Recounting the cost of addiction
- deansimpson7
- Jun 3
- 7 min read
Lured by the glittering lights and hypnotic sounds of the poker machines, Melbourne resident Anna Bardsley clearly remembers her first solo visit to a gambling venue. That night would mark the beginning of a decade-long battle she never could have anticipated. What started as a place to escape soon spiralled into a consuming addiction that derailed her life. Now a passionate advocate for reform and raising awareness about gambling harm, Anna shared her powerful journey from addiction to activism with Salvos Online journalist LERISSE SMITH.
It was a cold and wet August night when a heated argument between Anna and her husband reached breaking point.
Needing space to cool off, she left the house. It was late. Nothing was open, and she was too agitated to see anyone. As she drove around in the dead of the night, something caught her eye. An old haunt – a pub with poker machines where she occasionally visited for fun with friends. Anna stopped the car and walked in.
That moment marked a major turning point in her life.
“The lights had literally beckoned from the side of the road,” she recalled of that fateful night. “I knew that it was a safe place for women to go on their own ... it was the first time I had even been in a pub on my own, and the first time I had been to use poker machines on my own.”
In the past, Anna and her friends had only played briefly, losing no more than $20. But this time, she stayed longer, lost more than she expected, and walked out feeling changed.
“When I look back on that first night, the machines did what I had learned they were designed to do,” she said. “They are designed to calm you down and zone you out. They are designed by addiction experts to do what they did to me. Years later, I realised I was not the problem. The machines are the problem.”
Soon, the urge to use poker machines took hold. After work, Anna began detouring into venues. Shopping centres with the machines became dangerous territory.
“You could feel the pull of the venue upstairs and down and around the corner,” she reflected. “I had to stop going to those sorts of shopping centres because they weren’t safe for me. I didn’t want to lose all the money. I didn’t want to lose all that time.”
She tried to quit many times.
“I tried to stop countless times because I hated what I was doing,” she said. “It wasn’t fun. I wasn’t there to win money. If I did win a bit, it just meant I could stay longer. Once I was in there, I couldn’t leave until I had nothing left, and so I would stay there ‘til forever.”
By the time Anna walked away from gambling in 2011, she had spent 10 years battling the hidden addiction.
“I tried to stop countless times because I hated what I was doing.”
Now a passionate advocate educating others about gambling harm, she looks back on that August night as the moment that led to a decade-long struggle, one she successfully kept hidden from family and friends while juggling multiple jobs and managing household finances.
Her personal story took centre stage at the recent Salvos launch of the newly renamed Gambling Support Service, where Anna shared her own recovery journey from addiction, advocacy work, and how gambling devastates lives and livelihoods.
The cost of her addiction was steep. It eroded her identity, and shame became all-encompassing.
“My sense of self-worth was zero – it would be actually in the minus,” she said. “I thought I was a complete loser. I hated myself. I had tried so many times to stop that I thought the only way this is going to end is when I’m dead because I did not see that there was a way for me to be in control. The shame I felt about what I was doing was huge, and it encompassed every part of my life.”
Gambling disconnected her from everything meaningful in her life.
“I was pedalling like crazy, pretending I was fine,” the passionate advocate recalled. “And you can do that with gambling. There is no physical sign that you have that addiction present in your life.”
Born in the Netherlands and raised in Australia, Anna grew up in a Dutch household where gambling simply didn’t exist.
Her first encounter came in the 1970s, placing 50 cents on the Melbourne Cup. She lost and didn’t gamble again for decades. She never saw herself as a gambler.
“I didn’t know that when I was using poker machines that I was gambling because nobody uses that language,” she said. “We call it playing the pokies. It’s not playing, it’s using a gambling product, and a product that is designed to addict. And so, if you spend enough time with it, it will get you in the end.”
After years of struggling alone, Anna found hope in community, meeting others who had also experienced gambling harm. They shared insights she had never encountered.
