Latest / LAUNCH: Parenting Tips for Raising Adult Children & Building Better Relationships / #70: A 30-Year-Old Shares His Story of Video Game Addiction & Recovery

Transcript

#70: A 30-Year-Old Shares His Story of Video Game Addiction & Recovery · LAUNCH: Parenting Tips for Raising Adult Children & Building Better Relationships

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a parent of an adult child, worried and frustrated because they are struggling to become independent, responsible, and find purpose in their life, or you want to know what to do to prevent it, you're in the right place.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's an absolute pleasure.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: So for anyone new here, this is a podcast for parents with young adults in their 20s and 30s who are struggling to move forward, whether that's from a lack of motivation, self-confidence, mental health struggles, addiction, my guests and I address it all and offer suggestions and resources.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Today I'm speaking with Jake Uskiowski, a 30-year-old staff software engineer.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And rather than telling you why he's here, I'm going to let him tell his story, which I find to be so incredibly inspiring.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, Jake, if you don't mind, please share with us what your greatest achievement has been so far in your life.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe there's many, but you know, specifically the one I'm talking about.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Take us back to that first year in university.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: I like to say that I have always been a gamer, as the way to say it.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: I have loved games in all forms and every sense of the action to play.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: When I was a very small kid, I would run around the playground, play with my brother.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we'd make up games to play in our backyard.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, as I got older and I got access to like handheld games, like a game boy or something, uh, I was enamored.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: My family played card games almost every night, or we'd play some board games or anything.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the act of play was integral to my childhood.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: However, this grew problematic.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: For me, uh, gaming eventually shifted from this activity that I participated in for family bonding, for enjoyment, for all these sort of things, to a coping mechanism, a way to escape a lot of my anxiety, my fears, my depression, uh, my challenges fitting into the world around me.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it culminated after many years of problematic amounts of gaming in a terrible year at university where I finally was away from parental supervision and support, uh, the networks that I had relied on my entire life up until then.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: And rather than going to classes, I was gaming uh into the middle of the night and through the middle of the night all the way into the morning, getting breakfast and then falling asleep through all my classes.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: The eventual end point of this was in my second year, where I got deregistered from my program and from my year due to a late tuition payment because I was too afraid to look at my grades and my email from the past year, expecting that I would have failed, and the failure itself would have lost my co-op program, and the spiral of anxiety exploded out from that point.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I missed the tuition deadline email that I should have seen, uh, ended up cooped up alone in my apartment, starving myself, uh, still just playing games through the night, trying to avoid all acts of life, not bathing, not taking care of myself.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and finally, on October 2015, I believe, Halloween night uh or Halloween day, uh, I was finally pulled out of the apartment by the residence assistants who knocked on my door.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And they had knocked plenty of times before trying to reach me since I was not allowed to be in residence anymore, but they knocked on my door.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they pulled me out because I answered finally, uh, and they took me to talk to the manager of the residence who said, Jake, you can't stay here.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry of your circumstances and everything.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: He was a lovely man, very helpful, very generous.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but he said, just the circumstances are you can't stay here.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: So either you can reach out to a guardian or I can.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I went back to that room and I sat and I thought about what am I going to do now?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And in that moment, when I relied on what I believed all my life to be a nice and logical brain, what do people do in this situation?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: What is it that people who are stuck in this spot?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: I had spent the many years leading up to this point lying about my situation with gaming and specifically my university uh program, the grades that I'd gotten, the class I was attending, how I was doing to my parents, my family.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was a lot that I would have to reveal if I were to come clean and talk to my mom, talk to my dad, say, I need help, I'm struggling, I'm being kicked out, I need support.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I could reach out to them.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was just I would lose everything if I did.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: The alternative was I could run away.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: A person in this situation might try and flee.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but as I mentioned, this is October 31st.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: We're in the middle of fall in Ontario.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's cold, it's only getting colder.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I don't think I would last very well out there.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel well, it's just gonna lead to death.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: And the last option that my brain told me in that moment was Jake, when people reach this point, they'll take their own lives.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I looked out the window at the changing colors of the leaves, my favorite time of year.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: October's the month of my birthday, and I was too scared.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't ready to leave to take my life to find out what that other side looks like.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: And that meant I couldn't do that choice.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: The idea that my brain could even tell me this is a choice I could make, a choice that I was making.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: I had dropped from 180 pounds to 120 at 6'2.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's not a weight you want to see your son at.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was a skeleton, and I didn't realize that I had been slowly killing myself in that room.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't run away, because again, that's the same result.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: So on that day, I reached out to my mom.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote her an email about what had happened, what had gone on, and then I cried.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: She called me and I continued to cry.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: And she said she'd come and get me, and I continued to cry for the hour until she got there.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the start of my greatest accomplishment, which is recovery and becoming healthy, becoming capable, dependent, confident of a person who loves himself How many years ago was that?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: That was eleven years now, almost.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: It'll be 11 years in October this year.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: So bring us up to speed.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, obviously, I'm I shouldn't say obviously, but I'm guessing it wasn't a straight line from where you were to where you are today.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: It is not a linear process or recovery.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh for me, this was very early on in video gaming addiction in general.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there wasn't a lot of support from, say, Cam H uh or other organizations.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: There was, I think like Jack.org existed back then, but it wasn't talked about.