Word: internetting
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Alexander is the first patient at the newly opened ReSTART, a video-game and Internet addiction recovery program in Fall City, Wash., about 30 miles east of Seattle. It's hard to imagine Alexander, now merrily giving a tour of the woodsy facility, glued to a computer game for more than 16 hours a day, but he says, "It was pretty much all I was doing when I was in college." (See pictures of video gamers...
...regular jogs. Alexander also has daily counseling sessions with Rae, where they discuss his long-term goals, and even work on a plan for a tutoring business he hopes to start. Once a week, he has a therapy session with Cash, a specialist in video game and Internet addiction...
...every psychologist would agree that Internet or video-game dependency is a legitimately diagnosable problem. Some suggest that pathological game-playing or Internet surfing is not an addiction per se, but a symptom of a deeper issue, such as depression or anxiety. But Cash believes the virtual world can be no less addicting than other activities, such as gambling. She describes her first patient who exhibited signs of compulsion: He had come to her in a moment of crisis 15 years ago - having discovered a text-only role-playing computer game that was conceptually similar to Dungeons and Dragons...
Since then, Cash has focused her practice on video-game and Internet addiction, treating patients who use their electronic media so obsessively that they stop sleeping and eating properly, ruin relationships with loved ones, suffer repetitive use injuries such as eye strain and carpal tunnel syndrome, and develop depression and anxiety, among other things. Cash's private practice is located in Redmond, Wash., the home of Microsoft - not an entirely surprising hub of compulsive Internet and video-game use, she says. Indeed, the Seattle-Tacoma area is the nation's 13th largest media market, and has the highest level...
Although extreme cases of Internet and video-game addiction have not been widely publicized in the U.S., it's a different story in Europe and in East Asia, where game-playing has even been linked to player death. In 2006 an in-patient addiction facility for Internet and video-game abuse was opened in Amsterdam, and there are several similar programs operating in China. Cash visited one such facility - run out of a military hospital - last November. "It was half boot-camp and half-psychotherapy," she says, theorizing that the wider recognition of the problem overseas may stem from...