abuse is a previous psychiatric diagnosis in which there is recurring harmful use of alcohol despite its negative consequences.  In 2013 it was reclassified as alcohol use disorder (alcoholism) along with alcohol dependence.  There are two types of alcohol abuse, those who have anti-social and pleasure-seeking tendencies, and those who are anxiety-ridden people who are able to go without drinking for long periods of time but are unable to control themselves once they start.  Binge drinking is another form of alcohol abuse.  According to surveys, the heaviest drinkers are the United Kingdom's adolescents.  In 2013, 139,000 deaths globally were directly due to alcohol abuse and an additional 384,000 to cirrhosis from excess alcohol consumption.
  Title: Becoming Jane Austen
  Passage: Becoming Jane Austen was researched and written by the Jane Austen scholar Jon Hunter Spence.  It chronicles a demi-biographical version of Austen's early biography based on Spence's interpretation of the novel "Pride and Prejudice" as possibly being modeled on Austen's real life, although Austen herself does not make this claim for her novel.
  Title: Obsessive–compulsive spectrum
  Passage: The obsessive–compulsive spectrum is a model of medical classification where various psychiatric, neurological and/or medical conditions are described as existing on a spectrum of conditions related to obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD).  "The disorders are thought to lie on a spectrum from impulsive to compulsive where impulsivity is said to persist due to deficits in the ability to inhibit repetitive behavior with known negative consequences, while compulsivity persists as a consequence of deficits in recognizing completion of tasks."  OCD is a mental disorder characterized by obsessions and/or compulsions.  An obsession is defined as "a recurring thought, image, or urge that the individual cannot control".  Compulsion can be described as a "ritualistic behavior that the person feels compelled to perform".  The model suggests that many conditions overlap with OCD in symptomatic profile, demographics, family history, neurobiology, comorbidity, clinical course and response to various pharmacotherapies.  Conditions described as being on the spectrum are sometimes referred to as "obsessive–compulsive spectrum disorders".
citations: Problem gambling George Wickham