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Mama Maya acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast is recorded on.
There were times when I couldn't pay the bills. There were times when I had to borrow money to exist. There were times when I mean I never stole or did anything like that, but there were times when I considered it.
For Mamma Maya, this is no filter. I'm Meya Friedman. And sometimes we have people on this show who share a story that we know is going to literally save someone's life when they hear it. And this is one of those stories because you're about to meet Anna Martin. Anna is a recovering gambling addict who, as you're about to hear, almost lost her life to this insidious India.
When you imagine a gambling at it, you probably imagine a man, because men are mostly who gambling's marketed to, and it's also who most of.
The anti gambling.
Support services are also aimed towards. And women who gamble, and there are so many of them. Women who gamble are really in the shadows, and that's where Anna was.
In the shadows.
She didn't want anyone to know about her gambling habits. She had such shame, and she also didn't want anyone to know about the risks that she was taking, the financial risks, the risk to her safety. She didn't want anyone to know how bad it got to the point where she almost lost her life. Shame and secrecy are killers. We know that, and gambling is shrouded in shame and secrecy. So it's no small thing for Anna.
To share her story with us today.
And I don't think there's an Australian alive who won't be able to really late to the way this story starts. It's with Anna at the pub with her family having lunch.
Look, this was a construct within my family for many years. My grandfather, who is a core part of this journey for me, and my mother and my brother all rocked up to the same pub in Adelaide and had lunch together just about every weekend. So it was a core part of my childhood experiences.
The Pokeys for our non Australian listeners, the poker machines, they would know them as you were there with your family. They're a ubiquitous part of Australian culture, probably a lot more so now than they were back then. Your grandfather, though even back then, was an avid user of the Pokeyes, wasn't he?
He certainly was.
What did that look like to you?
So would it mean that he would have lunch with you and then he'd sort of scurry away? And how long would he spend there?
What did you see? What did you notice?
Yes?
No, he never made it a big part of the outings that my family did together. He would always be at the table for lunch with us, and then afterwards there would be a period of time when my brother and I were younger, that he would go away into the Pokey's venue and spend some time, and quite often I could hear him speaking and laughing.
And it was always a memory that.
I associated with joy, because he would build up to it, he would make references to it, and quite often if I spoke to him on the phone during the week in between the lunches, he would say, it's happening. It's going to happen on Saturday, and we're going to win money. It's going to be amazing. So it was always a memory that was associated with joy and positivity, and the less positive side of it only came into play for me when I was an adult.
I imagine it was also associated with sort of familiarity and safety, because that was your grandpa, right, and it was something that happened and in plain sight, even though kids weren't allowed to be around the Pokey's in that area, it did. It sort of seem exciting and a bit forbidden, but quite joyous, not furtive.
Did it. Ever?
The venuine question was the pokies were quite close to the eating areas, so we're talking about a sheet of glass that was frosted that you couldn't see through. But all I remember was the laughing. I remember the coins clinking in the cups before note acceptors came in. I
remember people coming out with smiles on their faces. And it was at this particular venue, never something that I considered unacceptable, even though I'm sure there were parts of it that I didn't see as a child, with people being upset, people losing their money, people coming out wondering how they were going to put food on the table. But as a kid, you don't pick up on those kinds of cues.
I don't think, Yeah, it's funny when you speak, you've got a really happy expression, like you're smiling in a really happy way, like you do when we look back on a happy memory. In high school, your family went through some changes. Your parents got a divorce, which took a big emotional toll on you. And throughout that time you were really close to your grandfather.
Tell me a little bit about him.
Oh, amazing man. So my grandfather was a banker and maintained a personal bank account with a reserve bank right up until he died. He was involved in the delivery of decimal currency to banks around Adelaide and was considered too important to go to war because of his role there.
As I was growing.
Up, he taught me to love books and words and reading and gave me my incredibly stupid and low bar humor that I still enjoy today. Probably one of the smartest people I've ever met. And when he died in two thousand and five that the memory of him passing was on the day that the sky show occurred in Adelaide.
So the sky Show, for.
People that don't know, is a firework show that happens usually on Australia Day. And I remember my mum had called us and let us know that he had passed, and it was just when the fireworks were starting, and a core memory of that for me is me going, wow, Okay, so he's moving on to the next part of his life. He's done all he can here and here is the welcome journey for him to the next stage.
Oh, that's such a beautiful way of looking at it. I've got a real sense of him.
I almost cried.
Yeah, I'm almost.
Crying, Like looking at your face. I've got a real sense of him. And I don't know if I spoke about my only met one of my grandfathers, but I don't know if I spoke about him. I loved him and he was great, but I didn't have that sole connection with him that it sounds like you had with your grandfather.
