CLOCKWISE^FROMTOP^LEFT:^ RAFAEL^ SOLDI(^2);^EIRIK^JOHNSON:RAFAEL^SOLDI;^PEYTONFOUCHT;^ RAFAEL^ SOLDItechnology and gaming—is intentional. “If
you’re going to treat heroin addicts, you’re
not going to find them in the workforce,” Rae
tells me. “You’re going to find them out on
the streets.” And if you’re going to treat peo-
ple with “technology problems,” as she puts
it, there’s no better place than here. “One of
the things that we believe creates health and
wholeness in people is a connection with the
outdoors and nature,” Rae says.
Rae and cofounder Hilarie Cash got the
inspiration for ReStart from watching tech-
addiction struggles firsthand. After spend-
ing the nineties as a contract developer and
IT worker for Seattle tech companies, Rae
became a clinical social worker. One case
involved a 15-year-old boy who was skip-
ping school to play World of Warcraft, the
hugely popular online role-playing game, 17
hours a day. Cash had seen people with simi-
lar problems, and she had a personal stake,
too—a young son who was developing a taste
for gaming. “I was looking at the future,” she
says, “and I was thinking, I want to under-
stand this so I can protect him, so he doesn’t
become one of these clients.”
Video-game addiction is not yet listed as
an official mental-health condition in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Men-
tal Disorders, the compendium of recog-
nized forms of mental illness published by
the American Psychiatric Association. That
may eventually change—last June, the World
Health Organization included “gaming dis-
order” in its International Classification of
Diseases, a web-based diagnostic tool that
helps doctors identify and treat afflictions.
But there’s still plenty of resistance from
health experts. In 2017, two dozen scholars
around the world cowrote a paper for the
Journal of Behavioral Addictions arguing
against the use of the diagnosis, saying that
there isn’t enough evidence to support it yet.
At ReStart, the issue seems settled: staff
and clients talk about gaming like they
would any other addiction. Rae tells me
about a 13-year-old boy who was “using”
World of Warcraft a dozen hours a day. Sto-
ries about game addicts run the gamut—lost
jobs, dashed hopes, broken marriages. Rae
mentions a man who fell asleep at the wheel
and crashed his car after a gaming marathon
at a convention. Another man developed
deep vein thrombosis in
part from sitting in his
game chair too long. He
eventually lost a leg to
amputation.
In a small, quiet li-
brary at Serenity I meet
Nate, an 18-year-old in
a hoodie and jeans who’s
been here several months.98 OUTSIDE MAGAZINE 11.19
Clockwise from
top left: the
main building
at ReStart Life;
Hilarie Cash;
bunks at the
Serenity facility; a
message-sharing
board for gamers;
Cosette Rae;
ReStart’s well-
stocked gym