Memoirs of a Rush Addict

By Pauly
Somewhere in Utah

Friday afternoon. Just another day in the life. Ignoring the propaganda. Avoiding the hype. Ditching the herd. Hiding from reality. The world spins as per usual. Planes taking off behind schedule and land way late. Pandas shit in zoos. Taxi drivers gypping tourists without a clue. Babies born. Bodies buried. The racy secretaries watching the clock tick down on the verge of getting their Happy Hour drinky drink on. Friday afternoons. That's the best time to step up and take the plunge. The Rush.

The voice is soothing, sort of like the angelic whisper you hear before you depart this life and enter the afterlife. You no longer exist in the physical being, but your spirit lives on. The cards appear. Then re-appear. And over. And over. They say you can play almost 200 hands of PLO an hour. If you play three tables, that's 600 hands. Maybe less, never more. That's sort of how the hippies from the 1960s, the real hippies, the original hippies, the OG gansta of hippies say that the weed they smoked back then could not compare to what's being growing in houses, basements, and crawl spaces all across North America. It's stronger they say. Potent. Powerful. 100% better. One hit gets you so high, it takes you days to come down.

Welcome to Rush Poker. I took the plunge. Blind faith, they call it. Dumb faith if you ask me. Who jumps out of a plane without a parachute? Well, besides me?

Day 1... The first hour. P. L. O. A blur. I couldn't tell you how many hands I folded. Dozens. Hundreds. I waited and waited and waited. Junk hands. All spades. Three diamonds. Green clovers. Blue horseshoes. I saw four of a kind so many times I lost count. And then I finally woke up to a hand A-K-Q-10. Double suited. I missed BOTH flush draw. Fuck me. Rebuy. The next hour went something like this... Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Raise. Miss flop. Fold. Fold. Find Aces. Three-bet. Miss flop. Raise anyway. Get three-bet and fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Call out of position with double-suited Jacks. Flop a Jack. Check-raise. Get three-callers. Turn a boat. Jam. Felt a Frenchie with a flush. Fold. Fold. Fold. Raise with Aces. Get four callers. No redraws. Cracked by two pair. Rebuy. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. 3-bet with Air. Miss the flop. Bet anyway. Win the pot. No way. Ah, my opponent was from Norway. Figures. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Get double suited royal cards. Flop a flush draw. Whiff. Rebuy. Fold.Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Raise with Kings. Raise the flop. Win the turn. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Call out of position with 5-6-7-8. Flop two pair. Turn a flush redraw. River a middle flush. Lose to Brit's bigger flush. Rebuy. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. I flop a set of Nines and snap off Aces. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. 1,876 hands later... I'm up two-buy ins. I started to recognize players. Takes a junkie to know a junkie. I wonder if they are paying attention to me and remember the time I cracked their Aces. I took a piss three times since I started and I love wi-fi because it lets me pee and fold at the same time. I'm not like those lazy fucking Rush-heads who just piss themselves or bought adult diapers. I actually get off and piss while my laptop is carefully balanced. Fold. Fold. Fold.

Day 2... I stopped playing three tables. I went to one so I could focus on my Google searches. I was seeking out psychiatrists in the Los Angeles area who made house-calls. You'd be surprised to find out that there's more head shrinkers in L.A. then there are actual plastic surgeons. I was shocked. My goal was to find a crooked shrink in the Hollywood area to write me a script for Adderall... but waive the office visit and come to me. In this shitty economy, there has to be one or two shrinks strapped for cash who will certainly do me a favor and stop by my apartment in the slums of Beverly Hills, so I can keep playing PLO. The thought if stopping is miserable and I'm running out of those little blue pills. I'll even toss in an extra $100 if the crooked shrink even picks up my pills at the 24 hour Pharmacy down on Fairfax. Just I wrote this, I stacked a German-donk. Suck it, Kraut. I flopped a set of bitches, turned a diamond draw, and rivered a boat. Ship it, Kaiser. The other Google search was trying to find a legitimate Canadian pharmacy that will actually sell me real medication instead of water pills. It seems like my junk mail is broken down into two main categories.... 1) a Nigerian princess needs my help to get her inheritance out of a Swiss bank... and... 2) a nice Canadian who is sympathetic about America's retarded health care system is willing to send me Valium at discount prices! Sounds too good to be true. But hey, if that means I can pay 50% less for pills from the Great White North that I can get down the street, then so be it. Except I don't want Valium. I don't need to get down. I wanna stay up. The longer I can stay up, the more money I can win playing Rush. The more speed that I can eat, the more hands I can play. The more hands that I can play, the more money I can win. You see this evil endless cycle. It never fuckin' stops. So please to my gregarious Canadian readers, please send me whatever you can get your hands on. Consider this Junkie Relief. Your donations are tax deductible.

