Hey -- you there -- the Spy? No no, don't worry, I'm not going to shoot you for sneaking into my TeamFortress base to get the flag. I was just wondering if you could pop me with one of those hallucinogen grenades you have, the kind that skew my game view and fill my vision with fake explosions and effects? Just one hit, man. Just gimmie a hit. I'm good for it.

Look I'm not really addicted or anything, I can quit anytime I want. In fact, I was gonna quit tonight, you know, after just one more hit to get me through the dry times ahead.

My story starts about a year ago. I play as a sniper, and like most of my ilk my reflexes were razor-sharp and my wrist was accurate to the 100th of a pixel. Then one day a spy like you came into the enemy base and just ... just POPPED me with a hallucinogen gren. Most guys don't take the full dose the first time but I didn't really have a choice, one moment I was staring through a scope, the next thing I know this smoking canister NAILS me in the crotch. I was doubled over with pain and couldn't get away. Pretty soon I started seeing things, like the 70s group Earth Wind and Fire taking turns stepping in front of a bus being driven by weeping Japanese school children. I saw lightning and turtles. I vaguely recall falling off of the sniper ledge, but when I hit the ground I felt no pain. It was THE WILDEST RUSH OF MY LIFE. I totally forgot where our flag was and why I was defending it. In the cosmic sense, well, it didn't have any meaning, you know? When I was high on grenades, I was able to see ATOMS. Heavy stuff.

So I started out with casual grenading, you know, I would claim to be base defense but if I happened to see a spy come in I'd let him chuck a few drug grenades before I shot him.

Pretty soon I didn't even bother to shoot him.

After a few weeks I gave up any pretense of "defense." I just hung around outside the supply room, doped up on grens, wrapped in rags, waiting for my next hit. My clan kicked me out, but they didn't understand -- if they could only know what it's like for me to NOT be hallucinating, they wouldn't keep telling me to knock off the dope. Look, the stress of sniping people day in and day out and, oh, oh, "here's the flag" no "here's the flag" and "enemy in the water" and "it's on the ramp" and "incoming blah blah" WHATEVER! I just needed a little boost to take the edge off of playing dee, is that so wrong?

But then I found this Canalzone server on the other side of the net, you know, where the pings are bad and the crowd is worse? It was just two teams full of spies chucking grens at each other getting high. I played on there for a month, maybe two, but I barely remember any of it. That was a fun crowd, those spies. We did some sick stuff. This dude named HacKney? He stuffed a gren up his nostril and pulled the pin. We were laughing so hard someone puked ... I think it was me. It's all a little fuzzy.

Pretty soon I ran out of grenades and they kicked me off. Life got really hard, really fast. I tried to quit grenades cold-turkey but it was worthless. I went back to my clan and tried sniping but I couldn't hold the rifle still. I jittered like jello on the subway. I couldn't remember which base was ours. One time I picked up a backpack and forgot where I was supposed to strap it on. I knew if I could get just one more grenade, you know, I'd feel like myself again. But for that I needed cash -- so...

I took our flag and sold it to the other team for some benjamins.

I didn't stick around to see the consequences. I went back to the bad Canalzone server on the other side of the tracks and together with my so-called friends I blew through my fortune and binged on dope grens until the group of us couldn't tell red from blue. Then my old clan busted onto the server and started shooting the place up. At first nobody believed there were actually soldiers on the server shooting us with rockets, we all thought we were just buzzing from a WICKED high, but actually we were, in fact, getting shot and killed.

They dragged me back to our base and the medic whacked me with that white beeping box thing until I begged him to stop. So, here I am. They won't let me anywhere near the flag room. I tell you, I really hit bottom. Yessir. But it wasn't my fault. I just got a bum deal from life, you know what I mean? Coulda happened to anyone. Yeah, the flag room is that way. I don't suppose you wanna hit a poor boy with a dope grenade for his trouble, do yas?

[Victim idea submitted by GameSpy reader Max Power.]