Dungeons & Dragons has a pretty wild reputation.

To some, it's that nerd game that pre-pubescent nerds play in their dingy basements with their nerd dice and stacks of empty pizza boxes. To many still stuck in the 80s and 90s, it's a game that steals the souls of nice boys and girls (thanks, Jack Chick), because nothing is more satanic than 6-hour improv sessions with occasional arithmetic. And now, thanks to references in shows like Stranger Things and Community, most people know it as a fun-looking (if still nerdy) game that they might like to try sometime.

But to me, D&D is more than just a fun game. It's the thing that got me through high school with most of my sanity intact.

Unless you're one of the happy few who somehow managed to enjoy high school, I'm sure you know how big of a feat that is. As for most, high school was not an easy time for me. I was going to hell in a handbasket that I shared with some really fun mental illnesses. Because of this, I isolated myself to such an extent that the next step would have been finding an island to desert myself on. The only people I didn't avoid were my D&D friends.

The group began when two of my friends decided that they wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons and enlisted me and two others to play. None of us knew anything about the game, so it was with significant confusion and excitement that we unpacked the red 4th Edition Starter Set box that first night. While our designated Dungeon Master (DM) pored over the manuals, we messed around with the included set of 6 polyhedral dice and sorted out spell cards with names like Expeditious Retreat and Shillelagh. We ordered pizza and frowned at the blank character sheets as our DM tried explaining ability scores and attack rolls. I followed along in profound confusion as I created a paper-and-graphite-and-imagination person with whom I would spend the next few months. His name was Fletcher Wyvern and he died as he lived: Incompetently, and preoccupied with dragons.

The time I shared with him, my friends, and their characters were an incredible escape. For hours on end, interrupted only by the pizza delivery, we would make incredible, ridiculous stories together. With our imaginations and twenty-sided dice, we fought monsters, negotiated with diplomats, terrorized innocent shopkeepers, abused a stolen Staff of Size Alteration, and developed irrational fears of dolls.

In our world, I could forget everything and just have fun. Not only that, it made me want to be social. I used to flake on everything, not willing to leave my room, but because of D&D I counted down the days until the next time I could see my friends. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I'm not sure if I could have coped with my depression and anxiety without this game.

Since then, I have been in three D&D groups, bought five dice sets and countless extra d20s, created too many unnecessarily detailed characters, done a horrible job of DMing several campaigns, sunk hours upon hours into reading, watching, and listening to all the D&D content I could get my hands on, and have even written my own campaigns and designed a class.

It probably sounds like a crazy hobby and a major waste of time, but it's worth it for me. When I pick up the Player's Handbook or work on a character, I'm taken back to that mix of excitement and calm that 14-year-old me found from escaping a world where it felt like everything was falling down around me. For that, I will be eternally grateful to this soul-stealing nerd game.