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: No one really knew about it.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and the WHO still hadn't recognized uh gaming disorder as a mental health illness or an addiction.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that was a time when there wasn't support, there wasn't training for psychologists, for counselors uh to help people with this kind of struggle and problem.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, um, I ended up with my mom trying to figure something out uh and counseling outside of private counseling outside of the university, but also uh a psychologist provided by the university uh for student support and special needs.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: The progress, I guess the way that we decided to go was cold turkey, uh, because we had to find some way of working this out.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I was not capable of managing or controlling myself uh with gaming.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: So trying to have some partial usage was not working out uh in those very early days.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we switched to cold turkey, and it was a cycle of a period of no gaming, and then a I guess a recurrence.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the language and terminology around addiction has changed since I was going through that.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: We we used the language of like a relapse then, but I'll continue to use it here because I can't quite remember the newer terminology, but it was that kind of relapse uh and then another period of attempting to um go away from gaming or to avoid gaming, sobriety from gaming, uh, and then another relapse.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And each time it happened, the amount of time that I was relapsed for before going cold targeting, like realizing there was a problem, shrank each time.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: In the very beginning, it was a relapse and not even recognizing that I had relapsed, that I was gaming and that it was a problem.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then a couple months later, it became, oh, I relapsed a month ago.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm now realizing I have done this and it's a problem.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I need to reach out for help.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: I need to talk to my family, I need to talk to my psychologist about what's happening, whoever I can.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then it became a couple of weeks, and then it became a week, and then it became a day.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, these also came in changes of going, okay, hey, gaming is problematic, but like really it's online multiplayer gaming, perhaps is the problem.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let's cut that out and try again gaming with just this subset.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh say like console games and other things.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like, nope, that doesn't work actually.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Relapsing again and it's problematic.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Take a break, go back and go, oh, okay, but maybe if it's only like on my computer, nope problem.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: All right, maybe now it's only games on my phone, maybe this will be better.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Nope, still a problem.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, those cycles were happening simultaneously until the day occurred where before I started playing a game again, I recognized I'm about to play a game again and I need to reach out for help.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is not good.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm about to fall into the same cycle that I've been falling into.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I haven't since.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Since when?
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: That was 2018, I believe.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it was about a three-year process from the absolute rock bottom to I have not uh had a relapse since.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: My parents and I worked really hard to try and figure out my mom was asking me, Hey, do you want this degree?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, is this a career path that you want to follow and a lifestyle you want to follow, or do you want to try something different?
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is it is this the problem?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: What do you want to do, and how can I support what you want to do?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Lover to bits.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, one of the things that I I want to stay in computer science, I want to stay going to university and doing all that.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: But the question of, well, how do we help you then?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: What'll it take for you to manage this?
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: I told her, I need you to take me to the lectures, walk me to the halls, and see me enter them.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you don't, I won't go.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: I will flee and run and avoid it somehow, some way.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So she did.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the early point.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: After about, I feel like a month or half a semester of that.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: We were also in communication with the university, and they were willing to give me a room in the on-campus residence because this other residence that I was in was off-campus, a 10-minute walk away, and so very isolated in the woods, uh, separated from the university itself.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: This was an on-campus location.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so we tried a few weeks of just like one day in that uh room on campus, and then a couple of days in a row, and then three days in a row, and then a whole week, but weekends still being brought back to be observed and looked over.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Additionally, as I kind of earned that trust slowly that I could be left on my own, I had to take photographs of the lecture halls when I entered them to show that I had entered the lecture hall.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was there, I was participating in the class.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: In summers, I was back home, though I got a full-time job, but it was just for the summer, a summer job in Toronto.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that meant that instead of staying with my parents, I moved into Toronto with my brother, who had an apartment and lived in Toronto and worked in Toronto.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I crashed his couch for four months while working that tech job.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: That tech job while there inspired me deeply to actually push myself and continue trying to improve.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: It was incredible for my mental health, for my confidence, for my uh growth as a person.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of those different things I attribute to that first job I got.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but then I went back to university, and this time I moved in with a family friend who lived in Guelph.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh she had a basement apartment that she was able to rent out to me.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I was staying with her.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And because this was a family friend, I was eating dinners with her and uh had a bit of that family support uh through her, was spending weekends in Guelph with her still.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: But um that was where one of the worst relapse happened, and I was spending months relapsed uh in her basement before figuring out something was wrong and needing to change and needing to reach out for help again.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then in final year, my parents actually moved to Guelph.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not to chase me and follow me, but just because throughout this whole ordeal, um, them traveling to the city so many times to Guelph, they fell in love with the city.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: They were looking to downsize anyway.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: So they moved in the summer of 2017.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that meant that I could live at the my parents' place for my final year, and also had access, therefore, to the university and the city of Guelph on weekends when I could participate in house parties and sports tournaments and all the different things that happen on a weekend that I didn't have access to when I was being pulled out of university every weekend to go back home and be supervised.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: So when you say relapse, tell us what that what does that actually mean to relapse?
