At 28, Christina Cook found herself divorced and single for the first time in ten years.
As Christina and her ex-husband divided up their belongings, she felt like she was moving in the opposite direction to everyone else she knew.
‘My friends were all getting married and having babies. I wasn’t prepared for the impacts of divorce. I just felt really alone,’ Christina, founder of The Broke Girl Society Podcast, told Daily Mail.
To fill her time on Friday nights, she started visiting the casino that had recently opened nearby.
‘I wasn’t a bar person, so I’d go to the casino, have a couple of drinks, stay for a few hours then head home,’ said the now 47-year-old, from Oklahoma.
‘Gambling prior was never something I was interested in. I went to the casino when it first opened and it was so smoky I couldn’t breathe, I hated it.’
The clatter of coins and the hypnotic swirl of spinning reels offered a strange sense of comfort, however – an escape from reality. Under the fluorescent casino lights, Christina sat alone at a slot machine – known as pokie machines in Australia – her heart pounding from the dopamine that rushed through her every time she had a small win.
She didn’t know it then, but it was the start of a 15-year gambling addiction that almost ended her life.
Christina Cook (pictured) battled a gambling addiction for 15 years after first visiting a casino that opened near her home at age 28
Christina continued to gamble here and there, visiting the casino two or three times a month as a way to entertain herself.
In 2007, after her divorce was finalised, she quickly entered another relationship – but it was an unhappy one.
‘I really started losing my own sense of identity,’ Christina said.
The casino became a place to escape and cope with the emotional turmoil. At that time, her mum was also having health issues.
‘I moved in with Mum to save money and because it was easier. We were close, and we’d go to the casino together to bond,’ she said.
One day in 2009, she noticed something was off about her mum.
‘She had been complaining about heartburn all day, and it was like 10pm at night. I said to her, “We probably need to go to the emergency room.” But she told me she had an appointment in the morning with the doctor,’ Christina said.
However, the uncomfortable feeling worsened overnight.
After her mum had a heart attack, Christina (pictured) drove straight to the casino
‘When I woke up, she was pacing, ready for her appointment, so I went with her. At first, the doctor thought it was her gallbladder; then, just as we were leaving, he suggested an EKG. I’ll never forget that moment.’
The EKG – a non-invasive medical test that records the heart’s electrical activity to diagnose heart conditions – revealed her mum was in the midst of a heart attack that she’d likely been experiencing for two days.
She was rushed straight to the emergency room for life-saving surgery to remove the blockage in her heart.
Suddenly, Christina was thrust into a blur of hospital corridors, urgent paperwork, and frantic phone calls to family, all while her mum’s life hung in the balance.
‘I didn’t know what to do – I was in another emotionally overwhelming situation,’ she said.
Thankfully, the surgery was a success and when her mum was finally stabilised, Christina volunteered to go home and gather a bag of her things to bring to the hospital.
But instead, she drove straight to the casino, saying that was ‘the only way she could deal with the situation’.
Sitting at a pokie machine, she inserted $50, hoping it would numb her feelings.
Within 20 minutes, she’d won her first jackpot of $1,400 USD ($2,150 AUD).
‘It was only a minor jackpot but it changed my life in ways I never saw coming,’ she recalled.
Unwittingly, Christina was seeking something far more elusive than money: relief from pain, loneliness, and the relentless pressure of everyday life.
As the years passed, she remained unhappy in her decade-long relationship, admitting she was afraid to leave and worried she couldn’t cope alone.
In the end, the pain and isolation within her relationship drove her deeper into gambling, as the casino became her refuge from turmoil.
‘I enjoyed my time alone at the casino and went up to five times a month, usually around payday. I was never an everyday gambler, I was a binge gambler,’ she said.
‘It became a pattern of not dealing with my experiences. I turned to gambling to deal with everything. My relationships with my friends were always hit and miss because I was never around.
‘As the gambling started taking over, I had no money, and stopped going out. I started to withdraw from interacting with life.’
At the peak of her addiction, Christina was spending her whole pay cheque in 30 minutes and borrowed money from family so she could gamble.
In 2017, she finally broke free from the toxic relationship but the gambling continued.
By the time she was 38 she was in another new relationship – this time a happy one – but she experienced another cruel blow when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer.
She described the diagnosis as a turning point that dashed her hopes of becoming a mother: ‘It was kind of my last chance… I was in my late 30s, diagnosed with cancer and the treatment for that was a hysterectomy.’
She consulted three different doctors, all of whom recommended the surgery due to the aggressive nature of the cancer, which had thankfully been caught early.
Christina said she never really addressed the emotional impact or grief that came with losing her chance to become a mum.
As a result, this period marked some of the worst mental health and gambling episodes of her life.
Christina’s ‘rock bottom’ moment occurred in March 2021, when she won $34,000 but quickly lost it again
When the pandemic hit in 2020, the casino closed briefly and Christina was unable to gamble for a few weeks, but went back with a vengeance the moment it reopened.
By Christmas that year she had gambled away her work bonus of around USD $2,000 (AUD $3,079), leaving her unable to buy gifts for her family.
Christina’s ‘rock bottom’ moment occurred in March 2021.
‘I was [at the casino] because I didn’t want to be home. I won $24,000 in 30 minutes of getting there and I probably only spent $200,’ she recalled.
She quickly went on to win another few bets, taking her winnings to $34,000.
The casino staff member who paid her out – someone who’d seen her come and go over the years – looked her in the eye and said: ‘You’re going to go home with this, right?’
‘I was like, this is the most amount of money I’ve ever won, of course I am. It’s going to make my life easier,’ she replied.
But after receiving her cash, she went straight back to the pokie machine.
And eight hours later, she was still there, having lost almost all of it.
‘As his [the cashier’s] shift ended, he looked over. We locked eyes and he simply shook his head,’ she said.
‘The hardest part is, I played every penny of the money I had won down to maybe $2,000-$3,000. I was so ill, I had to cash out and run to the bathroom and threw up,’ Christina recalled.
The following day, she returned to the casino, lost the rest of her money, and at 12.01am she sat in her car feeling utterly broken.
‘It was on March 6, I was sitting in my car, and I was absolutely devastated. I was broken, was going to end my life that night. I’d already been having really hard thoughts for the last several months,’ she said.
‘I thought ending my life would benefit everybody else, and that’s the problem with gambling addiction.
‘But something happened to me in that moment. I didn’t want to die, I actually want to live, and I hadn’t been living for years. I knew I had to figure out a way to actually live my life.’
The next day, Christina gathered the courage to seek help. She went to her mum and told her everything.
Her mum, who had already been considering an intervention, suggested she start with Gamblers Anonymous.
Christina called the GA hotline and attended her first meeting that day, which she describes as ‘a pivotal, eye-opening step’.
‘I was in a room with three older men who were in recovery. That was the first time I felt seen and heard in years,’ she recalled.
She continued to attend meetings and began sessions with a therapist.
Soon after, she launched The Broke Girl Society Podcast and a Facebook group, now with more than 3,200 members
Christina has spent the last four and a half years in recovery, and continues advocacy and support for women in gambling recovery.
She estimates over 15 years she lost USD $250,000 (AUD $385,000) to gambling.
‘The best things that we can do for each other in recovery is sharing our stories and experiences,’ Christina said.
‘Storytelling is one of the most powerful things that we can do as humans because I think that alone will go a long way to breaking the stigma around women and gambling.
‘There is hope and help out there, and there is a way forward. Be curious about what might help.’
Christina hopes sharing her story will help others struggling with gambling harm to seek help.
If you need support, call the Gamblers Helpline AU on 1800 858 858 or Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14
