Where Can I Get Help With Gambling?

Who can you call for help in Australia?

None of these require you to have decided anything in advance, and Gambling Help Online supports family and friends as well as gamblers.

Controls that work

The ones set before they are needed, because that is when they are easy to set.

• A deposit limit on the account. Daily or monthly, applied by our support team when you ask on live chat or by email. Changing it means asking again, and that pause is the part that works. How to set one.
• Bank gambling blocks. Nearly every Australian banking app has one, and switching it back off normally involves a compulsory waiting period. What it stops, and what gets past it.
• Operating system time limits. iOS Screen Time and Android Digital Wellbeing will both put a passcode-protected daily cap on one particular site.
• Cash-only deposits. a voucher has to be bought in a shop. That trip is the limit.
• Self-exclusion. A signed form that freezes the account for a week, a month, a year or permanently. Not shortened by asking, not dodged by a second account. What to do before you send the form.
• Telling someone. works better than any setting. Usually tried last.

How do you know it has become a problem?

It never starts as a problem. The change is slow, and what gives it away is behaviour, not the size of the numbers.

Topped up to chase a loss? Played past the point you meant to stop, more than once? Been vague when someone asked what you spend? Used money meant for something else? Planned the next session while doing something else entirely? Been angry, not disappointed, at losing?

One yes: notice it. Several: act on it. None of them mention sums, because the sum is not the thing.

If it is someone else

You do not need their agreement to call Gambling Help Online, and they support family and friends directly.

Describe what is happening rather than who they are, keep your own wallet out of their debts, and stop short of monitoring them. Counterproductive: ultimatums, and reading a slip as evidence the whole effort was pointless.

Free financial counselling through the National Debt Helpline is often the most immediately useful step, because it addresses the consequence while everything else addresses the cause.

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