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is a weird term to really nail down.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's something that is one that I have struggled to better define in more recent years, because on the one hand, video games, it's it's a lot harder to nail down with video games and like screen usage than it is with say uh substance abuse.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you have uh if you do meth, it's a very clear line of I have done meth or not.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: There are some concerns around like opioids and other and like meth-like substances for medicine, like painkillers and such, but in general, it's like, hey, if you do cocaine, you know how long it's been since last time you did cocaine.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: But a different question is is it playing a video game if you play Jackbox, which is a game where you play a bunch of like little party games that are on a TV that you're sitting with a bunch of friends on your phones to interact with?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: I consider that a video game.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: If I were to start playing that a whole bunch, I would consider that a relapse.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but differently, like, is pinball a video game?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: It has physical interaction, interactive pieces, but also a screen that flashes and tells you information and does some stuff.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: So where I draw a line around like what is playing a video game, what is having problems, and one that my mom and I have worked on to better understand uh was mostly like in early days, it was compulsive usage and any usage, because any amount of gaming for me would spiral out of control.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: If I was playing a video game, I would end up losing track of time entirely, staying up too late, ruining my sleep schedule, and therefore spiraling into another day where I go, Oh, I woke up late, the day is lost, I might as well play some more games.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Or I'll just be playing each night, still waking up trying to go to class, but playing late, losing sleep, then being tired in the day and being unable to stay awake in classes or pay attention in classes, uh, finish the day out, maybe put off doing homework and schoolwork and projects, assignments, et cetera, because it goes, ah, but like I just want to play some games and relax and unwind until those projects keep getting pushed and procrastinated to a point where then they're missed.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe it starts as, oh, well, I still got it done in time, but like I could have gotten a better grade because I didn't put in the time it needed to eventually just leads to, and I missed it, but I'll make it up because there's still some makeup points.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'll lose a little bit of points on it, but I can still get it done, and eventually it leads to I just missed it and I can't make it up, and I can't stop playing these games.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I stop playing these games, I have to stop feeling that little bit of joy that is keeping me going.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because otherwise, it is anxiety and is fear and is panic about the state of my life that it has fallen into, the fear of those assignments I've missed, of the work that I need to do, of the expectations of myself, uh, the ability that I need to uh reach, the achievements I'm trying to set for myself.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: All of these things start to pile up on top of me.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I can only speak for myself because I am a person with lived experience.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not a registered psychologist.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's a big difference there.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, relapse was when I would start playing games again.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And when I started playing games again, video games specifically, not board games or card games.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: If I started playing games again, it would spiral immediately and ridiculously.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: For other people, yeah.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's uh harm reduction is a typical strategy nowadays of reducing the amount of time you're playing games for and introducing other things to help uh bring joy back to life as well as to help manage the problems that have been piling up and creating that stress, anxiety, depression, etc.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: But for me in those early, everyone's different, it just didn't work.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I ended up going this cold turkey route where I still, to this day, don't play video games.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: So you said a second ago, you can only speak for yourself, but I I want you to share with the listener what are the attributes of a gamer.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you could create a profile of a video gaming addict, tell us what that looks like.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I want to differentiate between a gaming addict and a gamer.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because, like I said at the very beginning, I consider myself still like a gamer, and I know plenty of people who play games that don't have a problem with it.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: They'll play a game, they'll have fun, and then they put it down and they walk away and they do something else.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's fine.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And there are people who play a lot of games but still make time for other people and for other things in their lives.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: When video game becomes an addiction is when you prioritize gaming over the rest of your needs: food, social interaction, um personal achievement or progress, uh, education, um family uh obligations, uh fitness, etc.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: The hierarchy of needs uh does not include gaming at the top, but for an addict, it does.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: For me, at my worst points, I described gaming as food, where I needed to eat to survive.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone needs to eat to survive, but gaming became food, and when I had to stop gaming, my brain felt like it was starving and it was going to starve.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was like saying, Hey Jake, from now on, you can't eat.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: You can't have snacks, you can't have meals, you can't have crumbs, you can't eat anymore.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's never going to stop.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to remain unable to eat.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Until the inevitable happens, which is you die because you can't survive without eating.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it took pushing through that mental space, it took pushing through that starvation for my brain to finally start to recognize and realize that gaming wasn't food, that I didn't actually need gaming to live.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: It took, like after the first 30 days of it just screaming in my head to play games, do something, play a game and enjoy and relax and escape all the pain and fear that was attacking me at all times, to it's starting to fade away.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it was around like 90 to 120 days or so where it finally started to fade more, and I could get a clear thought and go, wait, I've made it 90 days, 120 days of starving, and I'm still alive.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe if not food.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of parents don't realize how bad gaming is.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: The parents I speak to, they'll just say, Yes, they game, but they don't understand that how how big a problem it is or an addiction.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So for the parent listening, what are the warning signs?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: How do they know?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you said it earlier, which I love, they're not just a young adult who enjoys gaming, but it actually is an addiction.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: But for me again, it's that prioritization.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: When they are choosing to play games over their other needs and over their other things, you might see grades declining, but their time is spent a lot of time gaming still.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you see that they are not spending time with friends or avoiding friends uh and socializing, though this is a harder target because of like COVID pandemic did a weird thing to what friendship looks like in the digital era and such, but still people should see each other in person and uh hang out and do different things.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: If they are prioritizing gaming over sports, athletics activities that they previously enjoyed and participated in, which is not to say that people can't change, people can change what they enjoy and what they do.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: But if it's more sudden, you see, like, hey, this person who's played soccer all their life and suddenly they don't play soccer anymore, and they instead are just playing games and you ask them, like, hey, why aren't you not?
