Death of a game addict

Thanks Jason for this one.

Here we go again...

Shawn Woolley loved an online computer game so much that he played it just minutes before his suicide.

The 21-year-old Hudson man was addicted to EverQuest, says his mother, Elizabeth Woolley of Osceola. He sacrificed everything so he could play for hours, ignoring his family, quitting his job and losing himself in a 3-D virtual world where more than 400,000 people worldwide adventure in a never-ending fantasy.

"It's like any other addiction," Elizabeth Woolley said last week. "Either you die, go insane or you quit. My son died." Elizabeth Woolley, who says her son, Shawn, was addicted to EverQuest, wants to sue the makers.

"Shawn was playing 12 hours a day, and he wasn't supposed to because he was epileptic, and the game would cause seizures," she said. "Probably the last eight times he had seizures were because of stints on the computer."

Woolley knows her son had problems beyond EverQuest, and she tried to get him help by contacting a mental health program and trying to get him to live in a group home. A psychologist diagnosed him with depression and schizoid personality disorder, symptoms of which include a lack of desire for social relationships, little or no sex drive and a limited range of emotions in social settings.

"This fed right into the EverQuest playing," Woolley said. "It was the perfect escape."

EverQuest is played by more than 400,000 (-1) people worldwide.

News source: JSOnline