One key lesson stood out: the brain could be retrained.
“I learned that if you ask your brain a question, it will go looking for an answer,” Anna remarked. “So, I asked the question, ‘How can I stop?’ And over a period of time, and it wasn’t easy, I found pieces of what I call the puzzle of the answer, and I was able to put those pieces in place. It took a lot of patience.”
A crucial piece? Self-kindness.
Her inner voice had become cruel and a bully, berating her as a loser. Quieting that voice changed everything. She reached out to Gambler’s Help, a free 24/7 support service and started therapy nearly two years after her last experience using the poker machines.
Another turning point came from a talk by Brené Brown on shame.
“I learned the language of shame,” Anna reflected. “She talked about addicts needing shame, like someone lost in the desert needs salt water. And I thought, Oh, wow, that’s true. And about bringing shame out into the light.”
Joining a writing group led by Melbourne writer Arnold Zable, who works with marginalised groups of people, also proved pivotal.
It introduced her to others affected by gambling and encouraged participants to explore their experiences – right down to the smells, sounds, and sights of the gambling environment. It unlocked vivid memories for Anna: going out that fateful August night, showering the next morning, and not being able to get the smell of coins off her hands. Staring into the mirror and asking, “Who the hell are you, and how did I become you?”
Many in the writing group assumed they would use pseudonyms. Anna chose otherwise. She was ready to retire and knew that going public would likely end any future job prospects. Her first media appearance was national – on ABC Breakfast. Her goal was not just to tell her story, but to change the way society talked about gambling.
“I wanted the language to be different,” she said. “I realised the language around gambling had made it worse ... and was deeply stigmatising. It made it impossible for me to ask for help. Because if I was the problem, I should fix myself. Gamble responsibly is an oxymoron. It is a contraction of responsible service of gambling. It is meant to be about people who serve gambling – not the people who use gambling."
Then came a special opportunity.
The group was invited to present the book of their lived experiences, From Ruin to Recovery, at the Melbourne Writers Festival.
A dramatised reading at the festival, with the help of theatre director Catherine Simmons, led to the formation of Three Sides of the Coin – a platform for using theatre to tell stories by people harmed by gambling.
Now aged in her mid-70s, Anna continues to speak out. She refuses to give another dollar to the gambling industry and consults with policymakers. Being a public speaker with the ReSPIN program is another important role, too. It assists those with lived experience of gambling harm to share their stories to mitigate the harms of gambling and bring positive change within the wider community.
“Gambling is a con. You can’t win,” Anna emphasised.
“The house always wins, and they pretend it’s fun. It’s not. It’s taking a massive amount of money out of people’s pockets, out of communities … I’ve met people whose family members have suicided because of gambling, and there is no coroner in Australia that counts the suicides.”
Anna also co-founded Gambling Harm Lived Experience Experts (GHLEE). She lobbies politicians and warns of the growing normalisation of gambling among children, especially as gambling features in social media technology, including games. She fears it is raising generations who believe gambling is normal. She urges Australians to lobby their MPs, too, about gambling harm and reform.
Looking ahead, Anna remains cautiously hopeful.
“Most of the time I have hope,” she said. “I hope that something meaningful happens (regarding gambling harms) before I die. I’m 76 … but I’m not holding my breath.”
“... you don’t have to be alone.”
These days, Anna finds joy in spending time with her family. While her marriage ended, she is close to her children and grandchildren, who have supported her advocacy work. She also enjoys being with people, music, writing, gardening and places that make her see the world slightly differently.
“I like spending time just looking at a flower … even a daisy. Daisies are amazing, and I love macro photography for that reason.”
To anyone struggling with gambling, her advice is simple: Talk to someone you trust, seek professional help and persevere. “Look for the pieces of your puzzle – and add things back into your life because gambling takes up so much head space and physical space.”
And with a final piece of advice, Anna makes her message clear: “I want others to know – you don’t have to be alone.”
