Internet addiction is a growing problem throughout the world. Now there is help in the United States. reStart is the first Internet Addiction Recovery Program in the U.S.
America is now following in the footsteps of countries like South Korea and China by identifying and providing treatment for Internet Addiction. You can get internet detox right here in the good ol’ USA! I’m not sure Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) is in the DSM-IV, but I’m betting it’ll be included in the DSM-V which is due out in a couple of years.
We’ve all heard the jokes about how to identify if you are an addict. You know, ‘Hello, my name is (fill in the blank) and I’m an Internet Addict.’ ‘Hello, (fill in the name).’ You might have a problem if you fill in the name with something like, ‘web_rowser’ instead of the name your parents gave you. Have you ever been at work and written a business memo and added ‘LOL’ in it? Have you ever responded to your computer nickname rather than your real name. Do you get depressed, despondent and/or feel disconnected and with the world when you power down for the night? Are you distraught and the world seems out of reach when your cable company is out? Do you avoid going places that don’t have an internet connection? Do you break out in sweats when you have to fly somewhere and know you won’t be able to access the internet while in the air? Is your closest confident someone named ‘nyte_magic’ and you don’t know their real name, what country they live in, what they do for a living, whether they are male or female or 17 or 75? Do you fall asleep at the keyboard? Do you dream in html?
Yeah, that’s just a small sampling of the jokes about internet addiction that have been going around since about 1996 or sooner, when the internet first started being accessible to everyone in every home.
Some of the symptoms of what behavioral experts are calling Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) include:
Using online services everyday without any skipping
Getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and checking email before returning to bed
Losing track of time after making a connection
Spending more and more time on the internet and less and less time with ‘real life’ friends
Spending less time on daily chores to allow more time on the computer
Eating meals while sitting at the computer
Minimizing the time you spend online when someone asks you about it
Sneaking onto the internet when family isn’t around to make you feel guilty about it
Taking time at work to go online, letting your work slide
Significant others complaining about the amount of time you spend on the internet
Fantasizing about being online when you aren’t
Work, relationships, study and life suffer because of the time you spend on the internet
You lose sleep because of staying on the internet late into the night
You get irritable and snap when someone interrupts your concentration while you are online
That’s just a sampling of symptoms, but I wonder how many of those you can check off? Personally, I’m not telling (whoops, that’s a symptom, isn’t it!).
There have been treatment centers for this addiction in China for a couple of years now. China has the distinction of having the largest online population in the world. They also have the distinction of having had a 16-year-old boy die in one of their treatment centers earlier this month and using rather harsh treatment techniques.
But we aren’t China. Instead, we have our very own treatment center opening up right here in the United States. Situated on a restive 5-acres just outside of Seattle in Fall City, Washington. reStart is a 45-day program that houses 6 people at a time and bills itself as an internet addiction recovery program.
Fortunately, I don’t have an internet addiction problem, so I can keep track of reStart and their Internet Addiction Recovery Program from right here at my laptop. Whoops. I have to run, my significant other just got up and I don’t want him to see
I’m still online, lol... Bye.....