MIEACT seeks volunteer speakers for Voices of Gambling Harm program

"I was playing cards or chess for matchsticks," he said.

"I didn't see it as gambling, or that 40 or 50 years down the track that this would have such an impact on me. Something as innocent as playing for matchsticks."

And then the worst possible thing happened to him in his early 20s when he was playing gaming machines. He won. Big time. A $33,000 jackpot on a 5c poker machine. Back then, it was the equivalent of about three years' wages. He was hooked.

"You think, 'This is easy'," he said. "But it's an illusion."

Mr Fischer went on to gamble for years until he was almost broke and suicidal, full of guilt and remorse.

"I lost my self-respect, my values my pride, my family, my friends," he said.

As the ACT government this week announced plans to limit bet and credit limits on poker machines, Mr Fischer is sharing his story.

After reaching rock bottom and going to rehab, he is now helping others, as a peer support worker for Relationships Australia and volunteer with Mental Illness Education ACT (MIEACT).

MIEACT says in the ACT, 44,000 people are impacted by gambling harm, but only 2 per cent of at-risk gamblers are seeking help. As a result, it is establishing Voices of Gambling Harm - a program to help those impacted by gambling through the powerful conduit of volunteers talking candidly about their own experiences.

"We're looking for people with a lived experience of gambling harm," MIEACT's John Dickson said.

"So that could be a person who has had troubles themselves with gambling or it could be a relative or friend of someone whose gambling has affected them."

Mr Fischer speaks to many groups and individuals about gambling, including prisoners in the Alexander Maconochie Centre, where he says inmates will bet on the proverbial "two flies crawling up a wall".

It's not just poker machines that are the threat. Mr Fischer said online video games aimed at children were schooling them to gamble. Sports betting advertisements were rife through televised games. It was everywhere.

The problem was the addiction to gambling per se and the thrill of the chase of a win. The lure of one more roll of the dice that gamblers think will make everything all right, change their life, fix their relationships, address their health, improve their mindset.

Considering the government's announcement, Mr Fischer said he wasn't opposed to limits on bets because it might prompt problem gamblers to stop and think twice about how much money they were putting through the machines.

But he says ultimately the only long-term answer to gambling harm is education - showing people how gambling can hurt them and their loved ones and helping them to stop before they cause any harm. He is against banning poker machines or any other kind of prohibition because, in the end, it will not stop people gambling.

"If I want to gamble, I will find a way to gamble," he said.

"In no shape or form am I condemning the clubs. I speak with the clubs, they are community-based.

"Not everyone walks in and says, 'I'm going to mortgage my house and puts it into a poker machine'. I didn't start betting two grand or five grand. I started with five cent pieces. I don't condemn and I don't think gambling is bad.

"I had someone say to me, 'Let's take all the poker machines out'. And I said, 'So you support prohibition'? It doesn't work."

MIEACT hopes a range of volunteer speakers will come forward for the Voices of Gambling Harm program.

"MIEACT will teach people how to tell their story safely and from there, we're going to videotape their stories and that's going to be put into an online learning module," Mr Dickson said.

"For those lived experience speakers, we're hoping they can then go out into the community and talk to different groups to inform them about gambling harm."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: