Erick Lindgren's Spiral

Erick Lindgren Goes to Rehab to Cope with Gambling Addiction

By Renee | January 14, 2013

A couple of years ago ‘Erick Lindgren’ was a name to watch out for on the online poker and live poker circuit. The player was known to be highly skilled and was considered a bad boy poker player as an opponent. Erick Lindgren earned large winnings in live poker tournament winnings taking in as much as $8,508,354. He also holds one WSOP bracelet and two WPT titles.

However, in 2012 Erick Lindgren leaped into one loss after the other as he racked up a mountain of poker chips that he seemed to handing over in his online poker games. Indeed, Erick Lindgren did not quit while he was ahead nor did he quit when his losses surmounted to almost epic proportions. Eventually, when Lindgren finally pulled out of the losing lane he had been driving in, his losses and debts had reached the staggering total of almost $10 million.

Lindgren was even forced to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy to get out of the situation he was in. “I owed people a bunch of money, and it’s something that I’ve been working on for a long time, but I definitely slipped up, made some really bad mistakes and I needed to address that,” the player said.

It was at this stage, that Erick Lindgren realized that $10 million in losses spelt gambling addiction and was able to seek help in a rehab that a friend encouraged him to attend. “I just want to get back to where my word, when I say something, it means something and I just want to get back to a level of full accountability,” Lindgren said.

Lindgren, a 36 year old poker player, has had a dramatic professional poker life with many great wins and even greater losses.

Erick Lindgren has been progressing in the right direction and has taken steps to combat his gambling addiction by checking into a rehab clinic at Newport Beach in California. Lindgren, an American poker player had his stay there paid for by a concerned friend.

Now that the poker player is back from rehab it remains to be seen whether he will jump back into the poker scene and try to win back his losses. However, now that Lindgren has admitted to a gambling addiction, poker rooms will have to be a tad bit more active in monitoring the player’s poker gaming activity so as not to be seen to be enabling his addiction.