How old were you when he died.
I was twenty five. I was just at the end of my law degree and he passed just as I was sort of finishing final exam. So difficult time in my life to manage that kind of bereavement, but incredibly hard. Miss him every day and have his initials tattooed on the inside of my wrist so I remember him.
Was he rich, No, not at all, because when you say he's a banker and he had an account with the Reserve Bank.
If you asked him that question, he would laugh. He was from a working class family and he was the sole breadwinner. My grandmother was a stay at home wife and parent, and although they didn't have much money, especially in the early parts of their lives, their family never wanted for anything.
When you turned eighteen, Anna, what did your grandfather give you as a present?
He gave me money. I remember that, and he also gave me, almost like rites of passage experiences. So the pokes was one. He tried to get me to drink. That didn't work. I still don't drink. And he gave me books because he and I had always given each other books, and that became a core part of how we interacted, was over books and reading and stories, as well.
As part of the money that he gave you, it was a cup of coins, certainly was so you could have your first legal spin on the pokes. Do you remember that first experience on the machine?
I do.
I remember, because, as I said, there was a pane of frosted glass that you had to walk behind to get into the area, and I remember going, wow, I've always been on the other side of this glass. Now I'm walking around to finally see what makes all these people so happy. And it might not have been on my very first experience, but this is a common experience
of people that struggle with gambling harm is. I had a big wind fairly early, and I was eighteen, So we're only talking a couple one hundred dollars, which was more than I made in my week's earnings at KFC, where I worked at the time, and that to me seemed like an amazing thing to do and an amazing way of suring that I was going to make this kind of money all the time. And who would do part time work given that so close to me starting this, I was so successful.
How much money did you have to put in to win that few hundred dollars?
Do you think, Oh, look, it wouldn't have been much more than twenty thirty forty dollars. Like, we're not talking a lot of money at all. I don't remember the exact amount, but that was the we intended to go up to. When he was handing over money as gifts, which as a young adult you're always grateful for when struggling with part time work, But it wasn't a lot like we're talking very very small amount to win what I considered a very large one.
You're right that at first you gambled alongside your grandfather as a sort of a bonding activity. You did it together. When did you first gamble alone? Do you remember that time?
I do?
It was when I started university in Adelaide City. So I went to the University of Adelaide and started my law degree and my art's degree and realized pretty quickly that pokeys were on every corner and they still are. So made my way across North Terrace into the venues when I had breaks between lectures and dutes, and used pokies as an escape and escape from study and escape
from work. I was working really hard in the early part of my tertiary study as well, and it quickly became a hobby that was destructive.
How did you feel when you were actually putting the money in and pulling that lever.
I think that a lot of people who experienced gambling harm, and myself included, say that it doesn't feel like real money. It's almost fake, like you think of it almost like monopoly money. And I referred to that period of my life sometimes as the Disney theory of living, which is everything will workout fine, provided i'd just believe that it will. And there was more times than once that money went in and I went, oh, it's okay, I'll just get more.
More will come next week after I've done more work. And I never had a rational kind of hang on a minute, what are you doing? All your money's gone, there's not going to be more until you earn more. Until I was much older.
So the money that you put into the machine, and I imagine it's one and two dollar coins.
One dollar coins when I was doing it, So when I started playing pokeys, it was before the note acceptors came in. So quite often now machines will just take banknotes. Pokis in Adelaide only took one dollar coins at that time.
And where do you get the coins from? So you'd go to the like what was your routine before you went and played the poking?
So there are two ways of doing it.
You can approach the person working in the venue who will change your banknote for dollar coins, or quite often there was an automatic machine where you put your note in, you put a cup down the bottom and the coins drop down into the cup based on the note that
you've put in. So I quite often would approach the person in the venue initially, but if I was getting to the point where I felt like I was losing a significant amount of money, there would be a level of shame associated with interacting with anyone in the venue, and then I would go back to the change machine and I would try and make it so no one was around if I was in that headspace, because to me, the shame was almost too great to bear, even at that early stage and losing what in the scheme of
things as my addiction grew, was relatively small amounts.
When you first started, did you have caps for yourself, like limits, I'll spend this much today?
Yeah, I did that lots and.
What were they at first?
So anyone who's experienced gambling harm will tell you they hate twenty dollar notes because twenty dollars is an automatic limit that a lot of people set for themselves. It was always only ever going to be twenty. Then I allowed it to be fifty on bad days, and it crept up from there.
