CASINOS in & near JOPLIN, MISSOURI - 2021 up-to-date list ...

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
This section is a bit erratic as I had to jump around a lot and it may not flow well. I almost didnt post it and instead did a short version, but it did the story no justice imo. The tail off in these posts are going to end with a lot of self reflection and things I have learned through all of this. I hope to keep the remainder to less than 3-4 parts but could genuinely make it 30-40 if I wanted to. This part (the bulk of it) is going to cover the least amount of actual time but its a pretty important juncture in my life.
I am about 3-4 weeks clean of opiates but I am still withdrawing badly, though no where near as bad as I was early on it was still bad. Could not sleep was always sore and achey sneezy runny nose etc etc. They say a month is what it takes to cold turkey but I was taking so much that it wasnt pacing well. One thing I realize in my current day and I will probably elaborate on it more later but taking oxy or opiates was only about the high for a month or two in the beginning. If you know anyone who struggles with it they arent taking it to get high, they are taking it to not hurt, taking it just to feel normal. Opiates are so unbelievably addicting its mind boggling to me. They are the most evil thing I have ever encountered.
I am driving to go play as I am trying to start playing live for income and I reach into my center console to grab some aspirin (it kinda helped the joint pain and physical pain of the withdraw) and I dump a few aspirin out and a little blue/green pill falls into my hand. As it turns out there were three 30s in that bottle. I remember this so vividly. I havent had an ounce of opiates since WSOP. Im 2-3 weeks from being clean of withdrawal and the worst is behind me, and I stumble onto these. I clench them in my hands for the rest of the drive to the casino. I even call my dad to tell him to try and get motivation to rid of them. He told me to throw them out the window obviously. Its why they were clenched in my hand. I rolled down the window and just hang my hand unable to open it. I cant bring myself to get rid of them. I remember laughing at it. A weird thing about being on oxy/heroin then getting clean is the emotions, despite being in pain from withdrawal I was laughing again, I hadnt laughed in a while. Emotions are strong when you havent felt them in a long time, whether it be anger or joy or sadness it is overwhelming. Anyhow I convince myself that I can handle doing 3 more and be fine. So I crush one up and blow it. I go into the casino to play, and within an hour I am getting the other two crushed up. My tolerance was still sky high even after a month roughly. I blow all 3 in an hour and play for a couple hours and leave once they wear off, withdrawals end up increasing a bit and now I am just wanting some hydrocodone to make the withdrawal go away.
So now I break my 3-4 weeks clean (immediately following WSOP) and buy some loritabs. These just took the pain away. There was no high from them but it took a lot to make the pain go away, was taking 3 10s at a time 5-6 times I day. Ashamedly I was actually snorting these too :/ which is a lot of powder and aspirin.
My body has been waking up from not having oxy. What I mean is oxy numbs you physically and mentally. You could jerk off for 3 hours and make your dick bleed but you wont get off. Youre emotionally and physically numb. So my sex drive is coming back. I have about 6k to my name. I am playing cards one day and I just snap. I lose it. I cant handle the monotonous live game. Not to mention I was playing 1-2nl as thats what was available in Tulsa outside of weekend nights and a scheduled big game.
So I text a girl I messed around with before oxy. I havent talked to her in 18 months she had no clue I was even doing oxy but I still remember the text I sent (for the most part)
I sent her a text asking her if she wanted to go on a mini road trip. (Im absurdly blunt and overly analytical and it hurts me with women) She asked to where and I responded by jokingly saying theres a good satanic cult meet up in Kansas. A few messages exchange and I tell her to just pack a bag and I will be there in an hour. She agrees. I run home and pack myself a bag. I go to pick her up and shes having second thoughts and I convince her once again. We go to the airport (yea its changed to flying somewhere) with intention of taking the next flight out to anywhere really. Well Tulsa has few options so we have to go to Dallas and we will assess from there. I only have cash mind you and they rape you for buying cash. We get to Dallas and its either Vegas or Orlando. Vegas it is. We get to Vegas and I we have no reservation so we go to Caesars (decent rooms much cheaper than Bellagio etc) and all they have are Junior Suites. Fuck it give me two nights (its a Friday and were going back Sunday because she works Monday) at 650 a night. Then we eat a couple nice meals and money already running thin.
