$14,000 Internet Addiction Facility Trades Cookies For Cookies
Got a problem with the ol' internet? Too many cookies clogging your cache because you can't quit the click? The reStart Internet Addiction Recovery Program can help - and unlike other programs, reStart uses cookies to help soothe your cookie problem - real cookies!
First patient Ben Alexander, a 19-year old whose World of Warcraft hobby addiction caused him to flunk out of the University of Iowa, is enduring cold turkey treatment at the facility, which can treat up to six patients at a time. Part of the recovery program takes internet addicts and immerses them in daily tasks and chores, like baking cookies.
Now, to a diabetic like myself, this cure sounds worse than the disease (if tastier)! And since Psychotherapist Cosette Dawna Rae lives in the Fall City, Washington facility with her family, internet sex addictions are the one kind of internet-jones the program won't treat. Now I ask you: what's rehab without low blood sugar and empty sex?
Bake Cookies, Beat Internet Addiction [GamePolitics via ShanghaiDaily]
tiny dancer
Posted to Miscellany on 23 September 2009
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: cookies, internet addiction, restart internet addiction recovery program, world of warcraft
$14,000 for this is such a rip off. My god, he could go back to college for a couple years for that.
I can see the use for this for some really bad cases, but that's an extortionate price. Surely there's some more cost effective getaways that can get good results.
I heard about this story via NPR - it's a 45 day in patient program or about $311/day for living quarters and a therapist. Expensive, but that's a lot of treatment.
The bigger question is non-substance addicitons. Internet addiction has high rates of co-morbidity with established diagnoses such as depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and substance abuse. People are can express psychological disorders in many ways - obsessive shopping, cleaning, television watching, etc... There is nothing inherent to the Internet that is addictive. Ben had pre-existing social anxiety disorder and it went off the rails when he left for college - it was just much more comfortable for him to make friends and be social in WoW. But calling it Internet addiction obscures the fact that he had problems which had *nothing* to do with video gaming or the Internet.
There are many PhD psychologists who are pegging their career on getting Internet addiction into the DSM-IV. I personally don't buy it.