What made you make the decision to go past your limit? If you can explain to someone who doesn't know what addiction feels like, because I guess it's the same as what makes you go past your limit of drinking or drugs or doing anything.
What makes you go past your limit is for me, parts of my life were crap. I was struggling with mental health issues. I didn't understand the way that some things were unfolding in my family. And when I deserve this, I deserve to win because other parts of my life were crap. So even if I went past the self imposed limit, it didn't matter because I deserved the positive outcome, which came so rarely.
When I was struggling with bolimia, I would feel a certain way in my body when I was going and buying food to binge with, and then I would sort of feel a level of agitation and sort of almost arousal in the anticipation period. When I was actually binging or throwing up, it would kind of be like a really numb feeling. How did it feel for you the different parts of your experience each time you went and played the.
Pokey's when you enter a venue, Well, when I enter a venue, it's the similar feeling of it's excitement, It's where nobody's going to get me, nobody's going to ask me why I'm here. Nobody's going to make me justify my existence. Nobody's going to say to me how you feeling, explain it to me, and I can just be by myself and do what I like to do, which is try and win money. But as time in the venue goes on, and if you look around a pokey venue, quite often there's not a clock and quite often there
aren't windows. And there's a reason for that because people get almost into like a robotic state of existence where they think, if I just put in a little bit more, I'll win. If I can just put in a little bit more, have a big one, I won't tell anyone and we'll all get on with life. It'll be fine. So if you think about it like a curve, you go up to the top of the curve up here,
you hit a numb state. You stay there until the point where you go, wait a minute, I'm in a situation that's really not constructive for me, and you take a very sharp decline. And that was normally when I left once I realized what the reality of what I've been doing meant for my life.
What would make you have that realization and crossing to that stage.
When i'd drawn out of money, when I got to the point where my shame was so great I couldn't look anybody in the eye in the venue, or when it was getting to the point where I felt unsafe. So quite often I would gamble or play the pokies to the point where it was quite late at night. I was living by myself, there was no reason or thought for me to go home, so I would gamble toll ten o'clock at night, and as a single woman in a pub at ten o'clock at night where people
have been drinking, it's not always the safest environment. And I got to the point some nights where I went, I don't feel safe. I had to get out of here, and that would be the trigger for me leaving. If I was still at the point where I was winning or had a lot of money, or I was knowing that I had to get up for work the next day would sometimes be a trigger as well. But there are a raft of ways you can justify extra time to yourself.
Would you ever leave when you were winning, when you were ahead, or was it always the point you'd leave was when you run out of money.
I would leave when I was ahead, if I'd want a lot of money because I could justify to myself I've made up some of the losses, like this is okay, this is okay.
I'm not going to be at.
A point where I need to borrow money. I'm not going to be at a point where my life is going to fall over and I'm not going to be able to pay my car, REGERL or eat. But I am going to walk out knowing that all the bills next week will be paid because I've won money.
What's the most you can win in a don't what would you even call it?
In South Australia, the limit is ten thousand dollars and if you win more than ten thousand dollars that money I don't know what happens to that money because I've never won more than ten thousand dollars.
But have you won ten thousand dollars?
The most I've ever won is four and a half.
And then I guess the most you've ever won is four and a half in one session. But it's kind of meaningless me asking you what's the most you've ever lost in one session, because it's accumulation of the sessions that causes the harm, right exactly right.
I mean, I can tell you individual sessions where I've lost quite a significant amount, like how much the figure, oh, like two three, four, five hundred dollars.
But the figure that would be more.
Meaningful for people listening and trying to understand addiction is over the course of my addiction, it would be two hundred thousand dollars or more. I would think that I've lost.
Wow.
And this is from a woman who was in a position where at any time there was supportive family that she could seek help from, but chose not to because of the shame and the fear associated with being judged for having this kind of an addiction.
When you looked around, who are the people at the machines around you?
So quite often people say that pokeis are an older person's game. In a way, that's true, but not for the entire span of the day. So younger people play the pokes at night. I've seen more than my fair share of couples who were younger sitting playing losing During the day. It's older people who might feel lonely and don't have anyone else to talk to, and it's a way of getting a cup of coffee and a smile when maybe during the day you wouldn't have anyone else
to give that to you. So this is an industry that attracts people from all walks of life at any point in time, if you are susceptible to having issues. I don't think it discriminates by age. I've seen it across the board and across the spectrum.
And do gamblers talk to each other while they're playing.
It's really funny because I went in there with no intention to speak to anyone, and in fact, I'm not someone who will not encourage a conversation with a stranger, but in a gambling venue, no, don't talk to me. I'm not there to speak or make friends. I'm there to indulge in my addiction and leave without anybody seeing
or interacting with me. But there's another element that I noticed, particularly towards the end of my addiction, which is people that make friends and sit there and have their coffee and play their small bets and talk to each other.
