An addiction for the 21st century is causing increasing numbers of desperate parents to seek help for their teenage children.
Internet Addiction Disorder, or IAD, is now as much of a real addiction as drugs and alcohol, according to the renowned Priory Clinic in Roehampton, south west London.
The disorder can lead to mood swings, compulsive lying, loss of interest in studies and a breakdown in real-life relationships, as surfers spend time using and abusing chatrooms, multi-user games such as EverQuest, and social networking sites like Facebook.
Speaking back in 2008, Richard Renson, then Addiction Therapist at The Priory, said: “In some families, money can be tight. Both parents work and children often come back home alone and go straight on to the computer. It becomes a routine and that routine becomes very hard to break.
“It’s lack of communication with another solid human being. Some people say when they’re gaming online, they’ve got thousands of friends, but it’s not communication and emotional involvement. It’s avoidance behaviour.
“One of the hardest things to manage is our emotional world and if you’ve not got any role models and are only using computer-based information, it’s not going to be solid, concrete or useful.”
Two years on, there are currently no statistics outlining the number of UK addicts, but with Facebook and Twitter usage continuing to amass large numbers of followers, the problem is increasing.
Mr Renson estimated at the time that as many as 20 per cent of Priory patients were chronically affected by internet and computer-based addiction.
However, critics argue potential sufferers only use the internet as a medium to fuel other cravings and that internet addiction itself is not a true condition.
Mr Renson firmly believed this was not the case: “There’s more and more evidence to show that it is,” he said.
“We can sensationalise it, but any action a human being takes that is detrimental to their well-being, and seems a repetition, can be classed as an addiction.”
He added: “Evidence also shows there are ‘hot-spots’ in the brain that remain when somebody stops using the computer. It’s exactly the same as when using a substance.”
An addict, speaking to The Times in March, said: “The social thing was something I always had trouble with. It was a lot easier to socialise and make friends online than it was in real life.”
However, treatment is not as simple as stopping use. Instead, it can be a slow and difficult process, requiring considerable after-care.
The key, according to Mr Renson, is tackling the underlying problems that lead to the compulsion.
“If you start off with abstaining from that substance or behaviour, you get to the bottom of how you feel,’ he said. “You can learn how to manage the emotions you probably thought were too hard to manage initially.
“When you’re not intoxicated, inebriated or doing something that avoids feeling, you can start to make sense of it and see that it isn’t so tough.
“But abstinence is quite a tall order. When you take away a behaviour that people have seen as addictive, it can be quite troublesome. People relapse unless you’ve got a support network around you.”
The cure though, can be prohibitively expensive. It costs approximately £20,000 for a 28-day programme at The Priory, although medical insurance may cover certain cases.
“It may sound like quite a lot of money,” said Mr Renson. “But you can’t put a price on a person’s quality of life. If you can give somebody back their life, it’s money well spent.
“We’re doing quite a lot of education around general compulsive behaviour and addictions,” he added.
“For better or for worse, The Priory has a reputation for treating the rich and the famous, but we have a social conscience.
“We want people to experience the world and the beauties of it. You can’t do that if you’re sitting at a computer.”
