{"id":33982,"date":"2025-07-24T15:13:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/33982\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T15:13:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:13:15","slug":"i-was-smart-and-successful-yet-a-harmless-pub-game-from-the-90s-turned-me-into-a-gambler-who-almost-lost-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/33982\/","title":{"rendered":"I was smart and successful – yet a ‘harmless’ pub game from the ’90s turned me into a gambler who almost lost everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

Libby Mitchell was in the mood to celebrate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was 1993 and she’d just sold her recycled textiles business to a colleague. The pair decided to toast the deal in the local pub.<\/p>\n

Little did Libby know, this seemingly innocuous night would spark an addiction that would consume her for more than two decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the time, gaming machine venues called ‘Tabaret’ were on the rise.<\/p>\n

One of the games was simple – pick six numbers from one to 100 and if all your numbers were drawn, you’d win. It was a similar game to ‘Keno’ seen in pubs today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘I had no idea I was using a pokie machine – I thought it was a bingo machine,’ Libby tells Daily Mail Australia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘One dollar was the minimum spend and I was placing 10c bets. I’d lose money but, every now and again, I’d win some back.’<\/p>\n

Libby, a single mother of two from Mount Eliza, Victoria, says she was ‘hypnotised’ by the machine and a few weeks later, went back to play again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"For <\/p>\n

For 22 years Libby Mitchell, a single mother of two from Mount Eliza, Victoria, suffered from a gambling addiction so severe she lost homes and businesses\u00a0<\/p>\n

That night she won $200 and after that started going a couple of times a week with friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Soon she was going alone after work, sometimes playing until 2am.<\/p>\n

Within a year, she’d lost $2,000, which she says was ‘massive’ at the time.<\/p>\n

Libby kept her addiction secret from her friends and two teenage daughters but over the coming years it worsened.<\/p>\n

After six years she needed to get away and hoped a move would break the addiction so she decided to sell her house and relocate to Melbourne.<\/p>\n

She received $100,000 from the settlement, part of which she invested in starting another business.<\/p>\n

The rest of the money she gambled away, sometimes losing up to $2,000 a night.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By now she was gambling in the 24-hour Crown Casino. On one occasion she stayed for 52 hours straight, sitting ‘mesmerised’ in front of the chiming machines and desperately feeding notes into the slot.<\/p>\n

\"Libby, <\/p>\n

Libby, pictured in 1993 when her addiction began, says she was ‘hypnotised’ by the machines<\/p>\n

She paused only for coffee, a ham and cheese sandwich and brief bathroom breaks.<\/p>\n

‘I left the house on Tuesday morning and didn’t come back until Thursday afternoon. My 20-year-old daughter was living with me and had been trying to reach me but I didn’t answer. She had no idea where I was,’ Libby says.<\/p>\n

By the time she arrived home, she’d lost her last $5,000 and her daughters\u00a0were ‘hysterical’ with worry.<\/p>\n

‘They knew something was going on but they didn’t know what,’ Libby recalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Without a cent to her name, she had no choice but to come clean to her children.<\/p>\n

While they helped Libby to find a counsellor, it wasn’t enough for her to escape the hold gambling had on her.<\/p>\n

In the year 2000, she sold another business because she was ‘desperate for a regular payslip, stability and normality’ and returned to teaching\u00a0Year 12 students.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For a time having a nine-to-five job stifled Libby’s addiction because she couldn’t head to the pokies any time she liked.<\/p>\n

But it wasn’t enough. Instead she started going as soon as she finished work.<\/p>\n

‘I went straight to a pokies venue and stayed there all night, then went to work the next day.\u00a0I just felt like a zombie,’ Libby admits.<\/p>\n

‘I drove home thinking, “I can’t do this to these kids – they’re three weeks away from exams. What have I done to myself?”‘<\/p>\n

\"Libby, <\/p>\n

Libby, pictured with her daughters in 2010, estimates she’s lost at least $500,000 on the pokies over the years but admits the real number is likely to be considerably more<\/p>\n

By now Libby was suicidal and on the brink of homelessness.<\/p>\n

‘In the middle of the night, I drove to\u00a0West Gate Bridge, stopped my car and stood on the edge,’ Libby says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘I had one leg over and couldn’t see the bottom. But then, out of nowhere, a ship came from underneath the bridge and sounded this massive horn.<\/p>\n