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: I shouldn't say why aren't you?
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Accusations are not good for trying to open dialogue with an addict.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: But hey, I noticed you haven't been playing soccer recently.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Is there any reason for that?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Trying to understand what has shifted there.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's when you can start to see, like, did they just start changing priorities of these activities that they loved that were physical to just gaming?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and otherwise, often we see uh addiction as a response to trauma.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so if there's been any kinds of experiences that may have been traumatic in some way, shape, or form, uh, and they have shifted or focused to gaming.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you look at for like signs of depression uh alongside, like I look at addiction, especially video game addiction, but addiction in general is a symptom of a problem.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: It is a coping mechanism, as I described it earlier on.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: It is not just something that appears out of thin air.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: The person needs to be seeking that need, that support, trying to find something that they don't feel like they have currently in their life through video games.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And video games may not be providing the best version of that.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I was using video games to escape my problems.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: That didn't mean that my problems went away because I was gaming.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: I still had those problems.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was just very good at masking those problems for me emotionally.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was good at avoiding those experiences and those fears and those concerns because I could stimulate my brain with something a lot more energetic and engaging.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're looking for just, hey, here's science of addiction, the other thing you need to be looking for is signs of trauma, whether it be emotional, physical, et cetera, that have caused this shift, this need to game beyond just enjoyment.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Got it.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So they're they're they're trying to escape something, they're hiding from something.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: They could be depressed, which may not be itself escape uh or something else, but like depression, anxiety, uh, isolation are the three big circles of the Venn diagram where an addict is typically sitting within two, at least two of these three circles.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Say them again, please.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: That would be depression, anxiety, and isolation.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: An example for me was I was isolated into my uh corner, like far off campus location, separated from all of my friends from high school, from my family, everyone else, so just in that lone space, and also building up a world of lies that made it feel like I couldn't reach out for help and support.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then also depression um is something I've struggled with for a long time and anxiety.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: I have a diagnosed disorder around anxiety, so that's uh a whole source of uh fear and concern that I was not I didn't build the tools to handle my anxiety.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I learned a lot of those tools through my counseling, through my um psychologist at the university during my recovery period, those three years.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, just so I understand this, you you are depressed, you're you're feeling this sort of dark cloud over you, something that you can't escape from.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you turn to gaming.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: What does gaming do for the person who is depressed and anxious?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: The isolation, by the way, is something I want to talk about in a minute, but because a lot of these young adults that I'm talking to or about, they're not at university.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're actually in in their bedrooms, right, right there.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: So the parent can open that bedroom door at any time.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: That kid can walk out that room at any time and not be physically isolated.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to hold on to that for one second because they kind of create that world.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to talk about how what what does, if you are a young adult struggling with depression and anxiety, what do you get out of gaming?
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: For me, I got a sense of achievement, a space where I could safely fail and try again without deep repercussion.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh example, let's say I'm playing a game and I lose.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: I can just spin up another game.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: At most, that impacts like my rank in a multiplayer game, or it impacts my progress in the story of a single player game, what have you.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: The important thing is the setback is minor, it is near inconsequential.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: And if anything, it is a part of the experience.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas the description of failure in life as a child, to me, failure was not optional.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you fail, it creates the spiral of continuous failure and the inability to ever achieve your goals and your dreams, etc., which is not true in any way, shape, or form.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: I was just gonna say it's it I want to know what you think now about fail.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want to talk about this for a second, about your fear.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, talk to us about that that unrealistic expectation of what failing means, which now you know so many years later, it's it's it's not exactly how we imagine it to be when we're younger.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: Correct.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when we're younger, we see failure as death, as uh you are losing everything through that failure.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh today I look at failure the same way that I look at failure in games, which is that it is not a setback so much as an intentional part of the human experience, which allows us to learn and grow and improve.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_01: A failure is a chance for something new, it's an opportunity for you to look at what happened and discover what you want to do next or where you want to go next.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Failure in life is inconsequential to life.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's only like there's very specific failures that can cause problems that we need to be more wary of.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_01: I said I snowboard way earlier on.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: I am a very high-level snowboarder.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm on a dull black diamond in the trees in BC and I hit a tree because of a failure to appropriately assess the situation and turn, I could die.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's a failure I want to avoid.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: But failing a class?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, who cares?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Like, who cares?
