When Tracy Weiss started going to substance abuse counselor Jay Parker, he thought Weiss might be an alcoholic. She had binged in her early 20s and was using destructive behavior to hide from memories of physical and sexual abuse.
But it wasn’t alcohol to which she was turning.
Instead, Weiss found solace in the blue-green glow of her computer screen. After buying a computer for her two sons three Christmases ago, she had spent up to 18 hours a day in chat rooms, ignoring her children, ages 11 and 14, for her more than 100 online relationships.
Weiss, who lives in Portland, Ore., is one of about 300 people who have come to Internet/Computer Addiction Services in Redmond, Wash., in the past two years. The for-profit center opened in 1999 to treat a growing concern about computer and Internet “addiction” and is one of a few centers in the country that specializes in treating a condition that remains controversial.
When the center opened, Internet addiction was met with skepticism by people in counseling and psychiatric fields. Since then, more research has surfaced, but the condition has not received the acceptance some professionals think it deserves.
Parker and Hilarie Cash, a Seattle mental health counselor, opened the center after they met at a conference and realized how many of their clients’ lives were being affected adversely by the Internet.
Cash defines Internet addiction as “using the technology of the Internet in an addictive way.” Some people become addicted to online games, some to chatting and forming relationships, some to day trading, online gambling, pornography or cybersex. Others, she said, live their lives through the keyboard and monitor–shopping, accessing information, making friends, maintaining relationships and finding support when those relationships end.
Kimberly Young, executive director of the Center for On-Line Addiction in Bradford, Pa., said between 5 percent and 10 percent of Internet users are addicted to their machines. That number is similar to addiction rates among people who drink alcohol or gamble.
Cash and Parker described the people who have come to them for help:
– The 21-year-old student at Washington State University who played an online fantasy game for 36 hours straight, had a psychotic episode from the lack of sleep and ended up in a psychiatric unit.
– The 29-year-old in middle management who played an online game at work until he got fired and ended up living back home with his mother.
– The manager who was fired from two computer companies because he couldn’t stop playing Dungeons and Dragons at work.
– The 16-year-old who became suicidal when his parents took away his modem.
Though Internet addiction is considered a clinical disorder, debate continues as to whether professionals are using the right words to describe it.
Dr. Richard Ries, an addiction psychiatrist and director of the addiction program for the University of Washington’s psychiatry department, said calling excessive Internet use an addiction is “really stretching the word.”
Ries said what some call Internet addiction is more accurately called a compulsion. The difference, he said, is this: Addictions involve putting a foreign substance into the body and having that substance affect the body’s chemistry.
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The same logic applies to people labeled food, shopping or gambling addicts. Many drug- and alcohol-recovery programs can fix compulsive behavior, helping to further confuse the words, Ries said.
Cash and Parker say they use the same techniques for treating Internet addiction as they do any other addiction.
Parker uses a 12-step approach like the one used in Alcoholics Anonymous, which includes admitting the problem and soliciting group support.
Cash said she concentrates on helping patients learn what triggers their behavior and to develop alternatives to excessive computer use. She also encourages clients to attend 12-step meetings.
Because it’s convenient, accessible and anonymous, Parker said, the Internet makes it possible for people who otherwise wouldn’t seek out gambling or promiscuous sex to find such outlets.
“Somebody who’d be too embarrassed to go into an adult-video store isn’t embarrassed at all to go online and hunt up porn,” Parker said.
Even something as harmless as being a well-informed citizen can be overdone on the Net.
“I have people who are information addicts,” Parker said. “They can [find information] in other venues, but at a certain point, the library is going to close, and they’re going to get kicked out.”
Online, people can hunt indefinitely. There is a correlation between the amount of time spent online and an increase in depression. Computer addicts are known to develop a tolerance level and mimic drug and alcohol addicts, and other compulsives. when they try to quit, Parker said.