‘The noise shot right up at me and woke me up. I hated heights and realised just how high it was. I climbed back over, got into my car and straight to the Royal Melbourne Hospital. I was terrified to be alone.’<\/p>\n

Once again unable to afford rent, Libby was forced to move in with her father.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my dad and my daughters,’ Libby says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘But my father was tough on me – it was like I was 12-years-old again. He said, “Here’s the rules, you’re not going out, you’re not driving, and the only place you’re going is to the doctor or a psychologist.”<\/p>\n

‘The hardest thing to face was the fact that I was such a failure. I was well-educated but was falling apart.’<\/p>\n

Over time she learned gambling was an addiction just like smoking or alcoholism and she started to avoid the pokies altogether.<\/p>\n

She managed to avoid gambling for a couple of years but fell off the wagon in 2002.<\/p>\n

‘One night I went with my daughter to the pokies and she left at 10pm but I stayed until 2am and lost $1,200,’ Libby says.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Libby went to the extreme of moving to Western Australia in 2005 where pokie machines were restricted to one casino and banned in local neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n

‘I thought it would fix me, and it did because it broke the physical addiction – I couldn’t gamble.\u00a0Thank God there was no such thing as online gambling then,’ she says.<\/p>\n

For two years, Libby managed to avoid the pokies, but still hadn’t faced the psychological urge underpinning her addiction.<\/p>\n

But after moving to regional Victoria because housing was more affordable, she relapsed several times.<\/p>\n

In the years that followed, Libby learned more about the machines and became involved in gambling reform.<\/p>\n

\"'I <\/p>\n

‘I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for my dad and my daughters,’ says Libby, pictured with her father, left, and two daughters<\/p>\n

By 2014, after losing her father, she had re-established herself financially.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘I hadn’t gone in years, then over three weeks in 2015 I lost $30,000 – it was the biggest shock of my life,’ she says.<\/p>\n

‘I managed to win $15,000 back, but for the first time in my life, instead of putting it straight back in the pokies, I took it to the bank.’\u00a0<\/p>\n

She vowed to never gamble again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Libby estimates she has lost at least $500,000 on the pokies over the years, but admits it could be even more.<\/p>\n

Libby, now 76, wants more action to be taken and strongly believes every Australian gambler must be registered. She says getting help once the addiction has started is often too late.<\/p>\n

‘I believe that gambler licensing is the only sensible way to go forward where every gambler must register for a year and pay a licence fee like our drivers must pay. Something like $600 a year or $20 for 24-hour access should be doable,’ she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Some gamblers would be properly warned and deterred before they ever get addicted and the government would make the money required to fund some social costs of gambling.<\/p>\n

‘Our employment levels would rise as traders would have more money going through their shop doors. Gamblers can easily lose $600 in one session, but the government does not profit from that loss. The gambling industry does.<\/p>\n

‘If a person cannot afford the licence fee \u2013 then they should not be gambling at all. There are people regularly losing $14,000 in a weekend right now in Australia. Gambling is a scourge on our economy that must be better controlled.’<\/p>\n

‘It’s the biggest all-cash, no-receipt industry in the world, yet it goes by unnoticed. Many blind eyes are turned – and we are too trustful.<\/p>\n

‘Poker machines cause addiction to people who are not given proper product warnings. A toaster has more consumer warnings than pokies do. Recreational fishermen must buy a licence – it is absurd that we protect our fish more than our people.<\/p>\n

‘Consumers should be registered to gamble \u2013 to force them to get a spending record. The government needs to know exactly how much money is lost from our communities, from gambling. A licence keeps everyone safer, including traders and taxpayers, who are the biggest losers from gambling, beyond the gambler and his family.’<\/p>\n

If you need support, call the Gamblers Helpline on 1800 858 858 or Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Libby Mitchell was in the mood to celebrate.\u00a0 It was 1993 and she’d just sold her recycled textiles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33983,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[1246,98,13341,97,27599,259,260,28254,28253],"class_list":{"0":"post-33982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-dailymail","10":"tag-femail","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-melbourne","13":"tag-mental-health","14":"tag-mentalhealth","15":"tag-perth","16":"tag-reallife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}