[Paleopsych] NYT: Hooked on the Web: Help Is on the Way

[Premise Checker]

Hooked on the Web: Help Is on the Way
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/fashion/thursdaystyles/01addict.html

[Checklist appended. I really don't meet that many criteria for addiction, 
but I have been spending way too much time on the Net and find it 
difficult to stop. Since Sunday, that is, before this article (Thursday), 
I have been sending only articles that I have read and have added comments 
on. Several people have told me that my comments are better than the 
articles themselves. I've also worked up some memes. This is why you've 
gotten very little from me lately.

[I have three more memes planned for the near future:

1. What it would take for me to give up my three most cherished 
hypotheses (non-design, importance of gene-culture co-evolution in man 
right up to the present, inability to nail down our most important 
concepts). The last is proving very difficult for me to write up. Please 
send me your own answer to my question. I suggested it to the World 
Question Center at http://edge.org.

2. Why I am not a Christian (follow-up to Bertrand Russell's essay). This 
will be easy, since only need to organize it.

3. A piece on conspiracies (including the by-far most talked about one of 
the last century but which is never called one). Major problem is that I'd 
like to say that conspiracy thinking is our default Stone Age sociology, 
since back then the chain of consequences was short enough that what 
resulted came about by the actions of just a few people. However, I've 
also read that looking for an active agent is a Western particularity. And 
again, that conspiracies today are viewed as ones without conspirators. I 
need to reconcile these viewpoints. And I'll talk about how one might 
judge the plausibility of various conspiracy candidates.

[For those of you on my lists, I *can* still send articles that I don't 
read or read and don't comment on. Almost anything that I might send and 
comment on does go onto my disk space in on the UNIX mainframe in 
Manhattan that houses Panix.com. But I'd rather have you all start working 
for *me* and help me with my two main projects, namely, "deep culture 
change" and "persistence of difference."]

------------

    By SARAH KERSHAW
    REDMOND, Wash.

    THE waiting room for Hilarie Cash's practice has the look and feel of
    many a therapist's office, with soothing classical music, paintings of
    gentle swans and colorful flowers and on the bookshelves stacks of
    brochures on how to get help.

    But along with her patients, Dr. Cash, who runs Internet/Computer
    Addiction Services here in the city that is home to Microsoft, is a
    pioneer in a growing niche in mental health care and addiction
    recovery.

    The patients, including Mike, 34, are what Dr. Cash and other mental
    health professionals call onlineaholics. They even have a diagnosis:
    Internet addiction disorder.

    These specialists estimate that 6 percent to 10 percent of the
    approximately 189 million Internet users in this country have a
    dependency that can be as destructive as alcoholism and drug
    addiction, and they are rushing to treat it. Yet some in the field
    remain skeptical that heavy use of the Internet qualifies as a
    legitimate addiction, and one academic expert called it a fad illness.

    Skeptics argue that even obsessive Internet use does not exact the
    same toll on health or family life as conventionally recognized
    addictions. But, mental health professionals who support the diagnosis
    of Internet addiction say, a majority of obsessive users are online to
    further addictions to gambling or pornography or have become much more
    dependent on those vices because of their prevalence on the Internet.

    But other users have a broader dependency and spend hours online each
    day, surfing the Web, trading stocks, instant messaging or blogging,
    and a fast-rising number are becoming addicted to Internet video
    games.

    Dr. Cash and other professionals say that people who abuse the
    Internet are typically struggling with other problems, like depression
    and anxiety. But, they say, the Internet's omnipresent offer of escape
    from reality, affordability, accessibility and opportunity for
    anonymity can also lure otherwise healthy people into an addiction.

    Dr. Cash's patient Mike, who was granted anonymity to protect his
    privacy, was at high risk for an Internet addiction, having battled
    alcohol and drug abuse and depression. On a list of 15 symptoms of
    Internet addiction used for diagnosis by Internet/Computer Addiction
    Services, Mike, who is unemployed and living with his mother, checked
    off 13, including intense cravings for the computer, lying about how
    much time he spends online, withdrawing from hobbies and social
    interactions, back pain and weight gain.

