Addicted to the Internet? There’s rehab for that

Addicted to the Internet? There’s rehab for that

Facility claims to be first in U.S. to offer Web, video game recovery program

Image: Ben Alexander

Stephen Brashear / AP
Ben Alexander listening to music in his room at the reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program in Fall City, Wash. reSTART is the residential treatment program of its kind in the United States.

 FALL CITY, Wash. – Ben Alexander spent nearly every waking minute playing the video game “World of Warcraft.” As a result, he flunked out of the University of Iowa.

Alexander, 19, needed help to break an addiction he calls as destructive as alcohol or drugs. He found it in this suburb of high-tech Seattle, where what claims to be the first residential treatment center for Internet addiction in the United States just opened its doors.

The center, called reSTART, is somewhat ironically located near Redmond, headquarters of Microsoft and a world center of the computer industry. It opened in July and for $14,000 offers a 45-day program intended to help people wean themselves from pathological computer use, which can include obsessive use of video games, texting, Facebook, eBay, Twitter and any other time-killers brought courtesy of technology.

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