Does poker consume your life?

[iDONKEDyoo]

This is my first post here, but I have been lurking for about a year. I’m one of those 19 year old college kids who has become a big winner in this game. Poker has been great. Unlike most college kids struggling to find money, I never have to worry about it when we go out and often treat my buddies. I’ve also been able to buy myself quite a few nice toys. I’m up about 275k.

Yet, while poker has given my life changing money, I feel completely unfulfilled, totally addicted, and totally controlled by poker. Although I feel like I’m a pretty strong player, poker is playing me so much worse. What I mean is this...I’ve spent so many long hours at the computer just playing 8 tables clicking my mouse around. And the thing is, I’m so burned out that I don’t even like poker anymore. I’m addicted to money, and I’m addicted to winning it. It’s a pretty sick thrill to go up 50k in a day and my life has been totally consumed by this. My mood is totally dependent on how I do that day, and there have been a few times I’ve cut my social interactions with others short to go home and put in a session on those juicy weekend nights. Before poker, I have always been a friendly happy go lucky guy, but now I’ve become less and less social.

Additionally, poker has cut deeply into the amount of time that I study. I used to be that model student, getting straight A’s, getting into all the colleges, doing well in sports... this year, I quit my college sports’ team. My initial thought was that this would allow me to study more as I was busily pursuing a career in medicine as well as play more poker. My day now looks like this...I will start when I wake up...which is at around 2pm. I wake up...don’t eat, shower and play poker...until 6. Then I go eat after which I will play more poker into the wee hours of the morning...like 4 or 5. Then I miss my 10 or 11am class. I’ve basically been completely unable to study and am falling way behind in some of my classes.

Last week, I went into a local casino 30 minutes away from campus to play in their 2k min nl game. There, I met a guy in his 30s who was very impressed with my play. I started with 4k to leave with 10k. However, while he genuinely respected my play he told me something I will never forget and still haunts me. He said that he doesn’t envy me because there will be nothing that I can ever do when I get out of college that will make me more money than playing poker. He also said that I was cursed to be one for the rest of my life. No disrespect to the people who do this for a living, but I just don’t want to be spending my life by myself sitting in front of my dual screen mouse-clicking away at a bunch of tables never seeing the daylight and never seeing any of my friends. I just feel like I’m wasting my life away just for the money.

It’s so hard for me to just sit out at a table. My sessions all end up being marathons because I do not know when to quit. I just sit there until I am too tired to do anything at all. My sessions often look like a great upsloping graph for the first 2 hours and then I make some dumb bonehead move because of being burned out and tired. Even though I’m still up...do I stop there? No. I get pissed at myself for pissing away money and try even harder to make it back...at this point I actually start to play better. This chain goes on for what seems like enternity.

I guess...to sum it all up. I feel so unhappy and unfulfilled with myself with this money. I feel like I’ve done nothing for the community and yet can’t seem to stop letting poker control my life. Does anyone out there have any advice or experienced similar experiences....

How do you guys deal with them...