Depression and Poker.

Originally posted by holnrew
Yeah, my brief dabble with drugs made things worse long term really... Was good at the time though, lol. And getting drunk several times per week wasn't the best idea either...

I'm getting the right help and that, it's just slow coming.

I'm starting to get a hold of tilts now and a better control of my emotions, I hope the qualities poker teaches me will extend to other areas of my life.

It should be the other way around really.. qualities of life should extend to your game in poker

Fuck BlackDog! ♦

hope you'll recover soon, take it easy man. Lots of love

poker cured my depression, it's not a lie,
after winning money I started to believe in future again, like I was beter than other people, I became more self confident, I can speak without pauses and talk jokes ect. be charmful. I don't know. Like I want to make money now to get hollywood smile and smile because of poker.

it's like poker is everything to me, I have nothing else, no friends, collapsed familly... well, I started making friends quite easy after poker cured my depression, so, future is bright because of poker.

Originally posted by Saruniks
poker cured my depression, it's not a lie,
after winning money I started to believe in future again, like I was beter than other people, I became more self confident, I can speak without pauses and talk jokes ect. be charmful. I don't know. Like I want to make money now to get hollywood smile and smile because of poker.

it's like poker is everything to me, I have nothing else, no friends, collapsed familly... well, I started making friends quite easy after poker cured my depression, so, future is bright because of poker.

Gl w variance

About 4 years ago I started playing poker, 2 years ago i had a horrible streak that lasted for months I was playing 12hrs a day online and live poker at night.
I lost a crucial pot on the final table of a big online mtt (for the millionth time it felt like) it was my KK vs QQ and it was allin pre. Then I went out that night to play live poker. I was on such tilt that i busted pretty early so i got drunk and played the pokies. I was up $300 on the pokies which still didnt cover my loses for the day so I kept playing and ended up losing big.
On my way home I snapped and was so pissed at myself I punched myself in the head as hard as i could repeatedly. Till i nearly knocked myself out...I know it sounds crazy and yes I thought I was .....I had kept in my frustrations for so long it had all ballooned inside of me.
The next day I woke with numbness in the back of my head It was as if I had an injection of anaesthetic. I could pinch it and not feel a thing. It wasn't very noticeable but after 3 days it left and I got this weird vertigo thing where I could barely stand, I couldn't eat anything without feeling sick and i couldn't sleep at all because I had this weird vibrating in my head and the more i got worried about it the worse it got. I went to the medical centre the next day and questioned my doctor what could be wrong with me. My doctor diagnosed it as severe anxiety and I was prescribed anti anxiety medication and sleeping tablets temazepam.
I got really ill after taking the anxiety medication but the sleeping pills somewhat worked. It was weird id be asleep for 12hrs yet when i woke it felt like i had just blinked. I knew something was wrong when I started experiencing weird dizzy spells and compression headaches. So I went back for another assessment I saw a neurologist after 4 months of tests MRI scans, CT scans, Doppler and blood tests since it started it was diagnosed as occipital neuralgia. To this day nearly 2 years later I take medication for it daily called prothiaden It is an anti depressant yet is used for conditions like occipital neuralgia. In the beginning I started on 25mg and am now on 75mg.
.....I know this is a huge essay I've written but I wanted everyone to know how detrimental poker can be to your mentality and health.
I know that the reason i have this debilitating condition is contributed from poker although there is no definate cause for occipital neuralgia.
I'm 27yrs old and still have the condition these tablets don't cure it they just mask it and suppress the symptoms.
It is incurable so I will have it for the rest of my life. So for those of you that think poker is just a game your wrong. It is like a drug it creates natural endorphins in your body when you win or or lose that feeling is a drug and you can OD on it if your not careful.

Is this because you were hitting yourself or what?

No because boxers get punched their whole careers it was the mentality.
Basically my mind snapped.

sorry if you didn't tilt of tge ft suckout etc, you wouldn't have hit your face.
Hitting your head can cause huge damage on your brain as long as you do it long/hard enough. I think poker was the cause, but only of you acting in a dumb way to the beats, not the reason for your injury now!

Originally posted by ihufa

Originally posted by holnrew
Tried both, neither has any particularly positive effects... lol.

poker and depression or beer and weed?

how about both?

Originally posted by GooDMoovE36
No because boxers get punched their whole careers it was the mentality.
Basically my mind snapped.

There were (and still are) millions of people in the most horrible wars and concentration camps all over the world, and they manage to survive and they manage to live afterwards. And you got incurable anxiety from a losing streak in poker? Goddammit, people nowadays are so spoiled and pampered...

Originally posted by Bliausmas

Originally posted by GooDMoovE36
No because boxers get punched their whole careers it was the mentality.
Basically my mind snapped.

There were (and still are) millions of people in the most horrible wars and concentration camps all over the world, and they manage to survive and they manage to live afterwards. And you got incurable anxiety from a losing streak in poker? Goddammit, people nowadays are so spoiled and pampered...

True, but if you are not one of those who have that anxiety, you probably don't understand them, how they feel.

Originally posted by SPeedFANat1c
True, but if you are not one of those who have that anxiety, you probably don't understand them, how they feel.

I know the feeling, but I certainly don't understand them. It is really difficult to understand people who breaks his/her nail and start depressing because of that (metaphor...).

I hope this cheer you up

Basically I understand your point of view but this isn't anxiety if you read my full post you will see its a condition call occipital neuralgia.
I see your point about the people in the concentration camps and yes that is far worse psychological damage than any bad beat.
Truthfully it had nothing to do with the bad beats it was the fact that I kept playing regardless of bad beats or not. I was angry at myself for getting myself so immersed in a game that is so unpredictable. Its hard to explain but if your playing poker a couple of hours a day you wouldn't understand.
I was playing 10hrs a day minimum online and playing live poker at night for up to another 6hrs 4 times a week.
This is all well and good for a few days but I did this every day for 2 years. As a result I suffered less sleep, less food intake, high levels of stress as well as headaches and stomach aches due to big losses.
Plus constantly getting what feels like being rejected continuously all day long.
Try It and see If your still functioning well after 700+ days of 32+mtts a day after roughly 8000hrs of poker online and 2000+ hours of live poker and see how your mentality is afterwards. Once again I don't want any compassion or sympathy I just wanted to let everyone know poker can be a dangerous drug that can lead you deeper than you ever thought.

Yes it can be a very dangereous thing, like any other activity in this world it will damage if you overdo it, also you let poker damage all the other aspects of your life like : social surroundings, family, health etc.

It's a stressful job and if you work more than 8-10 hours a day constantly without proper sleep and food it will certainly damage you.(even though you can learn it to become stress free :heart:)

Originally posted by Bliausmas
There were (and still are) millions of people in the most horrible wars and concentration camps all over the world, and they manage to survive and they manage to live afterwards. And you got incurable anxiety from a losing streak in poker? Goddammit, people nowadays are so spoiled and pampered...

+1

To GooDMoovE36:
I think you should go a see a psychoanalist. Talk it out and sort it out. Drugs might help your physical condition, but you need to sort out what brought you to this point. Hiding the dust under the carpet is just a temporary solution, that you might decide on until you feel brave enough to look underneath and see what there is there. Antidepressants are like anesthetics: they just hide the pain. The pain is a signal that must to be listened to, and once you cut the anesthesia, it will always be there to remind you somehting needs to be sorted out
S.

Many people would go crazy because of doing something monotonic 14-16 hours (if I get it right) per day for 2 years. But why do that? Did someone force you to play with a gun pointed towards you or what? Every player gets sick of poker sometimes, but then they take a longer or shorter break. Some of the weirdest addiction I ever saw, really..
And the point about drugs in the last post is also good. You need to work on your mind, not fool your body with drugs, and there's no way it's incurable.

It's odd to hear some of the replies saying that it is definitely not incurable. Unless you have a medical degree you should probably shut up because your just giving a meaningless opinion. Stress in all its forms is terrible for the human body and psyche. Besides exaggerating depression and mood disorders it contributes to heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer rates, and it lowers the recovery rates from other life threatening illnesses. This is true whether the stress is the result of war or working at a fast food restaurant. The cause of the stress is not particularly important outside of a clinical psychologist office. By the same token, activities such as meditation, yoga, and prayer have continually shown to have positive health ramifications while simultaneously decreasing stress levels.

Stress in all its forms is terrible for the human body and psyche. Besides exaggerating depression and mood disorders it contributes to heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer rates, and it lowers the recovery rates from other life threatening illnesses. This is true whether the stress is the result of war or working at a fast food restaurant.

I totaly agree. Stress hormones are the same, no matter what causes them.

No offense but I do agree with people saying its not completely incurable.

What gives me the right to say this is that I am one of those who has and still suffer from depressions and anxiety for many many years. I am not going to go into detail but let's just say that I at one point barely made it out of the battle alive.

I completely feel with the people who are writing about their conditions, and I really do recognize the state of mind and feelings that they have. But see the thing is, it IS possible to do something about it.

Is it possible to completely cure it? Probably not, since not even I have managed to stay completely symtomfree for more then weeks/months at a time.

It all comes down to really getting to know yourself and what causes your issues though. Medicine is crap, as many have stated it only supresses all kinds of shit. But if you learn to understand the way you are reacting in certain situations and even how you THINK you can learn to aviod or mainuplate your thoughtprocess.

I am by no means saying this is easy, It's really damn hard work that takes alot of time, effort and discipline. It also takes alot of will, you gotta be at the point where you really think getting well is the nr 1 priority in your life. Only then can you commit to it.

I am also not sure that everyone posses what is neccessary to do this, but I am quite certain that alot of people that think they don't, actually do.

Just bare in mind that if you don't try to change, nothing ever will. Also remember that you are the boss over yourself, not your emotions. What you truly want to do, you can do.