So I wasnt sure if I wanted to post this but I m sure it could help a few people. I had a friend from school who I used to hang with a lot and go to bars and **** but then I started seeing him less and less until he disappeared completely and I recently found out why.

So he played a ton of online poker grinding out mid stakes cash grinding all day at the 1/2 > 3/6 level at a decent win rate. This made him lazy so he started staying home more and more not even leaving the house to go shopping for groceries so his mom started taking him food so he wouldnt starve to death. He stayed home all the time playing poker alone and no social life. Once you stay away from people and social situations for long enough you start being uncomfortable around crowds and people and you develop a condition called social phobia http://www.socialphobia.org/whatis.html#whatis1 . So you re basically terrified of people and talking to them and just being around people caused him to get panic attacks and freak out. So finally his parents stepped in an sent him to a shrink who had a few sessions with him and gave him some meds to deal with all the pressure and help his confidence a bit. Everything was fine until he ran out of meds and he was too afraid to call the doctor to get new meds. His parents were away on vacation figuring he would be ok with his meds. So he had very intense social phobia and with no one to help him he had to go and buy groceries and leave the house to do other important stuff. This high stress and panic attacks made him fall into a deep depression. He was so scared and alone and no one helped him so finally when he couldnt handle it anymore he killed himself overdosing on pain meds. Actually I shouldnt say no one helped him because people tried but he just didnt let anymore near him.

I m sure there are plenty of 2+2 ers who already feel like they stay at home too much coz of poker and dont talk to people enough. I cant stress enough how incredibly dangerous that is even if it doesnt seem like it might be. So dont make poker your life and make sure you have friends and people to talk to.

cliffnotes: old friend stays home coz of poker, gets social phobia and kills himself

I hope this helps people to realize how fragile life is. This is a serious post so please keep the funny/level posts to yourself.

Ill keep the funny/level threads to myself when people post this **** in the correct forum. I ****ing hate BBV these days.. your friend didn't die because of poker he died because he had a mental condition and horrible caretakers and people who didn't give a **** enough to check up on him every once in a while.

Your friend did not die because of poker.

That said its a sad story. People should have looked after him better since he obviously couldn't have looked after himself.

I m not blaming online poker, I m just saying playing a ton of poker can be dangerous. Also if you re gonna be a dick why even bother posting. Besides i m sure you all started out here as expert posters, if this is so horrible why hasnt a mod moved it.

bbv isnt as moderated as other forums

and youre an idiot if you think playing poker causes someone to develop mental problems

people get addicted to gambling and addiction is a mental problem, that addiction can cause further issues like my friend did.

Wow, if true you really, really posted this in the wrong forum.

Not trying to be a dick at all.

If your friend stayed home and played solitaire with a real deck of cards would you blame that game?

He had a mental condition. You blamed poker.

Yeah this.

Also this. Everytime I drink a lot I do a big ****, therefore **** is made out of beer?

Actually on second thought no don't do it. If you take a class in logic it might set off a big chain reaction which will eventually lead to you committing suicide.

Wow that's heartbreaking

he didnt die because of poker. idiot

Ignorance. Addiction is a disease that isn't just merely linked to "naturally selected" people, it can/has/will grab a hold of people that are otherwise bright and outgoing. The reason people lose control is because they suffer permanent physical neurological changes. At first, yeah he could choose whether to go out or play poker. After the addiction develops, the problem moves outside of having free choice and they're physically dependent on doing whatever it is they're addicted to.

For example, I'd say 99% of this board is addicted to reading BBV and couldn't possibly pry themselves from going 2 days without it.

But yeah, poker probably wasn't the only issue he had, more likely it just compounded whatever life tilt he had going on and he had nowhere to go in his mind. Kinda like video games being blamed for kids shooting 20 other kids - sure the video game might have played a factor but how big is open for conjecture.

Sorry to hear about your friend. The best thing you can do now is learn from his case.

...

Please don't pour salt on the wound. Clearly, you have no idea what you're talking about. Read a book, talk to an expert, and educate yourself, instead of spewing ignorance. At least, use google ffs. Learn what happens inside the brain when you gamble; it just might humble you.

