Untangle Project: Adelaide lawyer Anna Martin’s pokies hell

She was a bright young law student surrounded by a loving family but still succumbed to the power of pokies. Here is her brutally honest story.

As a young law student with a loving, supportive family, the world was at Anna Martin’s feet – at least it ought to have been.

Her life was turned upside down and came harrowingly close to a tragic end when a fun leisure activity she’d first enjoyed with her beloved grandfather at 18 took over her waking hours.

Pokies at the pub became more to the non-drinker than a treasured chance to bond and catch-up with her older relative as putting $1 coins into a slot machine became a debilitating addiction after he passed away when she was 25.

“I was studying law at Adelaide Uni and during breaks from lectures and tutorials, I used to use the pokies as an escape from study and work but it quickly became a hobby that was destructive ... it didn’t feel like real money, it was almost as if it was Monopoly money.” she says.

“I didn’t ever see my grandfather and I going together as a problem because it was our way of catching up, socialising, interacting with each other over something we both liked to do.

Adelaide lawyer Anna Martin wants to raise awareness of the negative impacts of gambling, especially for women, on the back of her own experience. Picture: supplied

“For me, ironically it was a safe space ... somewhere I could escape from the world.”

The now 43-year-old, who estimates she lost in excess of $200,000 on poker machines over the years, admits her harmful habit defied logic.

“I could recognise the cycle of behaviour in myself, but never knew how to stop … you can be quite captured in that cycle of behaviour and it’s especially frustrating when you realise you are and you can’t get out of it,” she says.

“Other women my age (at uni) would go shopping during breaks and come back to lectures with stuff they bought, I’d come back having lost all my disposable income ... (in front of a poker machine) you get into an almost robotic state of existence.”

Her reliance on pokies worsened when she began full-time work as a lawyer.

“I used (it as) an escape after work, it started off as just half an hour to an hour here and there but it got worse … two to three hours sometimes, seven days a week,” she says.

“I used all of my disposable income on gambling … there were times when I couldn’t pay the bills, there were times I had to borrow money to exist.

“But still, I’d justify it by telling myself things such as, ‘you work hard, this is not a problem’ ... ‘I will just stop, I know I can do that whenever I want to’.”

As a student lawyer Anna Martin would spend uni breaks playing on the pokies. Pictures: supplied

Sadly, her opinion of herself deteriorated and she became overwhelmed with feelings of “frustration, guilt, shame and fear”, angry at herself for continuing the problematic behaviour.

On a near fatal night a decade ago, the toll of keeping her out-of-control habit a secret from family and friends became unbearable.

“I was sitting on the bed at home crying ... thinking, ‘this is enough, I can’t do this anymore … (ending my life) became a real option for me,” she says.

It was only imaging the heartache that would cause her mum and others that stopped her, reached out, instead, to Lifeline to seek help.

“I was in a position where I had received every kind of support and advantage possible from my family, and I felt like a failure because I couldn’t structure my life in a way to take advantage of those,” she says.

Today she is an advocate for others who’ve fallen victim to the “predatory gambling industry”, being a voice and support, in particular for women, founding Untangle Project.

“The way I describe the Untangle Project is it’s for people who want to undertake quiet advocacy and recovery … to help women who are experiencing the negative impacts of gambling harm or supporting someone else through it,” she says.

“The typical person struggling with gambling harm is generally thought of by mainstream Australia as being male and focused on things like sports betting or games in pubs ... the conversation (around women) just isn’t being had.”

She is applauding a newly-announced move by the state government aimed to “shift the way we talk about gambling harm”.

Human Services Minister Nat Cook says its time to ‘change the way we talk about gambling harm’. File picture: Matt Loxton

At its core is a rebranding of the Office for Problem Gambling, to be known from Monday as

Gambling Harm Support SA and the rollout of a new digital campaign to raise awareness of how language can fuel stigma.

Human Services minister Nat Cook said it was an important shift.

“By changing the way we talk about gambling harm, we’re taking an essential step towards a more supportive environment for those in need,” she said.

“Language can perpetuate stigma and discrimination and create barriers to help seeking.”

Sunday marks the start of Gambling Harm Action Week (GHAW).