There’s also drug-induced psychosis, and Lord knows there’s plenty kinds of “rec” drugs around the gambling/poker/casino world. Not saying this was Matt’s case, but he did hashtag some of his own IG posts with “cannibisinducedpsychosis” and the like.

I've seen "cocaine psychosis" and very scary.. Person stopped using cocaine and outward signs of psychosis disappeared fast

If you read Toronto Life article, Matt got beaten up really badly in university.. Friends of mine wonder if that was one basis for their son's schizophrenia (i remembered googling subject and it sounded reasonable)

I overdosed really badly on marijuana once, a newbie home grow person made brownies with no recipe. Used 20x dosage. I had no idea and operate

Insane trip, but more psychedelic/ "out of body" than paranoid... But everyone's different as is long term abuse effects

Have any of his close friends or family members actually come out and confirmed that he was mentally ill? I do not mean people who just knew him i'm saying people who have been with him on a regular basis. It does not matter how insane someone looks to you or what is said about someone in the news or by others, to come out and just call someone metally ill, take someone elses word for granted about that, when they themselves say they are not seems very dismissive and presumptuous to me. How do you help with that? How would you feel if someone else was telling others you are mentally ill? Whether true or not, I find it rather odd that people find it ok to do that and act as if they are coming from a point of empathy. Also as a family member I would not want to have strangers discuss this on a public forum.

I do not mean to derail and will not go into any discussion just my personal opinion on this.


RIP Matt Marafioti, a great player, one of the players I have been railing on Pokerstars when I first came up in poker.

Incredibly sad news Matt seemed like a very bright yet troubled young man.

His story reminds me of my good friend Mike Dolle(Klairic on pokerstars and 2p2) who jumped to his dead about six years ago, also just 33 years old at the time. Extremely bright, a bit socially awkward, could play 24 tables for hours on end or do advanced computer coding etc ... but seemed to have many delusions and fears that pushed him over the edge. Sad stuff. I miss him a lot.

He jumped to his death to save himself from nonexistent would-be murderers acting at the behest of the Illuminati led by Queen Elizabeth and the Obamas - its safe to call this mental illness. Come on.

I think this happened to someone I knew of, but he already had mental issues before the beatdown. They seemed 10x worse after the beatdown.

RIP always sad to lose one of your own

Is it the trauma from the assault or some form of CTE from a severe beating? I have a family friend like this now. He seemed like any normal guy our age but then he went to state prison for a few years and is now literally insane and talks in the same way ADZ did on his IG. Nobody really knows what set him over the edge. We've speculated maybe he got raped in jail or they put him on meds that made him crazy. Nobody can figure it out. These days he likes to walk around town in a full body wet suit like he's about to go scuba diving.

I hope I'm not going to hell for laughing my ass off at this visual

Some say it's even easier to get drugs in prison than it is on the "outside". Could be meth-induced psychosis, or some kind of PTSD related to events that may have occurred like you mentioned, or perhaps a savage beating which could easily have been a severe concussion/brain trauma. Possibly some combination of the above.

Perhaps same for Matt as well, minus the prison love of course.

You're not. We laugh about it too.

Situation/person-dependent. In your case, I would guess it was trauma/PTSD, and in the case I know of I would say it was CTE.

Very sad. Talented player back in the day. Poker can be a very hard lifestyle. You can get trapped in your own mind. Hopefully his family and his son’s mom can heal quickly

Glutamate.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10553033/
Its our biological/evolutionary survival mechanism to heighten immediate cognitive awareness in stress/dangerous situations.

When persons are subject to prolonged stressors, they wind up with a permanent excess of glutamate in the brain causing neuronal overactivity that manifests itself in various mental illness symptoms including delusions, schizophrenia, extreme paranoia, etc. Also, it can be aggression, fear, you get the idea.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5482215/

Long story short, put a normal person in an extremely high stress situation for a prolonged period of time, their brain chemistry will change and so will their personality, their worldview, their behaviors, their reactions, how they process literally everything and it will be for the worse, for the rest of their lives, even long after they've exited the high stress situation. In the worst case scenarios, the person can become so mentally ill, they're dangerous or dysfunctional to the point of being unable to hold jobs or any types of interpersonal relationships.

Thank you.

Truly fascinating and tragic how our minds can work against us.

Yep, that’s essentially what “shell-shock” is. Term coined from veterans coming back from WWI basically zapped out of their mind, and it took some time to figure it out, basically PTSD.

did some reading re: physical/mental trauma and schizophrenia (making a generic comment, no allusion to Matt)

unclear as to whether mental/physical trauma can cause schizophrenia in anyone without some genetic disposition towards it.

but there is a popular theory that the extreme trauma causes the schizophrenia to manifest itself in the person.. i.e. the trauma set off the schizophrenia.

if anyone else can word this better or correct me if i'm wrong about this, it would be greatly appreciated.

i am curious as to how popular/accepted "trauma triggers schizophrenia" theory is.

i've heard in theory in relations to other mental defects and personality characteristics.. and in some of those cases, it's more something like relationship with mom or dad..... i don't want to get into what i've heard. some of it would cause dispute and i have no idea whether they are accepted theories or not

It's not hard to get drugs in prison, but they cost about 10 times what they cost outside and your opportunities for making money are much more limited, so that acts as a brake on people's intake.

That said, Spice and its analogues dominates the UK prison drug scene. That makes people nuts on a single hit.

RIP ADZ.

I almost never look at NVG - maybe once every six months, if I'm especially procrastinating - it's weird to think that I most likely would have missed this news.

