How Dungeons & Dragons Helps Me (and Others) During the Pandemic
Or: How a couple of friends and some dice can help keep up your mental health.
We are coming up on one year of lockdown. The country, and the world, for that matter, have been (mostly) isolating from social contact for eleven months as of the writing of this article. As has become increasingly apparent, everyone’s mental health has suffered.
So, to help keep our spirits up, we all turn to a variety of different things to hold onto whatever hope we can. We create small bubbles of people that we can see in person to gain some semblance of social contact. We keep up with each other over the phone, messenger, and Zoom. Social media is a boon for many of us.
And, importantly, we do things that help us feel normal. So many of the normal things we do are difficult or impossible — my annual ritual of delivering cookies and candy on Christmas day was canceled this year for obvious reasons. So, we grab onto anything we can.
Online gaming has surged as a result. Among Us has become the breakout hit of the pandemic. It’s a simple game that is cheap and easy to pick up. It is normally played with a group of people, preferably friends, and is a good way to socialize and share a few fun hours with people you can’t see…
