DECATUR - Liz Woolley said it wasn't addiction to drugs or alcohol that robbed her of her son. Instead, the Tennessee woman believes it was an addiction to something many consider a fun, innocuous diversion: video games.

Woolley, founder of Online Gamers Anonymous, a national organization dedicated to providing support for those addicted to gaming, appeared on "Dr. Phil" last month to tell the story of her son, Shawn, who took his life in 2001 after struggling with an addiction to the online role-playing game "EverQuest."

Before he started playing the game, he had played video games for at least 10 years. Within a few months, his attachment to the game was affecting his life drastically, Woolley said. He quit his job, got evicted and his personality started changing.

He was depressed, started becoming withdrawn and got so attached to the game that it became the center of his life, his mother said.

"I didn't know that it was the new generation of game," she said.

"EverQuest" is just one in a class of "massively multiplayer online role-playing games," or MMORPGs, that allow users to interact via an Internet connection, chat in real time and work together to achieve goals during game play. Rather than working through rigid levels, characters exist in a kind of virtual realm where their ability to take on new challenges is almost infinite.

"They're really virtual worlds, and there's no end to them, ever," Woolley said, adding that she believes the games are designed to keep people hooked and coming back for more.

"He no longer was participating in his real life," she said of her son. "He didn't want to succeed in his real life. He didn't care about it."

Twenty at the time, Shawn Woolley stopped shaving and taking care of himself, quit looking for a job and continued to withdraw. His mother urged him to get mental health help, and he eventually was diagnosed with an underlying psychiatric condition, schizoid personality disorder, characterized by avoidance of social interactions, according to the Mayo Clinic Web site.

The game became Shawn Woolley's life. His family had been close, but all that stopped. Shawn Woolley told his mother that the other "EverQuest" users were his new friends and even left his brother's wedding in the middle of the ceremony to go home to play.

Shawn Woolley got involved in a long-term support group and was placed on medications. He was living in a group home with no access to a computer, but unbeknownst to his mother, he was walking five miles to her house to play the game in the middle of the night.

"That's the kind of hold it had on him," she said.

Liz Woolley thought her son was on the road to recovery. He got another job and a place of his own, but he soon isolated himself. Several months after moving into his new apartment, he got his computer and relapsed. Shortly after that, the 21-year-old took his own life on Thanksgiving morning 2001. His mother found him in his apartment.

"They never addressed the gaming as part of the problem," she said of her son's treatment. "It became more important than anything else in his life."

Woolley's personal crusade since losing her son has been to shed light on the problem of gaming addiction. Online Gamers Anonymous, or OLGA, which started in 2002, has online chat rooms, message boards, virtual meetings and an international following. Users log on, share their stories and seek support. The site, www.olganon.org, has had more than 5 million visitors and generally gets 500 or so each day.

Dallas-area mom Joyce Protopapas knows all too well the frustration of dealing with a family member who games excessively. Her son, Michael, now 19, played and enjoyed video games for years without a problem.

"It was always something he did until he got tired of it, which was usually pretty quick," she said.

In late 2004, he got "World of Warcraft," an online role-playing game, for Christmas.

"We pretty much didn't see much of him that holiday," she said.

It was around March when Protopapas started noticing her son didn't want to come to the dinner table, and he was staying up later and getting irritable when he was asked to do things that would take him away from the game.

"It hooked him like nothing had ever done before," she said.

Her son stopped caring about friends outside of the game, family relationships and schoolwork. For almost a year, Michael Protopapas spiraled deeper and deeper into the game. His parents went to great lengths to limit his gaming and then to prevent him from playing, but he always found a way.

"We saw a person we'd never seen before," she said. "It was like seeing a stranger."

Michael Protopapas was diagnosed with depression. An addiction therapist advised the family to get him out of the home environment, and his parents made the difficult decision to send him away for 60 days of wilderness therapy and eight months in therapeutic boarding school.

"We saw it as the only way to save his life," his mother said.

She found Online Gamers Anonymous that summer.

"It was the first time that I posted something, and somebody answered almost immediately," she said.

At the time, there were no parents on the site, only gamers and a few significant others. Now she serves on the board of directors.

Chuck Kerwin, a St. Mary's Hospital addiction counselor, said addiction happens when an outside influence causes a person's life to go out of balance. People can be addicted to all kinds of things, he said, sex, tattoos, piercings, exercise, greed, work or toxic relationships.

"You want to look at any addiction as an unhealthy relationship," he said. "It starts out good, but when it changes on you, it's unhealthy."

Many times, those who game excessively get sucked in by the escapism of the games, Kerwin said.

"They get so caught up in the fantasy that they don't really know what reality is," he added.

Gaming provides a welcome escape, a distraction from life for some.

"When we talk about gambling being so addictive, it's the distraction that's the attraction because they're caught up in the moment, and everything else doesn't matter," he said. "It's easier to click onto a computer and crawl into your imagination than it is to build a relationship with someone."

Gaming is not the same as a chemical addiction, but it can cause life-damaging consequences, he said.

Now a University of Texas at Dallas freshman, Michael Protopapas remembers gaming for eight hours a day, despite being active in school and football during high school. After a sports injury took him off the field, he played even more, and when summer came, the hours increased.

"I think I definitely needed intervention," he said.

His mother advised those concerned about a loved one's excessive gaming to approach it thinking of something else in the place of the game. Once the family realized Michael Protopapas had lost the ability to moderate, it was too late.

"It's like living with an alcoholic or a drug addict," she said. "They let their lives fade away, and that's it."

Michael Protopapas said he's considering a career in mental health to help people facing similar problems. He feels as though he's conquered his gaming addiction, and he urged people to realize the seriousness of such a situation in those they care about.

"It's not just the kids playing too much," he said. "Gaming can pretty much pose the same things as cocaine or heroin."

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