When Helpful Escapism Becomes Harmful Isolation
How a childhood of emotional abuse shaped my gaming habits
As a child, my bedroom was my secret base. It was a place where I could barricade myself and be safe from Dad.
The problem was, it didn’t really work.
My father was erratic and prone to sudden fits of rage (or happiness). He was an alcoholic until I was seven, quit that forever (albeit with a mildly suspect lifetime devotion to the yellow Listerine), and then smoked hash oil for a decade or two before quitting that.
He got his kicks out of teasing Mom and me. I can’t tell you how often he giggled and said, “You fat!” in this high-pitched, devilish voice to Mom. To this day she swears he was, “just joking.”
The worst was the anger. I never knew when he would snap and start growling at me. Along with the fear and consternation that produced whenever something set him off, I felt like it was my fault. That I did something stupid.
I was a sensitive kid. That behaviour scarred me.
I tried to hide in my room and keep to myself. To escape. That became my mission. At first, I turned to books, then video games.
My earliest escapes came from the NES and Dragon Warrior, my best from the SNES and Final Fantasy 2. I was, and still am, passionate about that game. I’d spend all my time in my room playing games, escaping into far-off worlds.
Until he would bang on the door, snarling, “That clickin’! In there at that clickin’!” He would often be stoned or drunk on the couch, the clicking of the controller buttons down the hall irritating him. Or it could be because I left my bike out that day or some other minor infraction that led to the five-alarm freak-outs.
It was only on rare summer nights when Mom and Dad went to the Parish Club until the wee hours of the morning that I could achieve that room-based freedom I strove for. Those moments were rare as Dad didn’t like to go out, but once or twice a year he could be convinced. I’d turn off all the lights in the house, close the door to my room, bust out the chips and just… float off into that other world.
That was how I experienced Shadowgate. It was an amazing, unforgettable, solitary adventure from the moment I found that key behind the skull above the door. Just me and a stark, strange world with countless secrets.
I was alone playing video games and it was the best feeling in the world.
And I chased that feeling for a long, long time.
I went to college for my second swing at education in the early 2000s. I didn’t have a console, but I had a barely functional PC. Just so happened at that time there was one legendary franchise that any barely functional PC could run: Diablo.
I’ve played video games for a long time now and sometimes I forget how much I have played a given game. Diablo suffered that indignity, but reflecting on my experience as I write this piece made me remember.
Diablo and Diablo 2 sustained me for years. I lost myself in it to a degree that became a tad…eyebrow-raising, to say the least.
I worked at a grocery store after I flamed out of Journalism after one semester. It was a five-minute bike ride from my apartment. For my fifteen minute break, I’d bike home, play Diablo for five minutes, and bike back to the store (I’d leave the PC running for the entire eight-hour shift so it would be ready when I got home). I know that had a lot to do with the addictive nature of the game, but I also know it’s because I wanted to be alone. To escape. Even for a few minutes.
Oddly, the desire to burrow into video games peaked after people genuinely liked me, like the people at the store did. But that’s what I’d do. I’d get to know people, make a lot of friends, then I’d ghost them and people would wonder what’s wrong.
Just trying to smoke weed and be alone.
Gotta hide from Dad, you understand.
I’m from an incredibly small town. It was inevitable that when you graduated, you move away for college, university or work. That’s how my friends and I split after high school graduation. Some went to different towns, one went to the mainland.
We had intermittent contact for a few years. Even convinced one of them to buy an Xbox instead of a PlayStation over the phone — thank you, Morrowind.
Eventually, we all moved to St. John’s and started playing video games together.
Xbox was first. Put in a lot of bonding there. Our first real cooperative experience was the original Ghost Recon. It was the first game that allowed us to define our roles and truly cooperate. Its difficulty and realism made all of that possible.
At first, we used a program called Kai for multiplayer. Then the 360 hit and suddenly multiplayer communication and play was incredibly easy (unless you had a PS3), so we moved to Xbox Live.
Video games were how we hung out, stayed in touch, and escaped. It was helpful to all of us, but my behaviour was already defined. That urge to be alone, to hide, was strong and ingrained by a lifetime of practice.
I’d sometimes hide my online status. Make excuses when they wanted to hang out with me just so I could smoke weed and play video games alone.
It put distance between us, a distance that grew for years.
This was harmful isolation.
My adult life comprised long stretches of time straining for the moment in the day when I could be alone with weed and video games. Although I loved gaming with my friends, I strove for the opposite. It was learned behaviour.
There’s plenty of research about how games help with social development and mental health, and that’s true. But there’s another side to that story. In the hands of the wrong person, video games can be destructive and emotionally stunting, with the wrong person being me.
I spent tens of thousands of hours and dollars just smoking weed and losing myself online. Sometimes I think I gave the best years of my life to Fallout 3 and Morrowind. I know you’re supposed to strike a balance between life and games, but that’s my point: I couldn’t.
It caused problems at work. It cost me jobs and put me thousands in debt over unfinished education. I wasn’t productive and I made poor life decisions.
An addictions counsellor once told me that when I disappeared into weed and games, I was actually trying to make the world stop. The thing was — as she so shrewdly pointed out — is that it didn’t stop. In fact, it kept going. The bills, the friendships, the classes, the workplace, the family, they all marched on and left me behind playing video games.
Helpful escapism with my friends transformed into harmful isolation when I replaced them all with weed and ingrained behaviour.
It’s been six years since my friends and I gamed together, and I don’t play alone nearly as much as I used to. These days I’m almost afraid to play. I could be writing! I could be working!
I think about the time I spent playing in my twenties and thirties when I could have been furthering my education or saving money, or… I know it’s not that simple, but you get the point: it’s hard for me to enjoy guilt-free gaming right now.
But my friends? Those I need. For my mental health and a connection to my home.
I realized that for me, escapism is helpful when my friends are there. People I know, whom I can talk to and be myself around.
After being alone so long, it was hard to reach out to them, but I did. And not because I wanted to get high and play alone, but because I was lonely and missed my bros.
Now, I’m really excited. I’m excited about getting back together with my friends and playing video games, not for harmful isolation, but helpful escape (by the way, we’re playing Battlefield 4).
I’m not trying to hide from Dad anymore. I’m trying to be seen by my friends.
And it’s a great feeling.