So whether those people have a problem with gambling is only for them to say, I guess, But you can see it when you walk into a venue that there are people there like me who don't want to interact on this level in any way, shape or form, and there are people there who use it as a way of socializing.
So a bit of both. I guess.
Is there a sense of camaraderie when someone wins? Does everyone cheer in a way?
But there are also jealous sight eyes and why is it that person and not me? There are also I think that staff are trained to make a big deal of people when they win. But what you might not see is that that person has been there for six hours and might be coming close to being even not a win. This is not a person walking out ahead. This is a person walking out with less loss than they might have if they'd stopped earlier.
After this break, the moment that Anna hit rock bottom and realized that she had such a serious problem that was putting her financial, emotional, and physical safety at risk, and also the phone call that saved to life and it was with an unlikely person. Anna, can you give me some context over what period of time this happened? So you use the pokeys for the first time when
you're eighteen with your grandfather. He died when you were twenty five, so that's seven years later, and you say that's when things got really bad.
That's when it got really hard.
So between eighteen and twenty five, how often were you going and would you have said that it was a problem in hindsight during that time, I.
Would say maybe three times a week, maybe building up to four or five near the end of that period of time. I didn't ever see that my grandfather and I going together was a problem because it was our way of catching up, socializing, interacting with each other over
something that we both liked to do. But I do remember going into the last year of my law degree and thinking I really should do something about this because people my age don't tend to hang around in pokey rooms when they've got gaps in between the days at UNI, So I was in classes with people who would come back with shopping bags or like yeah, in as a food or eat from breaks between classes, but not me.
I would come back.
I would sit in the back of lectures and try and hope that I wasn't going to repeat what I'd just done the next day.
So it was around that time, when you're about twenty five, that you started going pretty much every day. Would you say that's right, yes, For how many hours at a time.
I used it as a bit of a because I moved into full time work when I was sort of twenty six twenty seven when I finished my law degree, and I used it as an escape after work. So it started off as just half an hour an hour here and there. As it got worse, I would say two to three hours, sometimes seven days a week, sometimes less if I.
Was feeling good or was busy for other reasons.
But I also, at that period of time went through a period at work where I was quite badly bullied and didn't fancy being at home by myself, so I would use it as a way of not being alone with my own thoughts and other issues that I had to deal with at the time. I would, as good friends still say to me, pack my life full of crap so I don't have to think about the things that I really need to pay attention to, like this.
When you're sliding into addiction, or my experience anyway, at first you think you've got control over it, and it starts as a little treat, and then you lose that control.
But on the way down you make rules for yourself.
In an attempt to regain control over it, and then you find yourself one by one breaking those rules. What are some of the rules that you made for yourself and broke?
My brain still likes rules and symmetry, and I believe that it is directly attributed to this period of my life. So limits on how much I would spend or how long I would spen and in the venue always had to be even, so fifty.
Dollars or an hour. I love a round number.
I even still love around number when I'm filling up my car with petrol or something like that.
Like it.
It's su pervasive into other areas of black I always said to myself at various points, if you go in there and you talk to someone, maybe you've made somebody's day better. So that is a justification that I used as well. Another justification, you work really hard, You're allowed to have a few treats. You can spend your money how you like. All your bills are paid. This is not a problem. And the last one, and probably the most important one, is I'll just stop. I know I
can do that whenever I want to. Yeah, but I did that a lot. Yeah, And it never was consistent.
Where did you get your money from?
So work, I had a bit of a problem with credit card debt for a while, which I paid off, but it resulted in some fairly creative accounting on my part. To make things work. I used all of my disposable income for gambling, and even now would consider that I am behind in where I wanted to be in my life because of the choices that I made in that period.
What kind of financial danger did you put yourself in?
There were times when I couldn't pay the bills. There were times when I had to borrow money to exist. There were times when I mean I never stole or did anything like that, but there were times when I considered it. And certainly, speaking with other people, we've lived experience in gambling harm went down that pathway, and I think, whatever kind of god ess is watching over us at the moment, that I never did, because I can see how easy it would be.
Who was the first person that you told I think I've got a problem.
I went through a raft of different therapies. So here in Adelaide there's the statewide gambling rehabilitation services.
I went there.
I went to relationships Australia. In terms of people in my life, parts of my family still don't know that this experience occurred for me. It probably was a doctor or a counselor at some point, because I went, I don't want to be a burden to anyone who loves me. I'm going to go and get external help, and I'm going to go and I'm going to have this therapy and we're not going to talk about it. We're just going to go through it and make it happen and it will be fine.
No one needs to know.
Yeah, it would have been a professional person of some kind, But I don't know.
What was it that made you. Was it a particular thing that you went, Okay, I can't control this.
I need help.
It was one night when I was sitting on the bed at home, crying with a knife next to me, thinking this is enough. I can't do this anymore. And if my family ever found out what I've been through, it would be easier for me not to be here.
So it got to the point where that was a real option for me, and I realized that I couldn't do that to my mum, and I couldn't do it to people around me who I knew would be there for me if I needed help, And I stopped and I went, I need to get help here, and I rang Lifeline and got referred to a number of different support services and ultimately ended up self excluding myself from gambling venues, which is what helped me stop.
Can you explain that before you do, I just want to say thank God, thank God you reached out for help in that moment, Thank God, and thank you for thinking about your mum on behalf of moms couldn't not.
My mum is an amazing woman and doesn't know a lot of this, so her and I are going to have a conversation before this comes out. But it is incredibly important to me that women here that if you're in that place, what I'm trying to do will help you.
It's so generous of you to be this honest and talk about this, because I'm sure to save lives and I'm just so glad that reaching out saved yours. Do you remember what the person on the other end of the phone on lifeline said to you that night.
I'll never forget that. I'll never forget that.
And it's going to sound really trite, but I explained everything and I was crying. It was probably eleven, twelve o'clock at night, and it was an English woman. She let me talk and she let me cry, and she said, love, You're going to be okay, And I remember going, no, I'm not.
How do you know that?
And I'll still say that to people around me if I'm in because I manage anxiety and panic disorders at the moment as well, and I'll still say to people around me, how do you know I'm going to be okay? There's no evidence of that. And a very good friend of mine gave me a sticker that says, Anna, you have survived one hundred percent of your bad days. Because what that woman said to me was, Anna, you have survived one hundred percent of your bad days and you will continue to survive than I did.
And I will, Yeah you will, Yeah you have.
That's incredible, isn't it Funny? Has something that just seems so simple can just cut.
Through, yeah, the despair years. But you need to hear it from someone else.
And it was the shortest sentence from a woman I have never met and never will probably, But she talked me through putting the knife back in the kitchen draw. She talked me through having a shower and going to bed, and she said to me, here's what you need to do next. And we made a plan together that I believe.
Saved my life.
What was that plan?
So the next morning we discussed how I was going to keep myself safe. We discussed the therapy services I was going to get in contact with. We made a plan together about if I was unsafe, who I was going to call. And she was on that list, but there were other people as well. And even now when women contact me talking about gambling harm, safety plans of what I say, I say, if you're in a position
where you feel unsafe. I'm not a counselor and I'm not an expert, but I am a woman that survived this, and I know that the key to surviving yourself is making sure you're safe all the time.
How are we going to keep you safe?
Not all heroes were capes. Hey, oh sure that's true. And that woman.
You know the people on the other end of the finite lifeline, they are extraordinary.
Yeah.
Like any addiction, alcoholism or drugs, or sex or shopping, gambling is something that requires daily management. What does that actually look like for you?
Well, the self exclusion program, I believe is the only reason why I stopped gambling. So the requirements for doing that vary from state to state.
What does it mean?
Oh yeah, sure.
The way you do it in Adelaide is you go to the Office of Consumer and Business Services, who manage the program, and you say, I have an issue with gambling. I would like to be banned from gambling venues and identify to them the venues that you would like to be banned from. But I knew for me that that wasn't going to work because if I knew the venues I was banned from, I'd just drive further out and
pick a different one. So I said to them, I'm happy to do that, but I would like it to be a selection of venues within Adelaide, and I would like there to be a note within the order, because they make a formal order under the legislation barring you from entering the premises. I would like a note to be in the order that says I can only receive a copy and details of the venues that I am banned from if I ring up three separate times on
three separate days to get the information. And the woman, luckily who I was speaking to assisting me through this process, said, we've never done that before, but that's a really good idea.
I'm happy to do that.
Talk me through that, because I knew if I didn't do that, I would be able to ring up get a list of the venues emailed to me within fifteen minutes, because I'd done it before when I said to them I need to be banned. Please ban me from the selection of venues and don't tell me what they are. Probably two months after that, I rang them and said, let me know what venues I'm banned from. I might want to add more.
And I had the list in my inbox within fifteen minutes.
So you tested the system, you found the weak points, and you almost designed a more full proof system.
I did because I knew for me that if I had access to that information immediately I was stuffed.
It wasn't going to work.
