Database Connection Pooling: A Necessary Evil?

So, I've been chewing on this database connection pooling thing lately. It's supposed to be great for performance, right? But I've also noticed it can make debugging way harder, especially with those sneaky connection leaks or timeouts. Are we all just gritting our teeth and dealing with it for the speed boost, or are there times when just connecting straight up still works fine, maybe even better? I'm really interested to hear what you all have found works, when you decide to use pooling, and what to watch out for.