Four racehorses are being treated after a horse float rolled over on the Bruce Highway. Credit:Phil Carrick It was as if I had worked out Aladdin's secret, put a few dollars down on a couple of games and then get all this extra money and enjoy myself doing it. However, as everyone knows when we are young things don't seem to suffice our needs for too long. The rush I got from only betting $5 or $10 diminished the more I gambled and before long the thrill and excitement was only there when I would gamble larger amounts. This is when I turned to gambling on the dogs, horses and trots because unlike sport which is mainly on the weekends, these forms of gambling were daily. What had started out as fun and a way to try to make some money turned into an all consuming addiction. If I had money I had to gamble it. I wanted that rush all the time, the sense of not knowing if I was going to walk out with all this money to reassure my low self-esteem. The best thing about it was no one stopped me. I could walk in anywhere and just place a bet. I didn't even need to speak to a person I would use the electronic betting terminals that would take your cash, push a few buttons and a bit of paper would come out saying I was now on number three at Randwick race five.

I had progressed so quickly through the different stages of gambling that I was addicted by the time I was 17. It would be another three years until I got treatment for the addiction that made me do things like skip classes, leave exams early because I didn't want to miss the midweek race at Canterbury, drop out of university, abuse my mum, alienate myself from the world and live a life of misery and depression. These things have all made me who I am today and I have been fortunate enough to go through the different stages rapidly and seek treatment. The reality facing youth today is that easy access to gambling is becoming a part of our culture. For the young gamblers I speak to now, gambling is normalised and ingrained in what we do, just like it was for me when I was at school a few years ago. You only have to look at the sponsorship of sporting organisations and advertising of gambling-related products to see this. Research released a couple of weeks ago by Gambling Research Australia showed six of the top online betting agencies spent a collective $12 million in advertising over a 10-week period last year. They ran 13,000 TV, print, digital and radio promotions with one goal, to influence us to gamble, and according to the research there was some success. Three in 10 adults agreed they were more likely to bet after seeing marketing material and a third of adolescents agreed that gambling-related material made them more likely to gamble. I could walk in anywhere and just place a bet. I didn't even need to speak to a person I would use the electronic betting terminals that would take your cash.

However, the biggest area of concern is that 71 per cent of problem gamblers agreed they were more likely to gamble after seeing some form of promotional material. For recovering problem gamblers there is no escaping the constant enticements to gamble. Individuals may be able to restrict their gambling to sporting events, but it may eventually get to a stage where like it did for me where sports betting does not satisfy the urges that build up. We are impressionable when we are young and the research shows that "young age has been found to be the single most important predictor of problem gambling in Australia". We need to start a conversation about how to address this issue. If we don't show what can happen if we normalise gambling into our culture, we will have generations that have grown up gambling from a young age. The consequences won't manifest straight away: they will linger and breed in the gambler until he or she can no longer take it. Liam is a 23-year-old Sydney man and recovering compulsive gambler who stopped betting three and a half years ago. Now he helps other recovering addicts.

Help is available from gamblinghelp.nsw.gov.au or 1800 858 858.