Day 3... I've been up for a while. Everything looks green. The world has a green tint. I wonder if that's from all of the green tea? The only thing I have eaten since I sat down were speed in pill form and three Clif Bars. I've drank enough water to keep seventy camels full for three years, which is why I'm pissing every fifteen minutes. I can't remember how much I'm up or down. When I need to rebuy, Full Tilt keeps letting me, so I have to assume I have yet to blow my entire bankroll. Unless I'm playing on credit, which would be awesome and treacherous in the same instance. Most of my late night looked like this. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Gets Aces cracked. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Crack Aces with a set. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Flop a set and get sucked out on. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Aces cracked. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Crack Aces with Kings. Oh snaaaaaaap. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold.

Day 4... The delirium is starting to pass. I stopped hallucinating seven or eight hours ago. My fingers are sticky. My girlfriend moved out of the apartment and screaming something about staying in a hotel until she finishes planning the intervention. I think I'm up 51 buy-ins. I'm not too sure. Hard to keep track. Those Scandis play like drunken midgets in a Tijuana whorehouse on Easter Sunday. Sweet Jesus, all I have been doing was seeking out Eurodonks and trying to stack them. It works. Just three-bet and four-bet any Scandi and they will piss away their entire stack to you. Try it. Any four cards. It works.

Day 5... Been up for way more than 100 hours closing in on 120. I met the aliens who live on my block. I'm not talking about the Laotians, I'm talking about the visitors from the Orion Nebula. They come out at night and pick through my garbage. All the time, I thought they were homeless people. I had no idea that's the aliens cover. Clever. Pretty cool actually. They were scared off by the shrink who made the house-call. I need to call him back because the pill bottle is almost empty. I had 90 pills. Down to a dozen. Had to start snorting Adderall late last night in order to get that instant jolt of energy. I was up to six tables at once, but dropped down to three. Still waiting on those relief packages from Canadia. I'm gonna dance a jig when I chow down on Tim Horton's and Canuck's version of generic speed. That's the stuff they give hockey players. No wonder they are so fast on the ice. Shit, I'm gonna start shooting the batch of Canuck speed. That's the next progression, right? Pills. Snort. Spike. All I know is that when you crush up the blue pills, you have a dusty trail of blue magic in front of you. The more you inhale, the more hands you can play. The cycle continues and continues and blue dye runs down the back of my throat. That's when you know you got the good shit... when it tastes like heaven and you can't feel your fuckin' face.

Day 6.... Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Aces cracked. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. I crack Aces. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Flop a straight flush. Felt a Dutchie. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Aces cracked. Again. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. I flop a set and lose to a bigger set. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Aces cracked. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold.

Day 7... "Let's all get drunk. I want to take pictures," said Kerouac. In order to stay awake, I downloaded a few Kerouac novels in audiobook format. Odd yet awesome to hear him read On the Road, but his voice and the words keep me going and moving and sound like a smacked out trumpet player in a jazz band rattling off note after note as I sit and steam about folding hand after hand after hand after hand before I finally wake up to something decent and three-bet shove on the turn with a wrap and nothing more. Rebuy! I had a short period when I was raising every single hand. I lost fourteen buy-ins. The next three hours look like this... Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Call out of position because I'm bored. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold.

Day 8... The intervention failed. They actually thought that I would be stupid enough to answer the door when I heard a knock. I knew they were trying to take me away. Traitors. All of you. I thwarted your insurgency. Those greasy socialists running the Nanny State cannot tell me what to do in my own home, even though I am pantsless, haven't eaten in three days, maybe four days, no three days, and my nostrils are caked with a blue crust. 2,300 hands later (2,200 of which I folded) ... I dropped fourteen buy-ins, but that's OK because I have a fool-proofed way to get pharmies delivered to my house using Full Tilt Points. It's in Uncle Howard and Jesus' best interest to keep me jacked up and playing for 128 more straight hours. Shit the rake alone will more than pay for the cost of paying off an ex-Nazi scientist living in Argentina to create a special pill for Full Tilt customers that will allow them to play six or more tables of Rush.

Day 9... Been up for over 200 hours. Maybe 210? 220? Who knows. Whoever came up with that Rush concept should be skull-fucked. Lives are going to be ruined. Marriages destroyed. Houses lost. Cars repossessed. Children taken away and tossed into foster care. Emergency rooms are going to flooded with junkies OD'ing on Rush. Thick purple circles around the eyes. Fingers perpetually stuck in a claw-like pose. Covered in urine and feces because once you get hooked, you're unable to move. The Religious Right is going to have a field day with this. The moralists are going to find some brain-dead Rush addict and parade his drooling ass slumped in a wheel chair on all of the talk shows. Cavuto. Beck. George Lopez. Everyone will want to talk to the innocent honor student who was corrupted by the dark side of the force. They will use this as an excuse to ban the internet outright. And if you get caught playing online poker, you'll get tossed into the new Gitmo with the Islamic Fundamentalists and have to do the naked pyramid nightly to amuse the guards otherwise you don't get any meat. And don't even think about the fuckin' pudding either. We might let the prisoners of war pray to Mecca, but we sure as hell don't give them dessert.

