Spending his days overseeing construction workers and his evenings caring for his 3-year-old son, he had no-one to talk to.
But one group of people helped him pull through - even though he never laid eyes on most of them.
They were his World of Warcraft friends - "guild people", he calls them.
They live all over the world and spend 20, 30 or more hours a week together in the online world of Azeroth as druids, priests, warriors and rogues, slaying monsters and collecting treasure.
Schweitzer's friends in the Dread Pirates guild are a tiny subset of the 11.5 million people who have made Warcraft the world's most successful online video game.
Like many other massively multiplayer online games, or MMOs, Warcraft is set in a Lord of the Rings-like fantasy realm where players create characters and undertake missions, some team-based and some solo, to gather resources and earn rewards.
Most players become part of a guild, a close-knit group that plays the game together while chatting.
Active guilds spend hundreds and even thousands of hours a year together online, often developing strong bonds.
For Schweitzer (27), the Dread Pirates replaced the co-workers, family and buddies who someone his age might typically draw on in a difficult time.
He confided in them over his headset.
"The only people I had to talk to about it were guild people," he recalled recently.
"All of my friends are in Dread Pirates.
"I don't really have any others."
Schweitzer was sitting with them at the Lost Bar, a Peter Pan-themed drinking hole near the Disneyland hotels.
The occasion was BlizzCon, an annual two-day event put on by World of Warcraft's publisher, Blizzard Entertainment.
Twenty thousand tickets to the show sold out on the internet in less than a minute on a Saturday in May.
BlizzCon is held to promote upcoming products and sell merchandise.
But it's also a way for members of a vibrant if little-known subculture to see one another and reinforce connections formed via an ethernet cable.
Twenty-five of the 40 active members of Dread Pirates managed to land tickets.
That night at the Lost Bar, 17 of them sat in a circle, retelling stories, laughing at in-jokes and posing for pictures like old friends at a college reunion.
It was the third such gathering for the Dread Pirates since BlizzCon started five years ago.
In 2007, four members came; last year, there were 13.
Schweitzer took his only vacation of the year to attend BlizzCon, leaving his son with his parents.
Others travelled from as far away as Australia.
"We spend so much time together and share so much information that we become like a family," says Joe Benga, a 26-year-old computer help desk supervisor.
"Except," adds 26-year-old bartender Casey Aron, "most families don't spend time together three or four nights a week."
To a casual observer, they look like any loud group of twenty- and thirtysomethings at a bar.
For anybody who isn't a Warcraft player, however, their conversation might as well be in Russian.
"We're talking about the viability of shadow priests" (a reference to one of the characters in the game).
- "You take him for 5% crit and you take him for 3% hit" (measurements of the damage players inflict on enemies).
Dread Pirates use in-game monikers when together.
Schweitzer is Tallyn.
Dennis Mizer is Valeas, or Val.
Armstrong is Extenze.
Hrenchir is Hardrox.
Mary Mizer is Aeryanna, but, in one of many signs that the World of Warcraft isn't a hotbed of feminism, most people call her "Val's Wife."
Although they're expensive to produce, MMOs can be hugely profitable when successful because players pay a monthly subscription fee, typically about $20, after purchasing the software for about $60.
When World of Warcraft debuted in November 2004, the MMO genre was dominated by Everquest.
But that game peaked at 450,000 players, while World of Warcraft passed that number within months and has grown to become more than 25 times bigger than its rival.
Some of the newest players come from developing markets, such as China and Russia.
"Warcraft is an incredibly addictive game," says Morgan Webb, a long-time player and a host of the video game news show X-Play on US cable network G4.
"Just when you think you're done, it gives you one little carrot to keep on playing."
"On the morning of BlizzCon, a wider audience is nowhere in sight.
This convention is for 26,000 passionate Warcraft fans who paid more than $200 per ticket, along with tens of thousands more watching via pay-per-view.
The assembled crowd at the Anaheim Convention Centre is overwhelmingly white or Asian and male, a little chubbier than average and a bit more likely to have hair that flows down their backs, regardless of gender.
The assembled members of Dread Pirates look weary as they sit down for the opening ceremony after a late night of drinking.
Armstrong is nursing a hangover, and he's not the only one.
Like all of his guild mates, however, his eyes are locked on a far-off stage and 11 giant video screens as Blizzard executives announce upcoming products, including an expansion of World of Warcraft titled Cataclysm that will feature new worlds, new raids and new character types.
"Everybody request your days off now," says Schweitzer, as Gorman explains that when the last expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, was released, many members took a week off work to explore it together.
There are competitions for professional players, panels with titles like "game systems" and "classes, items and professions", booths selling T-shirts, comic books and other paraphernalia, and a signing by the cast of The Guild, a popular web series that pokes fun at Warcraft culture.
The main attraction is a sea of 544 computers with playable versions of Cataclysm.
Hundreds of people wait their chance in a twisting line that resembles the one for Space Mountain at Disneyland.
"It's going to suck going back to the old game," Benga says after getting 20 minutes of sample time next to Mizer and Gorman.
Later in the evening, the Dread Pirates sit together among nearly 10,000 others to watch costume, dance-alike and sound-alike contests in which participants dress, move and make noises like characters in the game.
It's an opportunity to laugh at others and at themselves but also to marvel at real talent, particularly when Dread Pirates member James Griffin appears onstage.
Most nights he serves as the guild's "alt," or alternate player, filling in with there's an empty spot.
Tonight, the alt is a star, wowing the crowd with a rendition of the "dwarf female dance" from Warcraft, a Riverdance-like Irish jig.
He wins first prize out of 44 entrants.
As the guild leaves the convention centre for a late-night dinner, they crowd around Griffin to celebrate his win and discuss their plans for the rest of the weekend.
There's a sense of sadness, however.
BlizzCon is half over, and the Dread Pirates will soon split up for another year.
For Schweitzer, it's not just the end of a fun gathering but his only time away from work and his son all year.
Next year, he may have to allot his days off more carefully.
"A bunch of us are going to get together in Las Vegas before the next BlizzCon," he says excitedly after returning home.
The guild members have even come up with a name for their planned group vacation: "DreadCon."
Below left: Zephial Swiftriver, of Texas, dressed as a character from World of Warcraft.
PHOTO: LOS ANGELES TIMES