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it was the end of the world.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it would be the destruction and fall of everything.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: I failed multiple classes in university, especially in that first year, and it was fine.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: That realization that actually it's fine, you can fail.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: A statistic I remember when I was going to university was something like of I think it was a US-based study, of the students who entered a four-year degree program.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: 87% of the people who graduated that program, not the people who dropped out uh included, but the people who fully finished that four-year program, 87% of them took more than four years to do so.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: You can't do that without having some sort of failure, setback, interruption, etc.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Life is not going to be perfect, and that's fine.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: But in say grade seven, grade 10, if you think, oh, I failed a year, I have to be held back a year.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: You are imagining that you are removed from your social network, your peers, your class is the group of people that you know and you move up with.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: You are instead getting bumped backwards away from all those people into this other class full of people a year younger than you that you maybe don't know at all.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh you have the expectation from everyone else of, oh, you're a failure, you you're dumb, you failed a class, you got held back a year, you're so stupid.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is negative to your social standing in school and in people and your peers around you.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: All these different things are these like fears that circle around your brain.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: But the reality, I I met kids, I had a kid in my class who had to uh repeat a year.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Totally normal guy, totally fine, everything was fine.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: He was a little sad in the start of the year, and then became our friend.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: And we all loved the guy, and it was all fine, but I wasn't remembering those uh situations of that's an example of failure that's safe and it's fine.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think we often, when I was growing up, didn't teach as much about what failure looks like and is failure okay?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: Failure was always this horrendous thing you had to avoid at all costs.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I took that as law, as gospel, and continued to spin out anxiety from that of what could happen, what would happen.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the anxiety disorder in my case of that panic spiral.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: It can go so quickly from the smallest little thing all the way out to I'm dead homeless on a street with no one around me.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: And when every thought kind of spirals out and ends up there, yeah, life is a very scary experience.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: I love this.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's so powerful because it's all based on your fear.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's the thing.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: I think adults understand this because we've have failed and we still come out, you know, learning and growing, and something comes out of it.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: But young people don't understand that.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And the fear of failure is, like you said, it's debilitating and spiraling.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Was there any other fears that you struggled with?
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Other fears is harder to put in because a lot of it was just self-imposed expectation of what am I supposed to be able to accomplish?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: What am I supposed to be able to do?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Who am I, and tying my identity to those things?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Where if I fail, I'm no longer me.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Who am I?
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a very dangerous activity.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: In university, when I was going through that relapse period, I had, I would describe no self-esteem.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, when I was in, say, like middle school, high school, the way that I define myself was just whatever anyone else said about me.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you said, Jake, you're funny, I go, awesome, I'm funny.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then next day someone says, Jake, you're not funny, I go, shit, I'm not?
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I'm not funny.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that was it.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: That was the entire depth of my personhood.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not healthy, nor is it accurate.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have the interiority to define myself with.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: And when I finally was doing rehab and talking to a psychologist and working through this, I tried to find a better way to define my own self-esteem.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: I took a somewhat literal and more radical approach, which was I looked at esteem as a concept which is rooted in military structure and merit.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, your esteem is your rank, which means that esteem is in self inherently reliant on comparison to others.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have a rank without having a person above and below you.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: But my problem came from having everything come from external and comparing myself to those other people.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm smart, I'm supposed to be smart, but these people are smarter than me, therefore I'm dumb.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's a dangerous comparison to make, and it's not healthy for your self-esteem.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: So instead, what can I do that will help?
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: If esteem isn't helpful because it's comparison and I can't handle those comparisons, what can I do?
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, let's try and define like self-love because that's the idea.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: You want to love yourself.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's what everyone and every Dove commercial says, what self-esteem means.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I tried to find something that I could not compare.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: What I ended up landing on as a unit of measurement for something I could use to find.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Do I love this about myself?
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: Do I not love this about myself?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: What is it that I'm enjoying or loving?
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: I chose the gut feeling of joy.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: I feel joy.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: You also feel joy, but I will never understand, no matter what, what your joy feels like, how much joy you feel over something compared to how much joy I feel about it.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: No amount of smiles or laughter or anything you do will ever allow me to understand fully and comprehensively your joy.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: Which means if I measure by my own joy, there is no way for me to compare myself to someone else in this space.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then I start asking myself, what brings me joy?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: What is it that I have or do that creates that feeling?
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I love snowboarding.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: I love the joy that it brings me being on the mountain and experiencing riding through the snow, feeling so zen and one in that moment.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not loving me, that's loving snowboarding.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I had to then go a meta layer above, I guess, and say, I love that I love snowboarding.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: I love that this activity can bring me such joy, that it can make me feel so at peace and so special in those moments.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: I love that I have this ability that I have worked on and spent at this point now two decades on uh improving and growing.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because I did that work, I have this thing that can bring me so much joy.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I can love myself for that.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: I can love myself for the fashion that I wear and the clothes that I put on.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can love myself for the way that I think and the way that I talk and the way that I engage with people.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: I can not love myself for the kinds of jokes that I'm making.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think the kind of jokes I'm making lately have been too pointed and too mean-spirited towards others.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they're putting people down for a laugh.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not something that brings me joy, which meant that that's something I could change about myself.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I don't love that and I don't love how that makes me feel, why am I doing it?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I at that time, this was in university, I changed my humor.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: I changed the way that I made jokes and how I made jokes to instead be a lot more inclusive, a lot more about observations of the silly things that are going on, as opposed to the mistakes and failings of another person around me, per se.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: That became the base and the structure for how I saw myself and could build up that love of myself that helped define and break away from some of those anxieties and fears and depression that were built on this lack of self-esteem.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blown away how how much work you've done on yourself.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's truly incredible.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: But there are parents listening and they're saying, Well, how where do I begin?
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: How do I help my young adult get there?
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, what would you say to the parent who's saying, Okay, I've got this young adult, he's where Jake was, you know, 11 years ago, and you've made such incredible progress.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: Everything that you said is just so beautiful and incredibly mature and evolved.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: But where does the parent start now?
