Are video games bad for us? Hear Pete Etchells dig behind alarmist gaming headlines newscientistlive.com CASE STUDY
Sam, a successful stockbroker and married father of two, has a life that looks perfect. “From the outside, everybody thinks I’m ‘that guy’. I’m always exceeding my targets, winning awards and helping people. But on the inside, I have this shadow that nobody knows about, that I’m so ashamed of. I hate myself. It’s a part of me that I cannot resist or control,” he says. Sam can remember the beginnings of obsessive thoughts and behaviours around pornography developing at the age of 12. But it was only in his 20s, when he met his wife and his career took off, that they became problematic. “I remember staying late at the office saying I had work to do, but really I was watching porn on my work computer until midnight, a couple of times a week. Stress, uncertainty and fear at work would be massive triggers for me to reach out to my drug, which was porn,” he says. He soon began “using” four times a week. “I’d wake up next to my wife with anxiety at midnight, sneak downstairs, then binge until 6 am, before getting an hour’s sleep and going to work,” he recalls. Sometimes he would start shaking at work, “like a drug addict or an alcoholic”, he says. Without pornography, he couldn’t think or function. His marriage deteriorated. At times, Sam felt suicidal. About a year ago, his wife found him watching
