After spending four decades gambling Tony Franklin, 49, is now actively campaigning for change and sits on the Gambling Commission interim Lived Experience panel.
Tony Franklin, originally from near Southport, developed disruptive habits as early as eight years old. What started off by bunking off school to play in seaside arcades led to a full-scale addiction and gambling on everything.
He started out playing on fruit machines in arcades, pubs and working men clubs and over the years progressed to gambling on fixed-odd betting terminals, where you can spend £100 on just one spin of roulette, and then to spending all his time on online casinos.
By gambling across the whole spectrum of products Tony’s addiction left his life in devastation. He said: “I had a big meltdown, and everything fell apart.” He added: “I lost my home, lost my job, broke up my family and was in a huge amount of debt.”
Alongside this Tony also suffered with mental health problems and was wrongly diagnosed with Bipolar disorder on several occasions by different psychiatrists. He said: “I was presenting with rapidly oscillating mood swings, so they started medicating me for a condition which I didn’t even have, and which therefore worsened my mental health.”
The 50-year-old would gamble daily, and his moods would correlate directly to wins or losses. “If I won there would be this huge euphoria of dopamine and I would be almost manic,” said Tony. He added: “If I lost, I would be on the other side of the equation to manic depression and having suicidal thoughts at times.” It took Tony a total of six years of being out of work to recover from gambling.
During his battles with gambling addiction and continuing after his recovery Tony has campaigned to raise awareness about the dangers of gambling. He is now committed in making people recognise that an extreme gambling addiction is a serious mental health problem. He said: “There is a lack of understanding of looking at it through the lens of it being a mental health issue.” He added “Because of that there is not as strong profiling with gambling addictions as there is with drug and alcohol addictions.”
Tony is campaigning to make all gambling activities 18+ (including the national lottery, loot boxes and fruit machines in seaside arcades) and to turn the most dangerous games, such as roulette, to 21+. He said: “This will give students going to University breathing space from products which could take their student loan off them in a blink of an eye.”
Tony also thinks that the solution to decrease the amount of gambling addicts is like the smoking campaign as he wants to see the ban of all advertising. He said: “Remove all of it, including shirt sponsorships, because half of the problem is the visibility of it.” He added: “If you don’t see it then for a lot of people it is not there so going forward that will be the biggest way to stop people getting involved.”
Tony is also a member of the Gambling Commission interim Lived Experience panel which was formed to offer advice on regulation. However, Tony has withdrawn from attending any of the panel’s sessions until the Commission changes its practises. He said: “The whole system around gambling is corrupt and I believe that this panel is tokenistic.” He added: “The Gambling Commission hasn’t fixed the problems for two decades and they are not likely to fix it at this point.”
Tony believes that the argument is flawed due to the Government only seeing gambling as a cost beneficial instead of the harm associated. “These commissioners are from a little inner circle that rotates around Government groups,” said Tony. He added: “They have no intention to speak up about what is wrong.”
The 49-year-old continues to spread awareness and carry on the conversation about the dangers of gambling. He is championing for reform and is passionate about sharing his own story to help others.
Comments