But the thing with self exclusion, and this is the important part for me, is because I have a legal qualification, if I am found in a venue and that self exclusion order is enforced, it will affect my career.
So the consequences are high.
Yes, I had to put myself in a position where my life and livelihood would be threatened if I.
Was found in a venue.
He need stakes, Yeah.
And they needed to be high. I needed to put the most important thing too me me on the line, which was my career, to enable me to succeed.
There will be a lot of people listening to this who gambling harm is not the problem for them, but someone they love. You can't do that exclusion for someone else, can you.
No, you can't.
The person has to be involved, but there are support services out there who will help you negotiate that process. If the person doesn't want to be self excluded, you can't make them.
They have to be ready to do that for you.
Is it just Pokey's or is it other types of gambling.
Only ever been just Poky's.
When Pokey's got blocked, you didn't just go, Okay, i'll do sports better, I'll do something else.
No, I didn't. But I had a bit of weird addiction transfer. In the first instance, I got obsessed with claw machines that you win toys from because I think that it's a similar kind of dopamine hit. Yeah, and I kind of once people in my life realized that that was a problem for me, because it became pretty obvious when I got good and won a whole bunch of toys and they were sitting in my place.
People hang around going, yeah, you're a woman that's in her forties, why have you got hips of these toys?
So oh, did you feel ashamed of that as well? Or could you kind of laugh about it?
I was proud of it because I was good and I kept winning.
And it wasn't called a bad word like it wasn't yeah right.
But I've always had the kind of focus I guess where once I've committed to something, I go all out. Like a good friend says to me, I've got two speeds, super fast and stop. And my addiction and my problems with gambling were super fast and stop. Right now, I'm stop, but I believe that at any point, if I don't properly manage this, I'll go back to super.
Fast after this shortbreak.
How Anna stays so but how she stays on the wagon, And what not to do if someone in your life, someone you love, has a gambling addiction, have you fallen off the wagon? In the time between self exclusion and.
Now, I've had one bad relay, but that was as a result of other issues that were happening in my life, and I was in a position where I knew that I wasn't banned where I was, so I was not in the Adelaide City area, and I was like, the venues right here. Everything in my life is crap, which is what the thought process was when this was really bad for me.
I'll just do it. No one's going to know by myself. And it was bad.
It was hundreds of dollars and it was really quick, and I had never played pokeys with note acceptors, and I was shocked at how quickly I lost the money.
So what have you done to guard against that happening again?
I've extended my self exclusion to the entire country and it was a bit of a process to get it done, but it's worth it for me because now I know I can go anywhere and feel safe knowing that I won't be in that situation where I might have the relapse again.
When you have had those moments of relapse, how have you sort of forgiven yourself and loved yourself enough to get back on the wagon, Like because there's a real sense of, oh, well, it's all ruined now, like I may as well just forget it.
It's always my mum because she's always been there for me, and I always think, if I can't, I'm going to cry. If I can't do this for myself, I'm going to do it for her because I love her so much. She's been through so much in her life and the last thing she needs is for me not to be tough. So I continue based on I'm from a long line of strong women, I can tell, and I want to make sure that that continues past me as well.
How long have you been in recovery?
Truly clean? Five years?
Although the relapse that I just talked about was about four months ago and it was one day in my life, and I've accepted the fact that it occurred, but I still consider myself clean for five years. The period of severe addiction was certainly in my twenties, and there were periods of time throughout my thirties where it popped up again and then went down and popped up and went down. But yeah, the past five years have been gold for me.
Are you in a lot of debt still from that time?
Zero? I've paid it all off.
Oh well, that must feel good.
It was hard, but I did it.
Has that made you feel like you've got some measure of control back in your life.
It has, but it took me a long time to feel okay to deal with money. I've got some good friends who run a budgeting company who helped me a lot recognize the fact that I can manage money. I went to a fairly well known national provider of budgeting assistance who took my money off me and said, don't worry, we'll manage everything. And that put me back a bit because I went, hang, in a minute, my whole, the
core of me and my recovery is being strung. If I don't have control over this, it's not going to work. So I am very glad to have transitioned out of that and to working with my friends and their company to help me get to the point where I feel okay to manage my money and pay my bills, and now I do.
You work closely with the Alliance for Gambling Reform and an initiative called the Untangled Project, which is a not for profit space created by for and also with women recovering from gambling addictions. How are women's gambling addictions different from men's Because when you think about gambling, you often think of the face of gambling, of not just being an older person but being a man.
