A fifteen year old boy has ended up in the hospital after snorting Ritalin to keep himself awake during a marathon gaming session.
According to a report from TVNZ, the anonymous high school student ended up in hospital after using the drug to keep himself awake while playing Xbox 360 games. According to the kid’s dad, he was “white as a sheet and hyperventilating,” and had apparently been using a pen nib to snort the crushed Ritalin capsules. Apparently this wasn’t the first time the aspiring Tony Montana had abused Ritalin, the boy admitted that he had acquired the drug from a classmate and had been using it for quite some time.
Extremely extended gaming sessions are dangerous enough without throwing restricted narcotics into the mix. Just last week a 20-year-old gamer died of deep vein thrombosis during an extended gaming session and before that there was the Chinese guy who played for three days straight before dying of exhaustion. Playing games until you literally keel over dead is not improving anyone’s opinion of the hobby, folks.
Thankfully, the kid’s dad, who refused to identify himself or his son to the media or the school authorities, wasn’t blaming his son’s gaming habit for his … other habit. “Being such a traumatic, emotional experience of thinking my boy was dying, to ‘he is snorting drugs,’ put me in shock,” the father told media. “I had a hundred questions but was too shocked and drained to address them.” He went on to add, “If they have Ritalin in their houses it needs to be kept in a secure place,” and claimed that a lot of parents think of their kids as “angels”, even when the evidence indicates otherwise.
Ritalin or Methylphenidate is a psychostimulant with effects similar to, but less potent than, those of cocaine. Its effect on your gamerscore is currently unknown.
Source: TVNZ via Game Politics
Published: Aug 8, 2011 09:00 pm