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Do they is it with their young adult self-esteem and self-worth and motivation, self-love?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: What's what do they do?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Where do they begin this process?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: I believe that the beginning for a parent that wants to be able to support their child through addiction and through the recovery of that addiction is compassion and trust.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Specifically, the addicted child is going to, and addicted to anyone, is going to need a support network to recover.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: There is no addiction recovery alone.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: It is unfathomably more difficult to accomplish that kind of recovery alone.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: You need friends, you need family, you need support, you need usually a psychologist of some sort as well, or a counselor of some sort to help.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: But that means that your child needs to be able to trust you in this process.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if they don't trust you, there's nothing you can really do to help them.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was pushed into a corner where I had made every single mistake and every single choice to avoid exactly that until then.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I still put that trust enough to try it because it was better than killing myself at the time.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to maintain that trust with her, and she had to maintain the trust that I was putting in her that we would get through it.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: The way that she maintained my trust through this process as I tried to rebuild the trust that she could have in me after being a compulsive liar for years, was to maintain compassion, maintain understanding, ask me questions that were not accusational, but could still help understand and lead to agreements between us to help me.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of it was because I had to do the work too.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like I was just sitting, getting my hand held and solving these problems.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: We figured out together what it would take to get me back to university, to get me back to classes, to taking these things.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: We built systems together that would help solve these problems.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_01: We worked together to get through this addiction.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: If we were adversarial, I wouldn't be able to trust her to turn and say, I've I've relapsed.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: I've fallen back into it, and I need help again.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: I still need help, etc.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: That compassion matters.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: So when we ask our kid, hey, why are you gaming?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's not a good question because it's immediately putting them in on a defensive position.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, hold on.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: I want to I want to do this for a second with you because you have an incredibly supportive and loving family, and you knew that from your entire life.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: There was never a doubt in your mind.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um what there was?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: There was doubt.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I didn't reach out.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, fair enough.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I do want parents to understand that this can happen to anyone.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um having said that, you know, I I'm a uh obviously a big um proponent of open lines of communication.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: But you just pointed something out.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just saying, I'm here for you if you want to talk to me, which is a wonderful supportive statement for a parent to make, but when you need to ask the questions, it's how what questions are they supposed to be asking that will make that child of theirs feel I I should open up, I can open up these this is a safe space for me.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: So for the parent who says, give me the wording, what do I say that I won't get that door slammed in my face or the lie?
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: The main way to start that I have heard work better, uh, things that my mom did with me as well, were to instead try to inquire and understand around the gaming.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's one thing to say, why are you gaming?
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's another say, what is this game?
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: What uh aspects do you find most challenging about it, most fun about it?
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: Not hey, why do you find this game fun, but showing that you are taking an interest in this thing, this concept, shows that you are trying to find an understanding.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because that child is scared, that child is holding desperately onto this gaming experience as the thing that makes them feel safe.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: So when we go and we ask them about their gaming, we ask them in a way that we want to show support for them as a person and show that we're not adversaries in their world where gaming is the only lifeline left, but we can be a point of support to try and reach out and get, hey, why you like why what is it about this game that's drawn you in so much?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then we can start to ask other questions about you know what experience have you found similar, what other things have you enjoyed?
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: Or uh, as I mentioned, like, hey, if the kid has stopped playing soccer, it becomes uh a question about going like, oh, uh, you were used to be playing like a lot of soccer, but you seem to have stopped.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, is there like something that happened?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: Is there something that became challenging?
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, these kinds of questions and prompts, when you're in that earliest stage of addiction recovery, it is before you, the addict, have realized you are addicted.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't know as an addict that you're addicted, you're not going to be seeking help.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: You're not going to be looking for support.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: But asking these kinds of questions can help prompt an addict to realize their addiction, that there is a problem, that they need to do something, make a change to try and improve and get support, get help.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: If I can understand what you're saying, it's not just about communication, it's compassionately communicating.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's being relatable, it's engaging with them, it's getting to the getting to them at a place where you they don't feel like you're attacking them or judging them.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_01: We're not trying to unveil or remind them of who they were.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: We're trying to remind them of who they are.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: Good.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: They're still there, they're still how holding desires.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: There's still things that they will enjoy, would enjoy, want to enjoy.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: It may have changed.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Example is the kid who stopped playing soccer.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they fell out of love of soccer, and the push to continue playing soccer is what started this whole tumble and led to a series of different things that have gone wrong and ended up at video game addiction.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because video game addiction is obviously not the first turn that happens and goes wrong, but that can be like that's the starting point, or something went really wrong in or you know, wrong in soccer that's left them with trauma that they don't want to return to.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: Saying you need to go back to soccer, that's a thing you used to love, isn't helpful.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I appreciate the distinction.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: The child understand where they are today, right?