So that's a really good question because women's participation in gambling is about the same percentage as men. There's about seventy percent of women in Australia will admit to engaging in gambling at least once a year, and a significant number of those, probably about a third, engage on a monthly basis. So the stats are about thirty five percent of women who engage on a monthly basis compared to
about forty two percent of men. And I think that quite often when there's language around this issue, it's pitched as a man's problem. Men have problem with gambling. You see somebody losing lots of money, it's a man. In my opinion, this further stigmatizes women because women are just
as vulnerable as men to this. And there's a wonderful woman called doctor Simone McCarthy who works at d COMMUNI, who has done some really good focused research on women and gambling, and her research actually says that half a percent of adult women were classed as problem gamblers. An additional one point five percent and five percent were classed as moderate and low risk gamblers. And when you do the stats and work that out, it corresponds to about one in ten women who gamble in the state of
Victoria are at risk of experience in gambling harms. So those stats, to me are absolutely mind blowing, and it's why I created the Untangled Project because I think that the services for men are pitched at encouraging you to speak out, encouraging you to go, hey, mate, I've got a problem. We're going to speak about it, and we're going to make it public and make it so the only way you can recover is by being loud and out there.
Women, in my.
Experience and the women that I have spoken to may not necessarily want to do that, And my project aims to show women that they can interact with services in a way that's quiet. They can interact in a way that allows them to seek information if that's all they need, and read things. They can meet with people that are associated with my project in most states around the country for a coffee, if they need someone to have a chat to, or if they want to become more out there,
there are opportunities to do speaking engagements there. I gave evidence in the Crown Casino Royal Commission on behalf of Alliance and myself as a lived experience, advocates. So the opportunities are there to speak up, but the language and the dialogue around this needs to change, because it's not just a man's problem.
It is everybody's problem. Women just don't talk about it.
I once read that the addictions women are most likely to suffer from the ones that aren't mind altering, because women have caring responsibilities in many cases, as opposed to alcohol and drugs, which are addictions, but they do alter your state of consciousness. When women have responsibilities, they will turn to things like food and gambling, which you can do while still being sober enough to take care of children or partners or elderly parents.
Absolutely right.
And one of the examples that a woman who I've been talking to gave to me was a marriage was breaking down, and at ten o'clock at night, if you need to get out of the house, where do you go to make sure you get that?
You need to get back quickly.
You want to go somewhere that keeps you safe, and as I mentioned before, or there's not very many places at that time of night that will let you in, give you a coffee, it's warm, You can spend half an hour they're everywhere, so close to your home and get back when you need to. So there's a lot of reasons women gamble, and there's a lot of reasons that women spend time in gambling venues. And the dialogue
is just starting, I think, to be spoken. But my project hopefully will encourage that to be louder.
We recently spoke on an episode if normally are out loud about the gambling companies being big sponsors of sport, and there's a lot of talk about that at the moment, and demands for legislation to ban the advertising of you know, things like sports bet and gambling in family TV shows and during sport and on.
The jerseys of footy players.
They have so much money and so much marketing power and that used to be something that cigarettes did as well. Right, it must make you, I mean, how do you feel about that conversation at the moment and the lobby groups like the big television networks and the sports clubs saying well, without this money from the gambling companies, we can't survive.
I think that the gambling industry is using that conversation to target new groups who may not necessarily be as visible. So if you think about the way that tobacco companies did their advertising in the eighties, it was women in
short skirts and looking sexy. Lately, gambling companies have started using I can't remember the name of the company, but they've started using influences to promote sports betting online, so targeting younger women who may follow that influencer and go, oh, wait a minute, this woman's associated with this gambling company.
It must be okay.
I mean, I am guilty of buying a bag that my favorite influencer was carrying around because I thought that it was right.
That's where the word comes from. Their influential. They make us buy stuff and they make us do stuff exactly.
So I think that if you look carefully, the gambling industry is jumping on board to different ways of pitching product to different markets, and women are one of them, and young women are one of them. So I think it's great that the dialogue is there around sports betting
because I think it's a really important issue. But I think it's broader than what's being reported, because I think that new ways of targeting women are just starting to come out and need to be part of this discussion to be effectively managed because otherwise it's.
Just going to harm more people.
So the short answer is, I'm pleased that it's coming out into the open, but I'm not sure it's comprehensive enough to cover what I think needs.
To be covered.
Well, it's important.
I'm proud to tell you that as a business, So we don't accept gambling advertising at Muma Maya because of the harm that it does, and because our purpose is to make the world a better place for women and girls. And I don't think anyone could argue that gambling makes the world a better place for anyone except the gambling companies who line their pockets. I just want to ask
you two final questions. The first is about for the women and the men who are listening to this, who have someone in their life who has a problem with gambling, what should they do?
