High score

Speed, acid, pot: As computer gaming enters the mainstream, its drug subculture is also coming of age.

Editor's note: At their request, the names of some of the gamers quoted in this story have been changed.

By Sandy Brundage

Nov. 6, 2001 | It's "adults only" night. Tom, 28, signs off from his job as an info-technology troubleshooter for a starched-shirt corporation and goes home to pack his gigahertz computer rig in the car. He grabs a few other necessities -- cash, pot and beer -- then drives 45 minutes to Alan's house, where the LAN party is in full swing. He slips Alan the $30 cover charge and sets up the rig.

The spacious living room looks like a college computer lab. Fifty slouching guys, most of whom have brought their own computers to hook up to the network, are locked on the Counter-Strike matches playing on their computer screens. The air is spattered with mouse clicks and trash talk. There's the same stale sock smell, the same rattle of pizza crusts as the Dominos boxes are shoved aside, the same hard plastic chairs (for an extra $5, you get a cushion). Some guys are downloading porn and warez. Some have brought sleeping bags for those moments when they simply cannot keep their eyes open a second longer. Tom steps outside to swap Counter-Strike strategies with a few prospective teammates and light up the weed. Now it's time for stoner mayhem.

Tom leaves three days later, drained from lack of sleep and fried from staring at his monitor. With his jacket empty of weed, another workday stares him in the face. It's been a weekend muffled in sensory white noise, a visit to a cocoon of headphones, pixels and dope, and he'll do it again next Friday. Gamers like Tom roam between thousands of LAN (local area network) parties each month, held in basements, living rooms, and hotels, some with 10 players, others with 2,000. They're seeking a double dose of unreality with a pack of like-minded people, chasing an escape within an escape.

Before the 1960s, few people could have anticipated concert halls filled with stoned fans chanting for Jimi Hendrix, or movie theaters packed with people settling in with a tab of acid instead of popcorn to watch "Easy Rider" or "2001: A Space Odyssey." Television in the 1980s spawned drinking games in college dormitories. Now drugs are on the computer gaming scene, a natural and not all that surprising step as gaming matures into a mainstream cultural force.

Gaming isn't well understood as an adult pastime. It's been a while since anyone looked sideways at a punk haircut. Not so for that copy of Counter-Strike bought at Best Buy. And for some gamers, even as they become adults, their underground subculture is a badge of honor. So while the Cyberathlete Professional League struggles to win credibility for gaming as a mainstream sport, there are gamers who refuse to sell out. They prefer the fringe, deriving a tribal identity from a gaming netherworld where speed and acid are as essential as a quick hand on the mouse. A rebellion is taking place in the invisible traveling cities of the LAN party circuit.

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