Blinded by the lights: How can we escape from the pokies zone?

By Jewel Topsfield

Pokies genericCredit:Flavio Brancaleone

It’s 3.24am on a Wednesday morning in the pokies room at a hotel in Melbourne’s south-east.

I am surrounded by flashing machines with names like Eastern Empress, Immortal Shogun, Lightning Cash, Caribbean Gold and Lucky Break.

Lightning in the shape of a dragon jags across animated screens. Pavlovian ka-chings, jangly music and the clink of cascading virtual coins ricochet around the room. Behind me cymbals clash and a golden buddha laughs to celebrate a win: Ha Ha Ha.

There are six of us here playing the pokies at this hour.

A woman in front of me appears hypnotised by the screen. She barely moves, rhythmically pressing the play button as reels of scarab beetles, Cleopatras and sphinxes whir around. Every few minutes she unzips her clutch and feeds another crisp $50 bill into the slot.

‘The only way I can describe it to you is everything else is gone’: Anna Bardsley.Credit:Wayne Taylor

Anna Bardsley, who lost 10 years of her life to the pokies, has sat gambling in this same cavernous room at 3am.

She says the trance-like state I observe, where gamblers are so absorbed they lose track of time and become unaware of what is happening around them, is known as “the zone”.

“The only way I can describe it to you is everything else is gone. You just go somewhere else because they mesmerise you. And poker machines are designed to do that.”

Poker machines have been called the “crack cocaine of gambling” and “electronic morphine”.

Victorians lost $1.58 billion on them in pubs and clubs in the first half of this financial year. If the trend continues, the state is on track to record annual pokie losses of more than $3 billion for the first time.

A national study, published in the Journal of Behavioral Addictions this month, found “unambiguous evidence” that electronic gaming machines are responsible for 51 to 57 per cent of gambling problems in Australia.

‘There are those who treat the machine as though it’s a person’: Associate Professor Charles Livingstone, Monash University.

At least 36,000 Victorians have a serious gambling problem at any one time, according to Monash University gambling policy expert Professor Charles Livingstone. Another 215,000 are affected, including children and partners.

Poker machines stimulate the brain in a way that in many cases, Livingstone says, leads to addiction with symptoms similar to those associated with cocaine use.

“It’s a really, really powerful addiction because it’s generated by neurochemicals, which the machines stimulate very effectively.”

Last year Tasmania announced a nation-leading scheme to bring in mandatory cashless cards for poker machines by the end of 2024.

Players will need to set daily loss limits of up to $100, monthly limits of up to $500 and annual limits of up to $5000, which can only be raised if the player proves they can afford it.

NSW will follow suit if the Coalition claims victory at the March election. Its reforms will ban the use of cash and transfers from credit cards and introduce mandatory self-imposed player limits on losses.

The Victorian government says it will continue to monitor the arrangements for hotels and clubs across the state to ensure the state has the appropriate regulatory settings and reserves the right to make further changes.

The impact of poker machine harm is proportionately greater in NSW, where there are far more gaming machines per head of population. Victoria has also introduced tougher maximum bet limits on machines and caps on the number of machines allowed at venues.

But Carolyn Crawford believes she wouldn’t have ended up in prison if she had a cashless card with a sensible spending limit.

“Why would I steal? I wouldn’t have been able to spend.”

Crawford is a genial grandmother of six, who lives in a neat unit in Frankston decorated with photographs of her family and best friend since school.

‘I’d never had a parking ticket in my life and here I was stealing money from a company’: Carolyn Crawford.Credit:Wayne Taylor

In 2016 she was sentenced to jail at the age of 64 for stealing $407,000 from her employer to feed the pokies. “I’d never had a parking ticket in my life and here I was stealing money from a company.”

Crawford had started playing pokies with her boss. She was lonely. Her kids had left home and her second marriage had ended traumatically. After a while she started going by herself.

“They gave me something to do and I didn’t have to come home to an empty house. It’s like a vegetative stage. You’re in the zone, and they really are mind-numbing and relaxing.”

Initially Crawford would chase her losses in the vain hope she could win big and pay back the money she had stolen. But in the end being in the zone became even more desirable than winning.

Crawford was sentenced to 18 months at Tarrengower, a minimum-security prison near Maldon. She says two-thirds of the 50 women at the prison had also been gamblers.

Crawford had a fabulous counsellor in jail, who helped her understand her addiction and its roots in the trauma she had experienced throughout her life. She has now paid all the money back.

“Prison saved my life because it stopped me and made me get the help that I needed, but locking people away isn’t how we should be treating addiction.”

There are multiple signs that indicate harmful poker machine gambling.

Some people – like Crawford – repeatedly withdraw more money and continue to gamble with the proceeds of large wins. Some get emotional and distressed, pouring with sweat, banging the machine and shouting.

“It’s not unknown for people to wet themselves because they don’t want to leave the machine,” Livingstone says.

“There are those who treat the machine as though it’s a person. I’ve seen people hugging it and stroking it. A lot of people have erroneous beliefs about their ability to influence the way their machine is operating.”

Bardsley calls it “magical thinking”: “I used to stand up, take the money out of the machine, turn around, put the money back in again and try and trick the machine that I was a new person. Special kind of stupid.”

The Victorian government requires venues to enforce a responsible gambling code of conduct which says staff are expected to ask people to take a break if they are showing signs of gambling problems.

Did this ever occur?

“Never, never, never,” says Crawford.

No one ever intervened with Bardsley either. “How can you expect them to? They are hospitality staff. There are better things we can do to protect people.”

A study of 11 pokies venues in Melbourne, published in Addiction Research & Theory in 2017, found venues often failed to respond to signs of gambling problems and instead encouraged continued gambling in contradiction of their code of conduct.

“Self-regulation has been a dismal failure,” Livingstone says.

In 2015 the Victorian government introduced more self-regulation: a voluntary pre-commitment scheme.

Known as YourPlay, it involves a card inserted into machines. It offers gamblers information on how much they are losing and how long they have been playing and invites them to set non-binding loss limits.

The take-up rate has been minuscule.

A 2019 evaluation found YourPlay cards were used in sessions amounting to 0.01 per cent of gaming machine turnover in Victorian hotels and clubs in 2017-18.

A Victorian government spokesperson said all recommendations from the YourPlay evaluation report to strengthen the scheme were accepted, and are either actively underway or delivered.

But Livingstone says the real way forward would be to turn YourPlay into a universal system that required everyone who wants to use pokies to register and set a limit.

“That would be a massive step forward.”

Victoria last year introduced laws targeting Crown Casino’s 2628 poker machines, including mandatory pre-commitment swipe cards that will by the end of this year force gamblers at the casino to specify maximum losses before they play.

But the crackdown on Crown, following the recommendations of the Finkelstein royal commission, does not affect Victoria’s other 26,321 machines in pubs, clubs and RSL venues.

The Age sought comment from the Australian Hotels Association and Community Clubs Victoria. Last year the AHA said it rejected any assertion that penalties imposed on Crown should also be imposed on venue-based gaming operators.

“It should be recognised that venue-based gaming operators have a strong record of responsible gambling [and] harm prevention,” chief executive officer Paddy O’Sullivan said at the time.

These included maximum bets of $5, no ATMs, no 24-hour trade, voluntary pre-commitment systems for players, self-exclusion programs, winnings above $2000 to be paid by cheque and the responsible gambling code of conduct.

In the lead-up to the Victorian election, Community Clubs Victoria was assured by the Victorian government there would be no upcoming policy changes that eat into gaming machine revenue, despite the reforms at Crown and in other states.

“It drives me crazy,” Bardsley says. “There are a lot of suicides because of gambling. A lot of destroyed lives.”

Given the shame involved, gambling addiction often leads to a profound despair. The first Victorian study on gambling-related suicides found there had been 128 between 2000 and 2012. State Coroner John Cain said a more recent study showed about 20 gambling-related suicides a year in Victoria.

‘It wasn’t a really pretty place to be’: Pokies addict Ian attempted suicide three times.Credit:Justin McManus

Ian nearly became one of these statistics. In 2014 – after his third suicide attempt – he woke up and all he could think of was his family. “I decided that to salvage the relationships I had, I needed to stop gambling.”

At the time Ian, who asked that his surname not be used, had lost tens of thousands of dollars to the pokies over 25 years.

“I think it’s the sounds, the music that’s played, the happy tunes that come up when you have a win,” Ian says of why he found pokies so addictive. “Even when the win is not a win, it’s actually a loss, you still get those joyous sounds.”

(This phenomenon, known as losses disguised as wins, occurs when players bet on multiple lines. If you win on one line, the machine will flash lights and congratulatory messages, even though you have lost money overall.)