How can they help?
As I said, I'm not a counselor or any kind of expert, but what helped me was non judgmental listening and people not forcing me to do things, being able to have the autonomy to do and manage my own recovery when I was ready to do that. So, if it's your kid that's got a gambling problem. Sometimes all they need is for you to wrap them up in your arms and tell them that it's going to be okay. If it's a kid like me that was autonic in
managing their recovery, my mum managed it perfectly. She said I'm here if you need me when she knew there were problems, but she never impacted or tried to insert herself into my life. So respecting people's autonomy and their recovery is paramount without taking over, because I think that if people try and take over a recovery process, it's not going to be successful.
And so long as also the person is not spending your money. Absolutely right in a family situation, a lot of families are being driven to the brink by people spending the resources of the entire family, or of their partner, or of their mother or if their child.
You don't have to come up with you, I mean, I guess the biggest thing I can say about that is there are allies out there who can help you. There are gambling therapy services in every state around the country. My project, I'm more than happy to take dms on my Instagram. So that's the Untangled project. AUS. I will point you and my team will YouTube services that can help you regardless of where you are in the country. We are people that do this in our spare time, though,
so we are not an immediate help service. GPS are a wealth of knowledge and a source of support in this environment, and I think that even organizations like Beyond Blue information through the consumer and business services in your state or territory, wherever you are, quite often there's support services out there that aren't publicized. So it's just a matter of digging around and if I can point you in the right direction, I will.
My last question is what's your little treat now? Gambling started is a little treat for you and descended into the pits of hell.
What do you do now to give yourself a little treat?
I have an embarrassing amount of books on my Kindle, if.
I'm being honest.
I my books.
I've started to learn how to make jewelry, which I'm not very patient at but learning, and as part of my work in the project, what I've also done is started studying nutrition and fitness qualifications because I've had I'm a weight loss surgery patient and I've lost about eighty kilos all up, so I want to create another space for women who have had weight loss surgery where there's
a network of pets who understand and help. So my treats for me are terrible, horrible, huge amounts of books, but I love and what gets me up in the morning is helping women. So creating spaces where trauma can be a victory rather than something that holds you back.
So I consider that a treat and a privilege.
What an amazing purpose. Anna, Thank you so much, Thank you.
Friends.
Anna did talk to her mum before this episode was released. We actually delayed it a little bit until she was ready to talk to her and then feel okay about it being out in the world. And I'm happy to tell you that their bond is as strong as ever as we thought it would be. Out to Anna's mum, if you're listening, and there's a phrase that I love and you may have heard me say before, someone out there has a wound in the shape of your words.
And what it means is that by telling our stories about things that are vulnerable and sometimes shameful or difficult or embarrassing, or even things that we wish had never happened or that we could forget. By doing it, we actually pay forward a gift to other people who are going through something similar, and I have no doubt that there are many wounds out there that Anna's.
Words will help to heal.
Also, can I just say how amazing are the people who volunteer for Lifeline. We often link to Lifeline in our show notes, like we will today, but I just want to send a special message out to those of you who answer these phone calls at all hours from people who need love and care like Anna did. You are literally saving lives, and maybe I know that they always need more people to answer those phones. You might
want to consider volunteering for Lifeline. I have friends who do it, and they say it is the most rewarding, enriching time they spend every week. One of the most interesting parts of Anna's story, I thought, is how different the needs of women are to men when it comes to getting help. And that's why her project Untangled is so brilliant. It's working to meet women where they are with the kind of help that they need, which is so important because there's not just one size fits all
and one approach always works. So we'll link to Untangled in our show notes as well, and they say the best disinfectant is sunlight. It's so important we continue to bring these stories out of the shadows and the shame and really just shine a light on them so that we can help understand and support each other. So yeah, I'm so grateful to Anna for doing just that. The executive producer of No Filter Isnama Brown. She got kicked
out of Aino. Wants long story and she particularly wants to hear from you about interviews that you think.
We should do.
Stories you'd like us to tell. Maybe you have a story that you'd like to share. Maybe your words will match the wounds of someone out there. They don't just have to be sad stories. They can be happy stories, amazing stories. We really cover the gamut here on No Filter, so you'll find our email in the show notes drop us A line. Audio production and sound design on the show is by Tom Lyon and as our resident man, he's sick of seeing gambling ads targeting young men and
infiltrating every sporting experience in Australia. As the mother of two young men, I bloody well agree. We don't accept gambling advertising on Mamma Mia. We never have because we know that gambling causes a lot of harm, and the victims of that harm so often are women. Anyway, thank you for listening.
Lots of love,