December 1, 1996
Net Addiction: True Disorder
Or Just a Cyber-Psycho-Fad?By PAM BELLUCK
Not long ago, in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in Texas, a 17-year-old boy was weathering withdrawal at its worst. His body shuddered with convulsions. He hurled tables and chairs around the hospital.
Had he been hooked on heroin? Cocaine? Jim Beam? Joe Camel?
No, his psychologist said. The teen-ager had withdrawn cold turkey from the Internet.
A woman in the Pacific Northwest whose husband divorced her because she spent too much time in cyberspace continued to worship the World Wide Web so fervently that she forgot to take her children to the doctor, buy heating oil or get the kids enough food. Her ex-husband sued for custody of the children.
But he needed someone to vouch for her ailment. "I had to write a letter to the judge," said Dr. Jonathan Kandell, a psychologist. "The judge did not believe there was such a thing as Internet addiction."
Is there? A smattering of psychologists and therapists say that Internet addiction is as real as compulsive gambling, drug abuse and binge eating.
In Boston, McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital affiliated with Harvard, opened a computer addiction clinic in August.
At the University of Maryland, Dr. Kandell, the assistant director of the counseling center, hung out a shingle for an Internet addiction support group after he watched a few Net-ensnared students nearly flunk out.
And this summer, for the first time, the American Psychological Association conference featured an academic survey about online addiction. The author, Kimberly S. Young, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh in Bradford, Pa., asked 496 heavy Internet users the kinds of questions normally asked of substance abusers. She said 396 of them qualified as addicts.
'It's Just a Computer' "It's a silent addiction that sort of creeps into your home," said Young, who counseled the 17-year-old boy who wound up in the Texas rehabilitation center. "It's just a computer, and it seems so harmless."
Perverse though it may sound, a great number of the support groups for the Internet-addicted are -- you guessed it -- online.
There is a Netaholics Anonymous Web page, a Webaholics web page, and Interneters Anonymous, an online 12-step group, complete with a serenity prayer:
Oh, Great Webmaster,
Grant me the serenity to know when to logoff . . . There is the Internet Addiction Survey. And there is the Internet Addiction Support Group, where Internet Addiction Disorder is almost a verbatim page out of the psychiatrists' bible, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
How can you tell if you have a "maladaptive pattern of Internet use?" Did you happen to notice "a need for markedly increased amounts of time on Internet to achieve satisfaction"? And when you're not on line, do you exhibit "psychomotor agitation" (the cybershakes), "fantasies or dreams about Internet," or "voluntary or involuntary typing movements of the fingers"?
A joke? Well, Dr. Ivan Goldberg, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, did have his tongue planted firmly in his cheek when he started the support group more than a year ago. But the response he got was decidedly straight-faced.
Tyler Johnson, 17, a high school senior in Abbotsford, British Columbia, modemmed into the Internet Addiction Support Group the other day. He spends more than six hours a day on line and more than an hour reading his e-mail.
Tyler dropped off the high school's champion drag racing team and now, every day after school and then after dinner until as late as 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, he clicks into Multi-User Dungeons, or MUDs, a world of fantasy games where he can take on different personas.
He is so engrossed by how engrossed he is in the Internet that he has chosen for the subject of his French class debate, "L'Addiction de l'Internet."
The irony of online groups for the online addicted is not lost on psychologists, who say that chat rooms for the computer-compulsive should be built of bricks and mortar, not fiber-optic cables.
Otherwise, it's like "having an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a bar," said Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack, a psychologist who runs the McLean Hospital clinic.
But for now, counseling centers aren't exactly being flooded with trembling, strung-out cyber-junkies air-typing in their sleep. Of course, that could be because the Internet addicts can't tear themselves away from their machines.
Dr. Orzack says her clinic gets about two visits a week, mostly from relatives and friends worried about a loved one who is logging on too much.
Dr. Kandell has been trying for a year to get enough people for his support group. And he said similar support groups floundered for lack of people at Marquette University and the University of Texas at Austin.
But give it time.
"When pathological gambling first started, no one was taking it seriously," said Dr. Young, who would like online addiction to become an officially recognized disorder, in part so addicts can get insurance to pay for therapy.
Dr. Young said that if alcoholism is any guide to Netaholism, between 2 percent and 5 percent of the estimated 20 million Americans who go online might be addicted.
Dr. Kandell speculates that many addicts aren't yet seeking help because they are still in denial. "I think we're about a year away from having people recognize it's really a problem," he said. "It's out there. There's no question."
Related Sites
Following are links to the external Web sites mentioned in this article. These sites are not part of The New York Times on the Web, and The Times has no control over their content or availability. When you have finished visiting any of these sites, you will be able to return to this page by clicking on your Web browser's "Back" button or icon until this page reappears.Webaholics World Wide Webaholics (a page for people skeptical of addiction theories. Internetters Anonymous ("Hi, I'm Rich, and I am an Internet Addict. Before I.A. my social life was disintegrating, ...") Netaholics Anonymous World Headquarters ("You know you're hooked on the Internet if... " "You know you're really hooked on the Internet if... " all the way to "You might as well just install a phone jack directly into your jugular vein if...") Netaholics Annonymous T-shirt ("Why surf naked?") Internet Addiction Survey by Dr. Kimberly S. Young, the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford
Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company