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“Nobody owns my story but me, I can tell whoever I want, I can do whatever I want.”
When Christina Cook began The Broke Girl Society, a podcast and support space for women suffering from problem gambling, she said she received a lot of push back. Some told her that recovery should only happen behind closed doors, using the 12 steps in anonymity.
Cook spent 15 years gambling. When she started looking for support to recover, she said she couldn’t find it. Many support spaces were rooms full of men. She didn’t feel represented.
“I wasn't seeing myself in the rooms, I wasn't seeing my story in the conversations, and so I knew I needed more,” Cook said.
Approximately 7 million to 11 million people in the U.S. meet one or more of the criteria for gambling disorder and experience problems from gambling behavior, according to the National Problem Gambling Hotline.
Some women are struggling to find help. The National Problem Gambling Helpline 2025 annual report found that 29% of those contacting the helpline were women.
Cook said that she attended a conference that reported men gamble at higher rates than women, which can sometimes be misleading.
“That data is skewed, and even if it was factual, a lot of times I'll follow up with, but women experience harm faster than men. They call it telescoping, when we're focusing on data, when there's no funding for research, there's no real fundamental information behind, they're using helpline data. Well, how many younger people do we know that are calling helplines?” Cook said.
A study found women face more barriers to entry – such as stigma, lack of knowledge about treatment, or lack of social support or childcare – when seeking treatment and are increasingly suffering from problems online gambling.
Jodi Axe, clinical director at Allied Addiction Recovery in Pittsburgh and gambling counselor, said that when women don’t seek treatment, it can lead to more severe mental health effects.
“It's so alarming because what I have seen is that the women who possibly may have started treatment and then fall out or don't call for treatment is one of the highest suicide rates is amongst compulsive gamblers,” Axe said. “We’re creating a more systemic problem within healthcare, with mental healthcare, that it gets out of control to the point of suicide.”
According to a 2021 report, 19% of those with gambling disorder who were surveyed considered suicide the previous year, compared to 4.1% of the general population. Some research also suggests women are less likely to seek treatment but are more likely to experience gambling-related suicidal thoughts compared to men.
Jody Bechtold, gambling addiction expert and CEO of Better Institute of Pittsburgh, said women are frequently overlooked in conversations about gambling.
“I’m a little tired of focusing on the young male sports bettor. There’s a lot of other people struggling out there, and I think there needs to be a lot more discussions around women, because women are unfortunately really struggling with gambling problems,” Bechtold said. “Overall, this is a huge public health crisis.”
Creating a support space for women was so important to Cook partially because of how deeply it impacted her.
“It systematically got a hold of me. It started when I placed that first bet, and even though it might have taken some time to really see the harm, it changed me almost immediately,” Cook said.
After realizing that she wanted to connect with more women who shared her experiences, Cook began posting her journey on Instagram, then eventually started The Broke Girl Society podcast.
Today, Cook runs a TBGS Facebook group with more than 4,000 users that hosts Zoom meetings five days a week. Many people who connect with Cook come from different backgrounds, whether they are 18-year-olds, new mothers, or household providers.
“I'm finding women who are just grinding, trying to keep the bills on, taking care of kids, taking care of family, and they're losing themselves, and gambling feels like a way to feel good for a minute. When you're having all of this, gambling can feel like an escape from that, from yourself,” she said.
A contributing factor of stigma surrounding women who problem gamble is the systemic differences and expectations, Cook said.
“That's why it's so important to create spaces where women feel safe, they can talk about things like relationships, mom guilt that are outside of the parameters of just 12-step recovery, meeting topics that address stress and societal expectations and demands, and caretaking, and self-care, because at the core, oftentimes women are just so depleted by meeting the demands of everybody else,” Cook said.
In her work experiences, Axe said that women may share different sentiments regarding the consequences of gambling compared to men, which can make it more difficult to connect in male-dominated support spaces. They may be traditionally viewed as the one who takes care of the home and the children, the provider, or the shopper.
“A lot of them feel locked into it because they don't see any hope of it changing, and most of the women feel that if they shared that with their family, the main phrase that they keep saying over and over again is, ‘My husband would divorce me and my children would hate me.’ But I don't hear that out of men very much.”
Kavita Fischer is a psychiatrist at UPMC who works in an emergency room. She has also worked with patients who suffer from substance abuse and addiction.
She said she lost $400,000 gambling.
At first, she would occasionally visit the casino with a budget of $100 for games, food, and drinks. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she downloaded an online gambling app. She said she quickly then became a problem gambler.
Fischer downloaded the online app shortly after her divorce, and said she enjoyed the social aspect that the apps offered.
“I got pulled over into the non-table games and the more predatory ones that are a lot more fast paced and eventually ended up having a pretty big problem in the course of, I would say six to seven months.” said Fischer, past president of the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society.
When Fischer later attended Gambler’s Anonymous, she said it was validating to see women in the room.
“Anyone could be affected by this, man or woman, and I think going to the GA meetings and seeing the women — there were a decent amount of women there as well — enforce that more, but I don't think it's recognized as much,” Fischer said. “This addiction doesn't discriminate and that's becoming more clear now.”
Cook shared that TBGS has allowed her to create meaning from the time she spent gambling.
“I was feeling like I wanted to end my life, I was a burden to people that I loved,” she said. “I hadn't lived my life in years, and so I think it was just like something changed, and I'm like, ‘All right, I've got to make this mean something,’”
Cook said since then she focuses every day on trying to pull something good from the experience, and on making amends to people in her life.
“You're not alone, you don't have to be alone, and taking care of yourself should always be a priority. Because when we take care of ourselves, we're able to take care of others better and in a healthier way,” she said.
Sarah Naccarato is a summer intern for the Pittsburgh Media Partnership and a senior at Chatham University. She is a one of 19 New York Times Corps mentees in the U.S., and a staff member of the Chatham Communiqué. In 2025, Sarah spent one month in Arles, France as a part of the ieiMedia international journalism and photography Arles project.
The PMP Newsroom is a regional news service that focuses on government and enterprise reporting in southwestern Pennsylvania. Find out more information on foundation and corporate funders here.
Header image: Christina Cook is the founder of the Broke Girl Society, which was started when she saw a lack of women in gambling support spaces. Photo credit: Missy Mayo Photography
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