SARASOTA, Fla. – At the height of what he calls his addiction, Ryan Van Cleave would stand in the grocery store checkout line with his milk and bread and baby food for his little girls and for a split second think he was living inside a video game.
It sounds crazy, but it's true: Something would catch his attention out of the corner of his eye — maybe another shopper would make a sudden move for a Hershey bar — and he was mentally and emotionally transported to another world.
World of Warcraft, to be exact.
It was his favorite video game, the one he played every night, every day, sometimes all weekend. The sudden movement in the store triggered a response similar to when he was in front of the computer screen, battling dragons and monsters for up to 60 hours a week. Van Cleave's heart pounded. His breathing quickened.
But then the thirtysomething family man would catch his breath and come back to reality. Sort of.
World of Warcraft began to crowd out everything in Van Cleave's world. His wife. His children. His job as a university English professor.
Before teaching class or late at night while his family slept, he'd squeeze in time at the computer screen, playing. He'd often eat meals at the computer — microwave burritos, energy drinks, Hot Pockets, foods that required only one hand, leaving the other free to work the keyboard and the mouse.
But possibly the most insidious part of his addiction came in the hours when he wasn't gaming. During those times — in class, out with his kids, drinking beers with friends — he thought about the game. Which weapons he should upgrade, which "quests" or challenges to take on, whether to join a "guild," a team of players who conquer territories, gain points and status.
Gaming and thinking about gaming was all-consuming. Yet living inside World of Warcraft seemed preferable to the drudgery of everyday life. Especially when the life involved fighting with his wife about how much time he spent on the computer.
"Playing `World of Warcraft' makes me feel godlike," Van Cleave wrote. "I have ultimate control and can do what I want with few real repercussions. The real world makes me feel impotent ... a computer malfunction, a sobbing child, a suddenly dead cell phone battery — the littlest hitch in daily living feels profoundly disempowering."
Despite thoughts like this, despite the dissociative episodes in supermarkets, he did not think he had a problem IRL — gamerspeak for In Real Life. But he did, and a reckoning was coming.
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