You can lose control of yourself when gambling, because of the dopamine (the feel good neurochemical in your brain) high. The more and more you do it, the higher your dopamine threshold gets (varies from person to person obv.). This means that in order to get the same high you have to gamble more and more until eventually you get the same release in your brain. The lows of gambling are lower than the highs are high.

The gamble is a wild beast that very few can successfully tame. It can even trick you into thinking that you got it under control...

Not sure if this is a level (your friend didn't have any more meds...yet he OD'd on them?). If it isn't, my apologies.

I'm pretty sure if your friend played World of Warcraft all the time instead of poker, then you'd be on some gamer forum writing this same story; or if he watched TV all day, etc.

Your friend had a mental condition and the somewhat anti-social tendencies of online poker led him to attach himself to it. Do not confuse the cause and the effect. Poker didn't give him social anxiety.

Jesus, some of you are pretty damn harsh on OP. He just lost one of his good friends. Give the guy a break.

Well, I also disagree poker caused his mental illness, but it didn't help that he was probably grinding 14-16 hours/day and sometimes couldn't handle the downswings by himself. Which ultimately causing him to get depressed and losing hope.

Bottom line, you must force yourself to go out and enjoy other things than just poker. This goes to everyone, including myself...

No, of course not. To say that he did and draw a direct cause-effect relationship between poker and social phobia would be foolish (there isn't any study that proves/disproves such). It did, however, look like it made his situation worse, which probably acted as a catalyst for his condition. Whether he started to develop stress and anxiety panic attacks before his poker playing is unknown, but it certainly came in full force after he started playing.

is this forum full of people who are like "gambling is bad"? sure seems it

I don't know, read more and find out, I guess. I must have given off that impression, eh? lol..

Thanks for posting this espicially it was hard to do.

Personnally i can see small ways in which poker has effected my life in a similar way. I mean the hours required to play online poker tournaments for a living are huge. and all this time is spent on your own. It can be a bit lonely and frustrating, and it can make it hard to socialise with alot of people

I, myself, make sure i regularly go swiming and meet with a few friends every so often so as not to fall completely into the hole described above.

I dont really understand how anyone can blame me for this since I wasnt even aware of his problem. Its not like he was my best friend or anything, just some dude I used to know and lost contact with since I do have my own life to live as well.
The thing is that any small thing can snowball into a huge problem that even the toughest people cant control. Like someone said that a gambling addiction is actually mostly just pure science and not some mumbo jumbo a shrink made up so I m pretty sure most poker players would feel pretty lost if they just had to suddenly stop playing poker. Their brain would stop getting that daily chemical they re used to having in their system and that would certainly influence their behavior.
Again I m not saying he died just because of poker but it certainly had a big part of him ending up where he was. Gambling affects people and thats why you keep seeing those coke/craps threads in NVG and how people lose it like Stu Ungar did.

anyone that pisses off HardBall47 gets THE BAN
HAHAHAHA


on a serious note: this story is not at all surprising. poker is a sick game that takes a strong character to play on a monthly/yearly+ basis. So I don't find it surprising that someone killed themselves over this game, amongst other things. One of the biggest reasons I find this story not only to be disturbing, but disheartening is seeing this person result to suicide when they didn't get a chance to experiment with different religions/medications/etc. There are plenty of things people can do to turn their lives around on a mental level. Just think about all the religions available in this world. Anyway, I must also add that I don't believe this story to be true. Why would a 1/2, 2/4 grinder do this when they could drop down a couple limits and still make 100k a year? Interesting to see everyone say that poker couldn't destroy someone mentally. You realize when two people are sitting at a cash game they are trying to destroy eachother in any way possible. Physically, mentally, psychologically, spiritually, are all ways people compete when they are playing eachother. A lot of poker players are willing to humiliate other poker players. It is a sick game at times that can definitely hurt someone mentally. I still don't believe this story to be true so but still a possibility.

What a bunch of *******s.

Sorry about your friend, and thanks for passing it on.

Well I have no idea what he played, last time I heard it was 1/2 2/4 or whatever so he could ve been playing 10/20 by then or just busto grinding out 50NL. I really dont see a reason for anyone to make up a story like that and it would actually be quite disturbing.

Sorry for your friend OP.

Its understandable many of us are locked away most of the time playing poker alone somewhere. I do think interacting with fewer people has affected me mentally & after reading this I might make a little extra effort to "go outside" etc...