Two months ago, I filmed a vodcast for FAHCSIA, the Federal Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. FAHCSIA oversees the Federal Government’s commitment to tackling problem gambling, and they have a number of vodcast testimonials on their problem gambling website.
The experience was a life-altering one for me. I returned to my desk profoundly shaken and wrote “And Still I Weep“, in an effort to show just how strongly the past can cling to the present… just how much we carry around with us, even when we think we’ve moved on. Making that vodcast caused me to reassess what I was doing and why I was doing it.
Today, my FAHCSIA vodcast, along with two others, went live, adding to the three vodcasts that were already online. Please visit www.problemgambling.gov.au and take a look; mine isn’t the only story to be told.
But as this is my place, here is my story. Thank you for watching.
Powerful stuff Tom! Done that been there…woooh…know exactly how you felt. I just hope in future that together we can all help other people never to get there… or at least to get the hell out of there lol! Congrats on the video. Others will be helped so much because they will know they are not ‘the only ones’. By speaking out you can speed up the wake-up process for others. All the best. oxxo
Hi,
Love your site and checked out your vodcast and all the others. One thing that you may want to look at is this… After watching videos through your site then up started to come the videos on poker machine wins from you tube… I can’t tell you exactly how this happened but this is definately not what poker machine players need to see.
Michael,
Thanks; that’s a YouTube thing, they offer up additional selections based on what you’ve just watched. It varies quite a lot, I saw some suggestions for other problem gambling videos as well as other kinds of videos.
Sadly, the same thing happens when you click through to YouTube from the FAHCSIA website… although the auto-play kicks in pretty quickly.
Tom
the production qualities are enormous – it’s filmmaking here on for you mate.
And why not?
Plenty of music scores available.
Chris
Thanks Chris 🙂 Although I didn’t film this… it was a crew from FAHCSIA, very professional and wonderful people to boot.
Tom. You were obviously in a trance state before and during gambling. It just shows how powerful the machines are at inducing a trance state. I would love to help some problem gamblers with hypnotherapy and ego state therapy. I think it could be very, very effective.
Kind regards
Tim
Great stuff Tom, please keep up your work, you are a prominent ambassador.
The reality of gambling is not all that dissimilar to the scourge of Domestic Violence the source of which which lies deep within the national psyche.
As you well know people gamble in the vain attempt to over rule and psychologically sedate one’s “endless aching need”. That psychological wound which was pitted into their psyche from a very early age.
This endless aching need is never gratified or dealt with unless contacted, relieved & addressed by experienced psychotherapists.
Violent abusive behaviour is a inherent consequence of abusive childhood conditioning.
Compulsive Gambling is in fact a form of self abuse, which extends to wounding families, children businesses, relationships, & friends to a place of ultimate shame ridden self withdrawn desolation.
Any momentary physiological perceived threat of harm, loneliness, abandonment, grief, or isolation etc., activates the ever present involuntary response to “Fight, Fly, or Freeze.
So the wounded forever strikes out attempting to avoiding this ever aching sensation by using gambling, alcohol, pornography, drugs, sex, shopping, gym, etc and even “happy clapping” does the trick for some.
We have a national mental health & psychological crisis which appears as gambling, drugs, alcohol and domestic violence.
All operated and knowingly driven by a “Mafia of Clubs”, with governments addicted consent gleaning taxes which they pretentiously “inject into the coffins of the naive”, wounded, and innocent.
Purveyors of nicotine, sugar and gambling have much in common.
Thank you for letting me share this information which I know from experience as Gambling Counsellor for many years now to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth which we know will set us free.