Ian was also lured to venues by free or subsidised food and drinks. “When you gamble most of your wage, the offer of a free meal or half-price meal is very tempting.”

After his first attempt suicide attempt in 2010, Ian realised he was in trouble. He was living out of his car and spending hours at pokies venues. His relationships had broken down and he was experiencing panic attacks and depression. “It wasn’t a really pretty place to be.”

Ian tried using a self-exclusion program introduced in Victoria in 1997. Under the program gamblers can bar themselves from venues, with staff supposed to remember them from photos.

“The self-exclusion program that operates at the moment doesn’t work,” Ian says. “I actually went to a venue that I used to go to very regularly and I was tapped on the shoulder and offered a coffee.”

Ian supports a cashless card system. He believes that if gamblers ban themselves from venues it should be registered on this card so that self-exclusion actually works. And he would like to see daily loss limits.

“When I was gambling I could lose $400 within half an hour, easy. That’s very dangerous to someone who is chasing their losses.”

Eventually, in 2014, Ian broke up with poker machines. “It’s a bit strange, but I actually looked at poker machines as a bad relationship that I’d given too many chances.”

He wrote a letter expressing his disgust at the way they had treated him for so long and left it in the coin slot of a machine in Anglesea. “I decided that I was going to move on and seek new relationships.”

These days Ian runs a support program for people experiencing gambling harm at Banyule Community Health Service.

He tells them what has worked for him: automatic bill payments, destroying his card – so if he needs cash he has to go to the bank – and filling the time he spent gambling with fishing, gardening and cycling. Recently Ian took up snorkelling, which took him into a state of flow, but this time it wasn’t a dark one like the gambling zone. “I absolutely love it. Once you are floating in the water you have absolutely no idea how long you are in there.”

Last week former Melbourne High business manager Frances Walshe pleaded guilty to stealing more than $430,000 from the school. Her second husband left her for another woman and she found solace and a sense of community by going to the local pokies venue.

Crawford watched the news item and thought about all the things that need to change to stop someone else ending up in prison.

Cashless gaming cards. Slow the spin rate down. Remove some addictive qualities of the machines. Introduce loss limits. Reduce opening hours. “There’s so many things they can do.”

Sometimes Crawford doesn’t feel optimistic. But then she reminds herself that she has seen change. Many of the AFL clubs have sold their pokies venues. There was the Royal Commission into Crown. Media interest in the issue has grown, she says, which makes people more aware. “I wasn’t filmed coming out of the County Court, it wasn’t an important issue back then.”

Bardsley now works for the Alliance for Gambling Reform, mentoring people like herself. She hasn’t used the pokies for 15 years but her eyes still well up when she talks about it.

For years she blamed herself for being hooked. “And then I found out I wasn’t the problem, the machines were the problem. And I got so angry.”

Bardsley thinks cashless cards are a brilliant idea. “Tasmania is doing it,” she says. “And I’m astounded that New South Wales is at least talking about it because I didn’t think that would happen.”

“If mandatory pre-commitment was in place when I was gambling, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you,” she says. “I always had in my mind when I went in ‘I’m only going to stay X amount of time and I’m only going to spend $50’. I never meant to lose thousands. I never meant to stay eight hours. I never meant to be there at three o’clock in the morning. I never meant to go home and lie about it. And I hated myself.”

At 4.15am on Wednesday morning, Little Wonders by American singer Rob Thomas is blaring through the pokies room.

Our lives are made

In these small hours

These little wonders,

These twists and turns of fate

Time falls away,

But these small hours,

These small hours still remain

I order a caffe latte and the barista tells me coffees and soft drinks are on the gaming room. “Would you like a snack?” she asks, offering me a tray with packets of chips and biscuits and chocolates. I choose a packet of scotch fingers and she urges me to take a mini chocolate bar too. “Keep you going,” she says kindly.

Behind me a machine booms “the Kraken awakes!”

“No one was ever having fun when I was there at 3am,” Bardsley says. “The industry will tell you they’re open at those hours for the shift workers. But no one needs to be in a pokies room at 8am or 3am.”

In the second half of last year pokie players at this hotel alone lost more than $6.6 million.

At 5.07am on Wednesday morning, the woman in front of me is still playing Egyptian Jewels. She’s almost out of credit and the Cleopatras haven’t lined up. When I get up to leave, she slides another $50 bill into the slot.

Gambler’s Help 1800 858 858, Lifeline 13 11 14.

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