Gambling Addiction: One Woman Discusses The Realities
$6,000 Welcome Bonus
Stacey Goodwin’s first bet was as a teenager, in the bathroom of a friend’s house. “I was 14 and getting ready to go out,” remembers the 29-year-old who spent almost a decade of her life addicted to slot machines and online gambling. “We looked in the mirror and bet on who could lose the most weight over Christmas. It was incredibly dangerous — it was also the first sign I was susceptible to addiction.”
A three year battle with anorexia followed: “I got a buzz from seeing a loss on the scales, from winning the bet. It was the same buzz I got, at 18, when I started on betting machines.”
Stacey, now more than two years into her recovery, is among one million women in Britain who find themselves at risk from gambling harms — debt, physical and mental health problems, relationship breakdowns, crime — according to new analysis by the charity, GambleAware.
The number of women in treatment has doubled in five years, to 2,400, as adverts for casino and bingo sites flood smartphones with promises of jackpots and communities. Despite more in treatment, almost 40% of women don't seek help at all, silenced by stigma and shame.
Gambling held a vice like grip on Stacey’s twenties. The idea that young women don’t gamble — or don’t look like gamblers — meant years passed before she could find help: “There was no one who looked like me in the bookies. It added to my self-consciousness and shame.
“As I realised I had a problem, I’d search online for a celebrity who had spoken about her gambling addiction and there was nothing. Gambling is incredibly lonely. As a woman, that's amplified.”
Stacey placed her first money bet at 18, while working in a betting shop. “I’d vowed I’d never play the machines,” she remembers. “I put £1 into a roulette game and got £30 back. That paid for a night out.”
Within weeks, she was putting £5 notes in, having promised herself she wouldn’t, and travelling bus routes, from her home in Derbyshire, to nearby Sheffield, stopping at every betting shop on the way. When she moved into a flat at 19, she quickly ran out of money for rent, food or heating. She also moved her habit online: “Instead of nights out with friends, I’d hide in a toilet on casino sites, where I couldn’t be seen. I was too ashamed to tell anyone about my secret but couldn’t afford to socialise. Eventually friends got bored of the excuses and stopped asking me out.”
Hiding your habit, spending more than you can afford and losing track of time are early warning signs of a problem. GambleAware reports that traffic to gambling sites, served up to women through social media algorithms and search engines, rise by almost a third during winter, when we’re indoors. Women, more than men, report mental health issues, including stress and anxiety, caused by gambling.
Stacey remembers attending a Gamblers’ Anonymous meeting: “ I was the only woman among a group of older men in a church hall. I never returned.” When she asked her GP for help, he offered a counselling referral but told her to hide her addiction and instead claim low self-esteem: “Even a doctor couldn’t validate that this problem warranted intervention in women. That was a real low. Women are expected to be perfect, caregivers, homemakers. Anything that doesn’t fit that profile is shrouded in shame. You’d never see a mum with a pram in the betting shops. That’s not to say they weren’t gambling — they were simply hiding their problem behind anonymous usernames online.”
Sites feed a need for connection that doesn’t exist, says Stacey: “I’ve never been lonelier than when I gambled.” She had also never been more unwell. “I weighed less as a gambler than when I had an eating disorder. The stress of hiding my addiction, the debts and loans and the fact I couldn’t afford to eat, stacked up. I’d go to sleep picturing slot machines.”
At 23, five years into her addiction, Stacey tried to commit suicide, having lost £50,000 in six days. “I thought I was chasing a jackpot all those years. That’s when I realised it was ill.” In 2019, she gambled away her partner’s mortgage payment. She decided that her only escape would be to put herself in prison, through crime, or go to rehab. She says: “There were no other ways to stop harming myself and people I loved.”
She found a women’s retreat, run by the Gordon Moody organisation, a treatment charity for gamblers, which set her on the road to recovery: “I cried with relief in there. It was the first time I heard women talking about gambling and knew it wasn’t just me.
“I learnt the science of addiction too, how I’d chased dopamine hits my whole life. The overpowering judgment and guilt lifted.”
Stacey has documented her recovery in a book and on social media, where she offers support to other women using the handle @TheGirlGambler. Her TikTok account has 75,000 followers and she receives 300 messages a week from people touched or helped by her story. She reflects: “If these conversations had been out there for women when I was gambling, maybe I could afford a house now. I love my life now but if I’d been given hope that I could get better, earlier, I could have clawed it back sooner.”
If you are concerned about your gambling, visitBeGambleAware.orgfor free, confidential advice and support, or call the National Gambling Helpline on 0808 8020 133.