    A growing number of therapists and inpatient rehabilitation centers
    are often treating Web addicts with the same approaches, including
    12-step programs, used to treat chemical addictions.

    Because the condition is not recognized in psychiatry as a disorder,
    insurance companies do not reimburse for treatment. So patients either
    pay out of pocket, or therapists and treatment centers bill for other
    afflictions, including the nonspecific impulse control disorder.

    There is at least one inpatient program, at Proctor Hospital in
    Peoria, Ill., which admits patients to recover from obsessive computer
    use. Experts there said they see similar signs of withdrawal in those
    patients as in alcoholics or drug addicts, including profuse sweating,
    severe anxiety and paranoid symptoms.

    And the prevalence of other technologies - like BlackBerry wireless
    e-mail devices, sometimes called CrackBerries because they are
    considered so addictive; the Treo cellphone-organizer ; and text
    messaging - has created a more generalized technology addiction, said
    Rick Zehr, the vice president of addiction and behavioral services at
    Proctor Hospital.

    The hospital's treatment program places all its clients together for
    group therapy and other recovery work, whether the addiction is to
    cocaine or the computer, Mr. Zehr said.

    "I can't imagine it's going to go away," he said of technology and
    Internet addiction. "I can only imagine it's going to continue to
    become more and more prevalent."

    There are family therapy programs for Internet addicts, and
    interventionists who specialize in confronting computer addicts.

    Among the programs offered by the Center for Online Addiction in
    Bradford, Pa., founded in 1994 by Dr. Kimberly S. Young, a leading
    researcher in Internet addiction, are cyberwidow support groups for
    the spouses of those having online affairs, treatment for addiction to
    eBay and intense behavioral counseling - in person, by telephone and
    online - to help clients get Web sober.

    Another leading expert in the field is Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack, the
    director of the Computer Addiction Study Center at McLean Hospital in
    Belmont, Mass., and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School.
    She opened a clinic for Internet addicts at the hospital in 1996,
    when, she said, "everybody thought I was crazy."

    Dr. Orzack said she got the idea after she discovered she had become
    addicted to computer solitaire, procrastinating and losing sleep and
    time with her family.

    When she started the clinic, she saw two patients a week at most. Now
    she sees dozens and receives five or six calls daily from those
    seeking treatment elsewhere in the country. More and more of those
    calls, she said, are coming from people concerned about family members
    addicted to Internet video games like EverQuest, Doom 3 and World of
    Warcraft.

    Still, there is little hard science available on Internet addiction.

    "I think using the Internet in certain ways can be quite absorbing,
    but I don't know that it's any different from an addiction to playing
    the violin and bowling," said Sara Kiesler, professor of computer
    science and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University.
    "There is absolutely no evidence that spending time online, exchanging
    e-mail with family and friends, is the least bit harmful. We know that
    people who are depressed or anxious are likely to go online for escape
    and that doing so helps them."

    It was Professor Kiesler who called Internet addiction a fad illness.
    In her view, she said, television addiction is worse. She added that
    she was completing a study of heavy Internet users, which showed the
    majority had sharply reduced their time on the computer over the
    course of a year, indicating that even problematic use was
    self-corrective.

    She said calling it an addiction "demeans really serious illnesses,
    which are things like addiction to gambling, where you steal your
    family's money to pay for your gambling debts, drug addictions,
    cigarette addictions." She added, "These are physiological
    addictions."

    But Dr. Cash, who began treating Internet addicts 10 years ago, said
    that Internet addiction was a potentially serious illness. She said
    she had treated suicidal patients who had lost jobs and whose
    marriages had been destroyed because of their addictions.