ADZ124 (Adz, pronounced short for Adam, as he will forever be known to me - I couldn't believe when I first heard his name pronounced Aye dee zee) - was a notable figure in my personal poker history. He's one of my most played opponents. When I first used to log onto stars, I saw him sat on every table, usually across a slew of 25/50 tables with massive stacks, sometimes 500bb+. I looked at him and thought "I wanna be that guy". At the time, he was the guy. The king of Pokerstars.

When I made it to 25/50, I remember playing with him finally. The pot I remember best was a 7bet CIB flop bluff which worked against him - this was the moment I knew I had finally got my foot in. Winning a hand against Adz - I posted the hand to my friends on a minor forum, bragging about how far I'd gotten.

Adz played a very weird style, often using small betsizes and unorthodox bluffs that didn't exist in most players toolboxes. Whatever he did worked very well for a very long time, and he was also able to execute across multiple tables with an astonishing grind ethic.

A bit later when I really had entrenched myself, I remembered seeing Adz as a weak spot - not for a major lack of skills, but because of his soft skills. He was playing 3 different opponents on at least 10 tables HU. I thought, this will be easy money, so fired up 4 tables of HU against him.

I'm not gonna say he played amazingly, but he held his own and didn't show any sign of timing out, which is astounding in itself. Eventually I quit. He wasn't worth the stress. I don't think I've ever seen anyone play such a deranged amount of tables so well since that event, 10+ years ago.

I don't think it would be right to write about Adz without mentioning the chat - ADZ was constantly befouling the chatbox and in and out of chat-jail with the site. He had something funny as his location, when they used to let you type it in yourself (probably he was part of the reason they changed that). He told me he performed the "sour cream angel" on my mother a few times which I thought was hilarious (still not sure what it is, but I have an inkling). Another time he told me he'd break both my legs if he ever met me.

A year or so later I did actually meet him. I was taken to one of those big buildings where all the poker players used to live, to a massive flat high up - I didn't know what to expect. Honestly, I can't remember a more enthusiastic greeting than when this guy met me - I replay the moment unprompted sometimes. He was delighted. He wanted to get a picture with me, Rich, Altrum and someone else who I forget as "a starting 25/50 lineup" (Not present - bullitos or Pacuno). The dude really treated me like royalty - I had a great night chilling in his apartment (then housing about 20 bros), playing table tennis and mingling - and regret not having more nights like that. Whenever I see people being murderous online I always think about when I met this guy and smile

I only met him a couple times after that I think in passing, and then parted ways with America. He loved talking loud about the glamourous life and being the best, so I think it's sad that his presence in poker faded, but as time wears on everyones light comes to an end.

I lost a bit of sleep last night wondering if I was in the wrong for laughing at his braggadocio and general antics, as I'm sure many people have. But I think there are two factors at play. For one, Adz was completely unreserved in his obsession with glamour. He seemed to know this, and at least for me, he lived out something that I deeply repressed, and the completely unabashedness with which he threw it in everyones faces is just funny, because it's not often you see someone with such blatancy - most people will show some modicum of reservedness, but he had none. Perhaps the opposite of down-to-earth could describe him best. It's not the most attractive trait, but it's not worthy of the shaming that it receives - which I think is largely derived from a lot of people wishing they had what he had, or could sometimes be as unreserved as he was.

The other thing is, I think we would not (and did not) laugh at him if we knew he was unwell. I think the scorn is underlined by a layer of respect - you laugh at him for the madness, but you gotta respect a guy that was that good at what he did, and I think without that respect it wouldn't be as funny to see him be the zany, coarse, bawdy glamourpuss that he was.

There was a time in poker history, where ADZ was a legend, and for many he always will be. Even the brightest stars fade, but his memory lives on. RIP ADZ

Funny because my experiences with him were completely mundane, or at least as much as could be expected of someone continuously stoned. He drove the pokerstars Aston to local 5/5nl games and was confrontational with anyone who was disrespectful to him but when you take away the audience it was normal stoner stuff. The videos he posted since are an entirely different story and I think it’s more likely to be drug induced than ptsd.

thanks deldar for dropping the story and the name bullitos.
one of my first poker memories was watching ADZ getting absolutely crushed by bullitos and berating him in the chat the entire time.
strangely enough i became a fan of Adz and his iconic joker avatar and railed him a lot on the nl5000 tables. Once i built my roll to being able to sit down on a nl5k table I wanted to sit and chat to him without the intention of playing.
Unfortunately for me it was a "fast table" and I got instantly dealed in as big blind with my entire 4k roll i built in months work on the nl10 streets.
Luckily enough i got a walk and remain to this day a 50bbs/100 winner on the NL5k streets.

on a side note, i was 100% certain that I read a thread that deldar died a couple of years ago. sick mandela effect indeed.

RIP adz, such a shame that you didnt get the help you needed, or at least it seemed that way from the outside, im sure there is more to it than what outsiders looking in think.

Its nice a few guys from the past have come in and gave their accounts on what adz was like back in the day , its good to see he was a nice guy and when he was considered king of the hill he lived what some would dream of doing.

Looking at all the negatives is pointless now. Thanks deldar for coming in and shedding some light on who ADZ was when he was mentally well.

I think it was known for some time something wasn't quite right with adz, but now is not the time to speculate imo. People just lost their dad, son, friend, sibling.

RIP to adz. may you be at peace now

i think you are thinking of rich lyndaker (nutsinho) who died 2 years ago

RIP ADZ you were a legend of the game