Do you think this will help or hurt my poker game?

[VoraciousReader]

This post is homeless, if you think it would be more appropriate for another forum, please advise.

My college roommate has moved back to town after 4 years away. We're very close. I discovered poker very recently... I think I played for the first time (freeplay) in December, and fell completely, hopelessly in love with the game. ANYWAY, she absolutely will not go to a casino where she would be playing with real money, but thinks it would be a fun thing for us to do together to join a local amateur poker league where you play for points.

I am torn. I play about twice a week at the riverboat casinos and often clear about $2-400 in profit playing 3/6.
Online, I play .50/1 and STTs and, while I've cashed out twice and tripled my original bankroll, I have no illusions about the fact that I am a barely mediocre poker player at this point. Maybe not even mediocre. That's okay, because I enjoy it and have dedicated myself to becoming better at it, and I see progress in my game.

On the one hand, it would be nice to have a friend to share my interest in poker. (My boyfriend really wishes I would go on a huge losing streak, and not be able to continue.) On the other hand, I'm a little concerned that people freeplaying for points and essentially meaningless "standings" might play differently enough from people playing for money that it might encourage me in bad habits that I'm actively working on eliminating. Or, it could just be practice in adapting my game to the table I'm sitting at. I can't decide which. [img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img]

The bottom line is I'm not that good, and I want to be plugging leaks in my game, not drilling new ones. Plus, I'm not wild about the idea of possibly giving up one of my $250+ evenings at the casino to go play somewhere that I win no money and have to pay for food and drink. Essentially, the only reason I would do this is to spend time with my friend. (Spending time with her is very much +EV.)

Any thoughts as to whether this could hurt me? Or is even being concerned about that an indicator that I should give up now and go back to playing Crazy Eights?