Day 10... Rush can only lead to bad things. A religious revolution. A Christian Jihad. Back to burning books and branding online gamblers. Next thing you know, you'll have to walk through full body scanners just to cross the street. But hey it's not my fault. I can handle my drugs. Rush ain't shit. That's amateur stuff compared to what I ingested in the 1990s. Don't forget, the Clinton era was a bonanza for cocaine and psychedelics until the infamous Pickford Acid Bust in an abandoned missile silo in Kansas. If you dropped a dose of liquid sunshine in the 1990s, 90% chance it was cooked up by Pickford. It's those weak-ass mofos who don't know what they are getting into which fuck up the fun for the rest of us. We're adults. We know exactly what we're getting into. The Jeffersonian Anarchist in me invokes the spirit of out Founder Father and preaches that all men have the divinity within to make the correct decisions in terms of their own pursuit of happiness. Jefferson wanted the federal government out of his personal life. And rightly so. But the rush of Rush is too dangerous. Too many fuckups are going to get hooked and a new pandemic will devastate the intertubes. Mass suicides. Daily prayer vigils. Lots of media coverage. If you have a poker blog, get ready for the media blitz. Hold on a second, I have the BBC on the phone. They want to know about the addicts. What is America going to do with all of the addicts? I say let them rot.

Day 11... Canadian pharmacies were a fuckin' hoax. I found a new shrink but he's charging me up the ass because he can. I had to resort to exotic Brazilian herbs and roots to keep me awake. Ibogaine. The secret drug that Hunter reported that Ed Muskee was chomping on during his entire Presidential campaign in 1972. It made him go mad, but for a while, it kept him moving and functioning. Hey, I don't care if I go crazy. I just need to stay up for a few more days... I need to get unstuck. Besides, I'm really starting to get the hang to Rush. I'm only down $14,000 but I still have a few hundred left in my account. The Brazilian roots are fantastic. More powerful than any of the pills I acquired. Nature is certainly more toxic than anything a big pharma company can synthesize in a laboratory. By the way, I dunno if the hallucinations returned, but I'm seeing more aliens. Well, creatures are more like it. Sort of hobbit-like figures that hide underneath the floorboards. They are plain evil and try to scare me into chasing them down the alley. I can only go forty or fifty feet before the wi-fi signal gets weak which is why I don't play outdoors. I also don't want my neighbors to see me and call the police. Besides, it's safer for me to stay indoors. I get too paranoid the second I step outside. Everyone I come across is either a government agent or a spy. I don't trust anyone, except the witch doctor in Koreatown who sells me the Brazilian herbs. All I know, is it keeps me in the game. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Raise with Aces. No action. Fold. Fold. Fold. Raise with junk, everyone calls. I miss the flop and fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold.Fold. Fold. Fold.Fold. Fold. Fold.Fold. Fold. Fold.Fold. Fold. Fold.Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold. Fold.

Day 22... Sorry for the lack of updates. I'm in Utah. At this place called Choices. They say it's not a rehab center, but rather a place that will "help you make better decisions and choices in life." For fuck's sake it's rehab. I don't know what happened. I think I passed out. It's hard to remember. My memory if fuzzy, a result of too much Ibogaine abuse. The first three days of rehab were awesome because I slept the entire time. I had no idea I had a roommate. I thought I was dreaming. Anyway, this place sucks. I'm stuck in the middle of Bumblefuck, Utah so trying to escape the medical compound is futile. Unless of course I want to deal with pious Mormons with their special underwear. Yeah, I'm surrounded by Mormons outside the walls. And inside, it's a friggin' zoo. Jesus, I have my shit together compared to these headcases. If you want to talk about some fucked up people, you should get forced into rehab sometime. If you want to make a million dollars, just follow around any four of these trainwrecks for a weekend and you'll have a runaway hit reality show. But the one thing I learned in rehab is that once I get out, I'll know a dozen hard core addicts who can hook me up once everyone leaves when their insurance runs out. Anyway, I have to go to my morning group therapy session and listen to those dingle biscuits bitch and moan about how they weren't loved enough as a child. By the way, I daydream all the time. What do I see? The QUICK FOLD button.


Original content written and provided by Pauly from Tao of Poker at www.taopoker.com. All rights reserved. RSS feeds are for non-commercial use only.