Now, I am supposed to be having fun on this trip. I like this girl actually, shes a great girl. However what I have yet to mention is when I ran home and packed my bag I left my bottle of hydrocodones... every passing hour after flying to Dallas I am further into withdrawal. I end up drinking most of the trip. I have the shits. Im sneezing. Im paranoid and over analytical and it just made an awful trip.
At one point on that Saturday night she gets frustrated and cries and tells me “I like love you _, but this _” the first __ is my name, the second I dont remember. I basically just got hit with the first part and I actually cry, standing in front of the Bellagio fountains. It was a combination of frustration with life having gone broke, opiate withdrawals, was drunk trying to mask withdrawals and that aided it and lastly hearing her say that just hurt me because I had clearly hurt her. I had messed with her 18+ months ago but was always playing cards never really made any efforts, essentially unavailable emotionally. Then I take her to Vegas and I am drinking and so fucking paranoid to fool around with her cause I am withdrawing and will blow a load in seconds or wtf ever else. Those words hit me hard though. I am too dumb to know that she felt that way. That is pretty much my assessment of that and a common theme with women for me. I do not pick up on subtle cues very well, and I am so analytical that any cues I do pick up I find a way to chalk it up to something else.
She was angry the rest of the trip and I never once talked to her again. I tried once but its irrelevant. I am in my early 30s and have never had a serious relationship in my life, thanks to poker and drugs. Honestly I think poker is the biggest reason. At the end of the day when you first start playing poker it is an addiction. I at one time in my life was a poker addict (spoiler alert I still play) and it consumed me. Time away from poker was spent altering my mind. I never was available to anyone. Before I played poker I had normal encounters with women. The longer I played the worse I became.
Ok I will try to rev this up a bit, those two or three months I reflect on a lot though. I think about her occasionally and had even meant to tell her this stuff at one time but never did (shes still unaware of everything outside of the shutdown breaking me, and that was more me than the shutdown).
So part 6 ended with me selling my truck. This actually happens now. I get home from Vegas with her and have relief with hydrocodones. I shatter my relationship with her, and actually one with a good friend who had owed me money and I had him run his card for my flights from Dallas to Vegas to save like 2000$ and made the mistake of saying I will write his debt off which was 3x what the flights cost. In fairness he used a company card, I agreed to terms and failed them. He was a very good friend to me and I have never talked to him since either. Partly because he is kind of a psycho (I say this kindly, hes just good friend or a bad enemy, not much in between) and told me if I ever see him I should turn around and run (to this day if I see him I would be tempted to do so, the guys a brute, hits harder than anyone I know, and I could write several pages of stories about him, I have seen him shatter the front window of a brand new corvette with a punch, not joking, shattered not cracked, be it a fluke or not I saw it, was in 2010 sometime, he went to jail obviously, quite the ramble on this but am tempted to share the story as its something out of a movie)
Fuck it. Short version.
At a bar 2010 with him his roommate and one of my friends in Dallas where he lived and we were visiting. His roommate walks over to a table of girls to hit on them and comes back saying her brother is mad. His roommates back turned to the table, my friend Joey is facing that table. The brother starts walking towards us angrily as Joey watches. This guy has 40lbs on Joey, but Joey is a freak of nature.
Once in range Joey swings and lays this guy out cold. Bar fight ensues. Joey breaks another guys jaw and has the original guy knocked out and the first guy in torn up. Theres a pile of security and shit with Joey on the bottom. It gets split up (Joey never got hit somehow, or had no bruises) and the bouncers are taking him outside. On the way outside with bouncers routing him by pushing him in front he bumps a table. Asshat hero at the table with two guys two gals says “hey buddy watch the table”. Joey breaks his right arm free and swings around his body (guys on his left) and literally knocks this guy on his back while still in his chair. Basically got a wind up and a 180 degree turn for that punch.
Outside they push him off and tell him to get the fuck out of here (cops are called already, I am not sure why they didnt try to detain him tbh, he fucked 3 guys up at this point) so Joey being Joey he kicks a potted plant over walks out towards his car to drive off and on the way to his car hes walking between two cars, one of which is this brand new 2011 Camaro and he just shatters the window... hits it dead center and fucking shatters it. Cops arrive pretty quickly and scoop him up.
