‘I didn’t know how to talk to people’
Gaming addiction
Jamie Callis recalled how his addiction cost him his educational qualifications.
He was just 11 when he became hooked on video games and by 15 he was playing multiplayer games for a minimum of eight hours a day.
“In the school holidays, I would play for between 12 and 16 hours a day. I would sleep, eat and play, that was all,” recalled Jamie, from Barry, south Wales.
Formerly an academic pupil, Jamie – who “sat through lessons in a zombie state” – performed poorly in his exams, leaving school with one A-level and one AS.
“I ended up not even applying to university because I knew they wouldn’t take me,” he said.
“But the psychological effects were the worst. My communication skills were affected so badly I didn’t know how to hold a conversation. There’s also the stress, because when you’re addicted to video games you can get extremely agitated and angry when you lose.” At 18 he finally quit gaming by going “cold turkey” and enrolled on a college course.