November 21, 2022

Gambling my life away: Stories of addiction and recovery

27 minutes

An increasing number of women have become addicted to gambling in recent years, and experts fear the current cost of living crisis could put even more women at risk.

Sandra Adell is a professor of literature in the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of a memoir, Confessions of a Slot Machine Queen, and she is currently working on a book about the impact of gambling on underprivileged communities in the US called And Then The Casinos Came: Narratives of Gambling and Loss.

For Lisa Walker, gambling has always been a recreational activity. She started at the age of seven, playing cards for pennies with her dad, and she continued throughout her twenties. But winning £127,000 at a game of poker led her to develop a severe addiction that left her broke and homeless. She is now a community outreach worker with the UK charity Betknowmore and she leads New Beginnings, a project supporting women who struggle with gambling.

Producer: Alice Gioia

(Image: (L) Sandra Adell, courtesy Sandra Adell. (R) Lisa Walker, courtesy Lisa Walker)

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By BBC World Service

4.5