"Thanks pGO, you're helping save my life."

#PokemonGO: Hey all, I lurk on another account usually, I just wanted to say thanks to the people here and pGO in general. It's saving my life.I have severe social anxiety and depression. Last year for example (2018), there were several months where I would only leave the house for 2 things: bring my son to and fro school, and groceries. I haven't been able to work for 2 years now because I spiraled downward, hard. I almost took my life one point and was hospitalized. I used to hardly be able to be outside for more than 2 hours without having severe anxiety and trouble breathing, blood pressure spiking. I've lived in a constant state of anxiety for so long and now it's slowly going away. I'm no longer sitting on the couch struggling to breathe with my BP hitting 160/105 or more all the time.I wasn't always like this though, before I went downhill I was hanging out with people, socializing, going to the park every single day with my son rain or shine. I had a fantastic unionized job making great money. Being a constructive member of society. But I started going home and being mentally drained, berating myself for social interactions/how people perceived me/jokes I made/etc and it got exponentially worse from there. I have sole custody of my son and throughout the court battle and his issues I dealt with, I never bothered dealing with my own issues, I had more important things to deal with.Late in the year (November) I was convinced to login to my old pGO account I created in July 2016, I was level 9. I started playing more and more. Actually being able to leave the house! I quickly started getting multiple 25k rewards, taking my son out and playing with him on my phone. Now I'm level 28 with 219km under my belt. I created an account for my 6yro son on Dec 27 with an old phone of mine and he's walked a total of 50km so far with me and we have a ton of fun.I go outside, and don't even think about people. I hotspot my son's device and we walk around anywhere and everywhere. By the end of this last weekly reset I had 51 eggs hatched for the week. I'm getting my life back. I may be able to start counseling and even go back to work in some time. I used to walk maybe 5km in a month at times, now I'm doing 25km weekly at least! I've got a long way to go, I still need professional help to get through what I'm going through for real, but this game was the stepping stone to get started and I'll forever appreciate it for that.Thanks to /u/player2424 for prompting me to post this with their post. I wish them well going forward along with everyone else here. Take care of yourself. via /r/pokemongo http://bit.ly/2RicxlR