Doom
In 1993 I was 16 and studying for my A-Levels. All was going well until my older brother gave me a PC to help with my studies. There was just one problem; Doom was installed on the hard drive. I had enjoyed playing Wolfenstien during the summer holidays so I gave it a go. Never has anything sucked me in so hard and fast, not alcohol, not women, not dope, not gambling...

I would get up early to play Doom before school and as soon as I got home I would fire up the computer. I stopped sleeping, eating was not a priority and neither was my schoolwork. Needless to say I was failing miserably, misery being the operative word. I hated school my parents and myself. I think I hated Doom as well but I just couldn't stop playing it. By the time I got to the end of my lower sixth I was well on the way to becoming another teenage college dropout.

One night I was feeling really ill, probably a cold made worse by being a run-down Doom junkie so I necked a can of lager and went to bed. What followed was a night of the most terrifying delirious nightmares I have ever had. I was in the game without weapons and all I could do was run and hide...these dreams went on for hours.

I woke up screaming in a cold sweat in the early hours of the next morning and I knew straight away that I could never face playing Doom again. My mock exams were coming up and the grades would determine what universities I could apply to (if any). I dropped one of my A-Levels and revised my arse off. I also did something that I have never told another living being. I cheated. I refused to let a rough patch at 16/17 fuck up the rest of my life and I stand by that decision today.

I passed my mocks with the grades I needed and the rest, as they say, is history. I still don’t play first person shooters much.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Thu 18 Dec 2008, 18:07, 4 replies)

But still
you must have been bloody good at doom after all that and lets be honest, that's all that really matters in life.
(hipflask, Thu 18 Dec 2008, 18:21, closed)

I was
but it was before the days of online computing so I only ever played with myself (fnarr fnarr).
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Thu 18 Dec 2008, 18:41, closed)

Another Doom addict
Yes, I had the Doom addiction too: Doom and then Doom II, though it never went beyond that. Heretic, Quake etc. never floated my boat.

I too would sit there playing right up until bedtime and then have the nightmares. I did it a couple of times too often and then made a rule that I stopped playing at least an hour before going to bed.

The level of my addiction? In a non Doom-related incident, I managed to fold a brand new, sharp and shiny Swiss Army Knife blade shut on the end of the ring finger of my right hand. It went in almost to the bone, it hurt, it bled a lot, it took about a year for the feeling to come back into the fingertip, and it left a permanent scar. But all of that paled into insignificance: It was the finger that operated the right arrow key when playing Doom, and it was too painful to play for about a fortnight. Not that it stopped me from trying.

Deathmatches were great. One guy at work was pretty evenly matched with me, and another was just cannon fodder. I even wrote software for Doom II that randomised the levels and disabled the exits (nothing worse than someone 'accidentally' quitting while they're ahead on a deathmatch.)

Yes, you could say that I was addicted to Doom.
( Horatio P Lemming, Thu 18 Dec 2008, 19:22, closed)

I had a feeling there may be others out there.
I once read a magazine article that hypothesised that Doom was responsible for millions of failed exams, jobs, marriages.

I couldn't agree more.
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Fri 19 Dec 2008, 9:20, closed)