The 28-Year-Old Who Gambled Away Millions

A lottery ticket here or there, a night out at the casino with the boys, a quick bet on a sports game... gambling has its pincers in Australian culture.

Australia is home to 20% of the world's pokie machines (even with Western Australia's ban on the addictive game) and we house the world's worst average gambling losses — around $1,000 is lost per adult every year.

Now, Sportsbet has lucked itself into a deal with TikTok so they can advertise to Aussies. When $25 billion is lost to legal forms of gambling every year, we're left wondering: how greedy can gambling get?

This didn't stop in lockdown either — online slots, poker, casino gaming and virtual sports made life difficult for people already living with a gambling addiction, those in recovery and anyone susceptible to developing one.

London-based gambling addiction charity Gordon Moody said it saw a surge in the number of women seeking support after becoming addicted to online casino games. "They're very easy to access — but they're also highly addictive," warned the charity’s chief executive.

Against this backdrop, 28-year-old Stacey Goodwin from Chesterfield, Derbyshire, decided to share her eight-year history of gambling addiction and help other women on TikTok via her account @thegirlgambler. "I was hugely scared but the pandemic pushed me. Seeing all the gambling adverts, I thought it must be so hard. People are so trapped," she tells Refinery29.

Stacey was introduced to the world of gambling at the age of 18 while working part-time in a betting shop to earn money for nights out. Despite seeing people losing every day, one day she decided to put a couple of dollars in a machine and "unfortunately" won £36 ($64 AUD). "It wasn’t a lot but it gave me a high and then it played on my mind more and more. That's when it started."

Slots were her game of choice and, soon enough, she was putting notes into the machines, despite vowing she never would. "In order to get the same kind of high, you need to increase your stakes." At her worst point, she was doing £20 ($35 AUD) a spin. "That’s the only thing I could do to get the high my brain needed."

There were days when Stacey wouldn't have time to go to a betting shop but still wanted to gamble. "Soon enough, 99% of my gambling was online. I don't think my wage ever lasted longer than 40 minutes in my account because I would go online in the middle of the night and lose it all."

Online gambling took her addiction to the next level. "Previously I’d try to hide I was gambling so much by going from shop to shop, whereas online, people don't know who you are." There were very few limits to how much she could gamble so she felt anonymous and free of judgement — unlike in the betting shops, where she was a rarity as a young woman. 

"There’s nobody to watch you, nobody to see how upset, distressed or angry you are because you're hidden behind a screen," she says. "If I was in a shop and I was getting upset, maybe somebody would have walked over and said 'That’s enough for today' and helped me step out, but online, there's none of that".

In person, there’s also the option of asking to be 'self-excluded' from gambling premises (but it’s often possible to break your self-exclusion agreement and gamble online without being identified).

Stacey can’t be sure how much money she lost in total but after eight years of "burning through thousands of pounds a month", combined with taking out loans to fund her habit, she believes it’s close to a million pounds ($1.7 million AUD). "Money was just gambling tokens" to her at that time. "It's strange, because I’d never spend hundreds on clothes or makeup or anything like that, but I wouldn't even bother gambling unless I had £200 ($350 AUD) to do it with."

In hindsight, Stacey recognises the impact of her addiction on her mental health and quality of life. "I can't remember a time when I felt happy in that eight-year period," she admits. "It was like every part of my brain other than the addiction was unplugged. I walked about in unwashed clothes, I didn't look after myself, I couldn't think about anything other than gambling and money. I was sad all the time because nothing in my life mattered other than gambling. I hated myself — I was so ashamed, so guilty. The depression and anxiety were horrific."

It was losing £50k ($87k AUD) in six days — an experience that haunts her still — and an attempt to take her own life that made Stacey realise she needed professional help. "I thought, 'This is so much bigger than money and I need to get help because it's either my addiction or me, one of us needs to give'."

Stacey found Gordon Moody and, after spending four days on a retreat for female gambling addicts arranged by the charity, managed to turn her life around. "There were other women who’d been through the same, which was massive because I thought I was the only woman in the world who’d fallen into this trap." She learned about why gambling addiction happens and the tools available, like Gamblock and Gamban, which let you put controls on your online gambling.

On the whole, though, Stacey says that the help available for female gambling addicts is poor, partly because of the stigma and a lack of awareness that women are suffering at all. "Gamblers Anonymous was brilliant but I was 22 when I went to a group and I was sat in a room full of older men. I was scared to death so I never went back," she admits. "There needs to be more of a gender split [in the help on offer] because being with those other women changed it for me completely."

Though it's typically thought of as a male-dominated problem, research commissioned by the Victorian Government found there has been an increase in women experiencing gambling-related harm.

Stacey now gives advice to other women via TikTok and Facebook, and has written a book about her experience, The Girl Gambler. "I give them tips, point them to services in their area or services that I've used. There’s been such a huge response, I'm messaging people all the time." She also campaigned for "triggering" scratch cards to be removed from the front counters of shops in the UK.

Stacey believes her role in creating awareness and helping women with gambling addiction is particularly crucial right now. With daytime TV full of gambling adverts, she says, "there's a lot of women working from home and looking after children who are more likely to see them."

People should be wary of the pink branding and references to the "community" aspect of these websites, she says. "Some companies take advantage of people feeling low, lonely or depressed and say things like, 'There's [a] great community on here'." Escapism also plays a role in these adverts’ appeal. "It’s advertised so much as a fun, harmless thing that people think it’s okay to do it more and more, because that's how it's portrayed."

To women who may be suffering in silence, Stacey says: "You are not alone. There’s a huge number of women out there who find the escapism they're looking for in gambling, and it quickly becomes a problem. We might not speak about it enough but so many women are going through this, and there are tools out there to help."