One of the guys had his jaw wired shut and one needed reconstructive surgery on his nose if I remember right. The third guy got out good I guess. There was a fuck load of blood though.
Ok back to my shit. Had to tell that though, its a nuts story that doesnt even sound real. I wouldnt believe it from an anonymous source either, its ok.
As 2011 wears on I am losing control further. I end up having to move out of the house I dump like 40k into (while my sister refuses to show me any of the note progress and its now her house again, though she loses it eventually)
I have nowhere to go basically. My parents wont let me come if I am doing opiates. So I end up staying with a friend in Joplin MO. I am unable to stay afloat on pills and poker. I go busto a few times. Random money would arrive to me from old carbon checks to Stars paying out to running ok on TruePoker (kept a 10-15k roll alive long enough to do opiates for a couple months) but I am bouncing from hydros to oxycontin back and forth, running out quite often.
I end up in a methadone clinic early 2012 and eventually quit doing the pills. I am beyond depressed, barely leaving the room I had at my friends house. I am sure I laid in bed for 7 days straight a time or two. I pay him no rent and have to borrow money for my clinic trips. He had the house for free via a mutual friend though. Once my True account ran out I go on poker hiatus.
From 2012 to 2014ish I play essentially no poker aside from a few hands on Intertops from left over cake money. Which I bust eventually.
One isolated poker story from this stretch goes as such. I am staying at a hotel my grandfather (poker one) owns in a small town in NE Oklahoma. Hes letting me stay in one of the cabins on the property. I drive 45 minutes 3-4 days a week to get methadone here. I am depressed have no job and hustle money somehow. I dont even know where it came from but I would stumble onto a thousand here and there.
Tulsa is having tourneys one weekend. So I go play this 350$ two day. I forget the guarantee (it wasnt wsop or wpt it was local) but I think its 100k. It is one of the two or three times I enter a casino over these two years but I bag day one and day two goes well and we end up chopping it 3-4 ways with me and another guy taking two best spots at 15-16k. I remember zero hands from this tourney.
I go back to the cabin I was staying in. I have 15-16k now. I remember being alleviated about having money. I hadnt held 10,000$ in 12-18 months. I dont play a single hand of poker with it. It was so calming to have this money, I was content and didnt want to lose a dime of it. I did buy some oxy with it despite being on methadone and it doing nothing basically. This actually all happened before moving to Joplin, so it is chronologically wrong here. I slowly bleed this money off over a couple months. I just remember the contention I had for having it.
I get accustomed to methadone eventually and move back to Tulsa with another friend. I get a normal job slinging Pizzas at Papa Johns and fucking hate it. What an awful company, they make good pizza (for chain) but they are a joke to work for. Tip those drivers well, they make shit and get (at the time) 50 cents a delivery. PJs charges people 3$ and gives 50 cents to the driver...
Later on I have a buddy who deals circuit events and I get him to help me get hired. He gets me on under the assumption I have dealt before, I have not. I have dealt at my home games back in the day a time or two, I ended up being fine. I deal an event in St Louis then am trying to get set up for Tunica, buuuut I have a felony from when I was 18 (pre poker, never told story but long story short I got B&E charges for getting into a bunch of unlocked cars) and that ends my dealing career. So I move back home as the friend I was sharing a place with in Tulsa was on methadone and genuinely the dumbest guy I know. He was a highschool friend who I partied with a long time, but he ended up fucking me out of rent and didnt pay (just kept my money) and we get evicted.
Side note to the dealing job I had. I did play some poker in St Louis because the stop was so slow. I ended up making like 800$ dealing and 2k playing 1-2nlh while there. I play no poker when returning though, once again content to have any money at all.
I am still on methadone which my parents hate me being on it for obvious reasons. I get a job near them at a mushroom farm doing manual labor. I needed the exercise. Then get hired on to work in a warehouse driving a forklift for dick money. I do this for 6~ months or so.
I will do the next part picking up here. I make an unusual style return to poker. It is a great story imo and things get more positive.