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: And they can still like sports and activities, even if soccer is not that thing anymore.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: But trying to understand and bring back out the person they are beyond the shell of fear and anxiety and depression and isolation, those are the things that you're trying to do.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: I do, I do appreciate the distinction, but I also at the same time, I'm trying to help parents to find the wording to make that to connect with them again because there is such a disconnect between that young adult in that bedroom and they don't know what happened.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: They don't understand the why behind the addiction.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: And stepping from that past person that they were to the person they are today in that space of gaming, that's a process that you can build compassion and trust learning about.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: If your kid used to like soccer and stopped, understanding what changed in there will help lead you as a parent to better understand the child and what they might need in the moment now to help pull them back out of gaming.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: Whether is the return to soccer a change to a different sport, something else has happened, maybe their friendship has imploded.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was based on soccer.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_01: They don't want to go back to there because their friendship is dead and gone.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: All these different things working from that past point, I just I know for a fact that there is a trigger in children when you say, You used to like this thing, that a child that is in that space of addiction or uh rebellion of that kind will hear that and immediately just turn off.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's almost like saying you don't know me anymore.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're not seeing me for who I am, you're seeing a past version of me, you don't understand me, you're not going to understand me.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's no point in having this conversation, in trying to put trust in you because you're not here with me right now.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's the key difference.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to make sure that parents, when they're finished with this conversation, that they have something that they can talk, like walk away with.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_00: They have some tools and a better understanding, a lot, like a different, a newer and fresher approach, because so far everything that they're trying isn't working, and their young adult is in very much in denial.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like you said, they don't even think they have that addiction.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to kind of start the process of making them come to terms with this, the realization first.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why this podcast is always about giving parents suggestions and re and tools and even resources that they can use.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: And because that's our goal here, Jake, is to help every young adult come out of their bedroom and be able to feel that they can trust their parent and for their parent to get to know them as an adult, because that's a huge thing for parents, is that we don't know our kids as they get older.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: We have to, you know, it's hard, especially if you do, you know, fall into a state of depression or, you know, what have you.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I I do want to ask you a couple more questions and we're rounding the hour, and I prom I didn't want to go too far into that for you because of your time.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about isolation and on the flip side of isolation, social connection and how important is that?
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because if that's if anything, parents ask of them is to open that door and to get them out of that room and to understand that there is so much danger in the isolation process of it all, and that they're not safe in that room where they think, well, they're safe, at least they're not out on the streets, they're safe, they're home.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I urge them to like understand there is no safety in in being isolated.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then the flip side of that is the power of social connection and community.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_00: So if we can talk about that for a minute, I'd appreciate it.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: Isolation can look many different ways.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was going to school in middle school, I was bullied heavily in middle school.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: It drove me to that initial starting point of video gaming addiction, that then I was a functional addict through high school and then finally crashed and burned in university.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't mention that in the story for the sake of accelerating through to that critical failure point.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: But I was in a classroom of 10.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: I had two, three, four, yeah, I had four other peers in my grade in that class.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was a seven, eight split class for enhanced kids.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: Of that classroom, I had three friends, two and a half, depending on the day, and a bully who had it out for myself and one other guy, and to somewhat a third.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: I had connections, but I did not want to be there.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I felt isolated by this bullying, despite being surrounded by people.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: Isolation doesn't always look like you are in a room alone at a computer.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there's different forms and different ways that it can appear that can still be so detrimental to mental health.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so when I would talk about, hey, there's this isolation, for me, I didn't feel like I had proper social connections because while I had friends at school, the couple that I did, I also had what felt like enemies, people that made me not want to be there at all, who made me want to pull away from that space and avoid it.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because for me, I have a severe flight response as opposed to fight in these situations.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: That made me withdraw and find online gaming where I could build new social connections and relations.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I got introduced to it by my brother, who is my best friend in the world, has always been my best friend, currently lives two floors above me in the same apartment building.
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I go and I swim with my two nephews and him, my sister-in-law.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: We have great times and it's all wonderful.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: But back in middle school at this time, my brother went to Spain for a few months on an exchange student program, which meant that not only did I lose my uh social connections in middle school when everyone was trying to bully me and turn on me, it felt like, I also lost my closest friend to a different country.
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, I still want to play with you, Jake.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: I still want to stay connected with you.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the way that we play is games.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I found these online games we can play together.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that opened me up to that world of gaming that could fill the needs that I felt were missing in that space of isolation, depression, anxiety.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: I found a zone or an area where I could regain those feelings.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then because I had that, I could keep leaning on it.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I did continue to lean on it more and more until I started to self-isolate from my own friends, from my own connections in favor of this online space and these games and some of these online connections, which you can have real friends online.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to tell parents and children that like all friendships online are fake and worthless and should be avoided.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: You can have real connections.
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_01: I went to Japan with one of these friends that I made in that connection.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_01: We had an awesome time together in Japan.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_01: But you still need face-to-face human interaction.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: You still need to see physical friends and be connected with people and make those kinds of connections too.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, video games and online connections are not a full replacement for live human connection.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: But because I felt like I was getting some amount of connection out of this, I continue to lean on it more and more in isolation.
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: So when we talk about isolation as a danger and isolation as a trouble, the big ones that I usually find are that isolation can be physical.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: You are alone in your room, it can also be social.
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_01: The spaces that you are in, you still feel alone despite being surrounded by people.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: The way that I found most useful for regaining connection, rebuilding connections, especially in environments where I didn't have a lot of variety.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: Say, like, you know, you have your classroom, you have the people that are in your classroom.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: How do you still find new social connections in school?
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: Joining clubs.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: As a young adult, or uh even still a teenager, you can do this, but like after school and outside school programs, uh, rock climbing.