    She said she was seeing more patients like Mike, who acknowledges
    struggling with an addiction to online pornography but who also said
    he was obsessed with logging on to the Internet for other reasons. He
    said that he became obsessed with using the Internet during the 2000
    presidential election and that now he feels anxious if he does not
    check several Web sites, mostly news and sports sites, daily.

    "I'm still wrestling with the idea that it's a problem because I like
    it so much," Mike said.

    Three hours straight on the Internet, he said, is a minor dose. The
    Internet seemed to satisfy "whatever urge crosses my head."

    Several counselors and other experts said time spent on the computer
    was not important in diagnosing an addiction to the Internet. The
    question, they say, is whether Internet use is causing serious
    problems, including the loss of a job, marital difficulties,
    depression, isolation and anxiety, and still the user cannot stop.

    "The line is drawn with Internet addiction," said Mr. Zehr of Proctor
    Hospital, "when I'm no longer controlling my Internet use. It's
    controlling me." Dr. Cash and other therapists say they are seeing a
    growing number of teenagers and young adults as patients, who grew up
    spending hours on the computer, playing games and sending instant
    messages. These patients appear to have significant developmental
    problems, including attention deficit disorder and a lack of social
    skills.

    A report released during the summer by the Pew Internet and American
    Life Project found that teenagers did spend an increasing amount of
    time online: 51 percent of teenage Internet users are online daily, up
    from 42 percent in 2000. But the report did not find a withering of
    social skills. Most teenagers "maintain robust networks of friends,"
    it noted.

    Some therapists and Internet addiction treatment centers offer online
    counseling, including at least one 12-step program for video game
    addicts, which is controversial. Critics say that although it may be a
    way to catch the attention of someone who needs face-to-face
    treatment, it is akin to treating an alcoholic in a brewery, mostly
    because Internet addicts need to break the cycle of living in
    cyberspace.

    A crucial difference between treating alcoholics and drug addicts,
    however, is that total abstinence is usually recommended for recovery
    from substance abuse, whereas moderate and manageable use is the goal
    for behavioral addictions.

    Sierra Tucson in Arizona, a psychiatric hospital and behavioral health
    center, which treats substance and behavioral addictions, has begun
    admitting a rising number of Internet addicts, said Gina Ewing, its
    intake manager. Ms. Ewing said that when such a client left treatment,
    the center's counselors helped plan ways to reduce time on the
    computer or asked those who did not need to use the Web for work to
    step away from the computer entirely.

    Ms. Ewing said the Tucson center encouraged its Internet-addicted
    clients when they left treatment to attend open meetings of Alcoholics
    Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, which are not restricted to
    alcoholics and drug addicts, and simply to listen. Or perhaps, if they
    find others struggling with the same problem, and if those at the
    meeting are amenable, they might be able to participate.

    "It's breaking new ground," Ms. Ewing said. "But an addiction is an
    addiction."

Danger Signs for Too Much of a Good Thing
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/fashion/thursdaystyles/01aside.html

    FIFTEEN signs of an addiction to using the Internet and computers,
    according to Internet/Computer Addiction Services in Redmond, Wash.,
    follow:

    1. Inability to predict the amount of time spent on computer.

    2. Failed attempts to control personal use for an extended period of
    time.

    3. Having a sense of euphoria while on the computer.

    4. Craving more computer time.

    5. Neglecting family and friends.

    6. Feeling restless, irritable and discontent when not on the
    computer.

    7. Lying to employers and family about computer activity.

    8. Problems with school or job performance as a result of time spent
    on the computer.

    9. Feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety or depression as a result of time
    spent on the computer.

    10. Changes in sleep patterns.

    11. Health problems like carpal tunnel syndrome, eye strain, weight
    changes, backaches and chronic sleep deprivation.

    12. Denying, rationalizing and minimizing adverse consequences
    stemming from computer use.

    13. Withdrawal from real-life hobbies and social interactions.

    14. Obsessing about sexual acting out through the use of the Internet.

    15. Creation of enhanced personae to find cyberlove or cybersex.