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_01: Rock climbing was a huge one for me in more recent years, post-COVID, where I found that I could go to a rock climbing gym, go start climbing the walls, and then someone else would be climbing that same problem as I was, trying to do the same thing.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we could just start a conversation, go, that was tough, right?
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm really struggling with this particular part of the movement.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that was hard.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm figuring out this way, that way, blah, blah, blah.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you go, by the way, my name's Jake.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they go, Hey, I'm Greg, I'm Silvana, I'm whoever.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you have that beginning of a conversation.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: Then you can start to ask, hey, what do you do?
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, what are you studying, etc.?
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: Anything can flourish out of it.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: What are you interested in?
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: What books have you read?
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: What shows have you watched?
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: You start to build normal human connections and you start to find new communities.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: So even if your community that you're in right now feels isolated, or you feel like you are in a physical space where there is no opportunity for a community, say you are isolated in your bedroom, you're past high school age, you're not in university, etc., there are these places you can go that you can build community in that have natural touch points for making connections.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to go out and try and open yourself up and be willing to talk to other people around you.
• 57:45
  SPEAKER_01: For the students or for the kids, it's hard at first.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's really scary, uh, especially when you've been in that kind of isolated space for so long.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: But for you know, the parents listening who are wondering about this, and if their kid goes, Oh, I won't be able to talk to people, the encouragement that I can offer is that people are a lot more willing to just talk and have human connections than you expect and are willing to give you patience to figure your shit out.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: So try, see what happens, and it's okay.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you have a conversation that doesn't quite work out, you can just have another one with another person.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: Just try to be genuine and try to be compassionate and try to be kind.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: Jake, I always like to leave our listener with something positive, and this conversation has been incredibly insightful.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_00: But is there a message that you can share with the parents of adult children who are spending a disproportionate amount of time gaming and not living their life?
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's a hard process.
• 58:49
  SPEAKER_01: It is a long, arduous, difficult, nonlinear process to go through the healing of addiction.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_01: There will be so many times that you want to just scream, rip your hair out, throw a chair against a wall.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: But eventually it gets better.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_01: Things heal.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: The addicts grow as people and the the people that you loved once are back in your life.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you can make it through this process, I can promise you eventually it gets better.
• 59:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's not just for the parents, that's for the kids too.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_01: It gets better eventually.
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_01: You just have to keep working at it.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: I really do hope parents um share this episode with their young adults.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: I do think it's time we tell the listener who your mother is, because she's been on this podcast twice so far, and she's an incredible resource for parents and their young adults who have a gaming addiction.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: So would you please do us the honors?
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:00:15
  SPEAKER_01: My mother is Elaine Uskoski.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, she is a writer, a uh coach, uh, a specialist in video gaming addiction.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_01: She speaks around the world on the subject uh about her experiences with me and how we got through this.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: But you can find uh her most recent book, uh Seeing Through the Cracks uh on Amazon.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_01: It is a sorry, that's actually her original book.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: The current one is uh Cyber Sober, uh, a Caregiver's Guide to Video Gaming Addiction.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: It is everything that I have talked about and mentioned you have heard uh or you would find in her books and in her works, because she and I have had many of these conversations back and forth about the subject.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of the things that I draw on these days around the psychology of it is information that she has told me about and taught me about through her own research into the subject matter.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: When I talk about that uh pre-recognition addiction phase and such, you'll find information on that and information on how to help your kid get past that stage and into the next stages of recovery.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_01: I can't I I love my mom.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: She has been the most incredible and supportive rock for me.
• 1:01:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I cannot stress enough how valuable her work is and how helpful her work is for parents.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, for anyone that's interested, the episode was number 24 when we talked a lot about you and her book.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then again, we went back and did another one, episode 47, and we talked about the dangers of being isolated and values of having social connection.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: So go back and listen, but I will put your mom's books and contact information once again in the show notes.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Jake, thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so sure that parents will find this very helpful.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I really do encourage any parent to send this episode over to their young adults.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope they're going to be open to it.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how they would react to it.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_00: Jake, what do you think?
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is it is that a good suggestion, or maybe not maybe not?
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: It all really depends on what stage of the process you're in and they're in.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I I'm based in Ontario.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm based in Toronto, I mentioned.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I do talks at KMH still, uh, and sometimes that's with youth included.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: I've had many very positive responses from speaking directly to youth and sharing my story and my experiences.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I don't think that a person hearing stories and experiences is going to be a negative impact, usually.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: You just might have a tough time getting them to listen to this random podcast your old folk listen to.
• 1:02:57
  unknown: Right.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: Please say hi to your mom for me.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you so much for your time.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed listening to you.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: You are really, I if you were mine, I'd be so incredibly proud of you.
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: But thank you.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk soon, I hope.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you having me on here.
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Kate.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: I hope today's episode gave you valuable insights and actionable steps that will help you guide your young adult to launch successfully into adulthood.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you found this topic helpful, feel free to leave a comment and hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_00: Leaving a five-star review helps us reach more parents who are dealing with the same issues.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's something you want to ask me, I invite you to join Launch Advice, my weekly publication where I answer one question from parents just like you.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's free advice that will appear in your inbox probably when you need it the most.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_00: Just click Launch Advice in the show notes and don't forget to email me your confidential questions.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, no one ever said parenting is easy, especially when you're raising an adult.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: Talk to you soon.