A 45-year-old corporate chief executive in Seattle finds himself locking himself in his office, holding all his calls and surfing the Internet for pornography for hours on end.

A University of Washington student flunks out because he stays up all night – every night – playing online fantasy role-playing adventure games.

A homemaker turns on the computer when the kids go to school. When they come home, she’s still there, talking about sex with total strangers in an online chat room.

“This is really happening, and it’s pretty powerful stuff,” said Jay Parker, and Eastside addiction counselor. “This does impact people’s lives. They need to start figuring out ways to live their computers and make it a healthy part of their lives.”

So Parker has teamed up with a colleague, psychologist Hilarie Cash, in opening Internet-Computer Addiction Services, a Redmond counseling center that specializes in treating people who just can’t kick the online habit.

And while some scholars say they doubt that computer obsession rises to the level of a true addiction on par with alcohol or drugs, Cash, Parker and a contingent of highly respected colleagues say it’s just as harmful as gambling addiction, and just as costly.

Some estimate that at least 10 percent of heavily Internet surfers are psychologically dependent on cyberspace and need professional help.

“It’s a growing thing,” said Maressa Hecht Orzack, a Boston clinical psychologist and professor at the Harvard Medical School who is considered the leading expert on computer addiction. “It’s a very isolating experience for many people. People who get into this situation will have tried to stop. But they tend to do it compulsively and they can’t stop it.”
Parker and Cash collaborated after they met at a conference and debated the various methods of treating computer addiction. Both had seen a surge in the number of clients in their regular practices who were finding the Internet affecting their lives.

But the idea of computer addiction is so new that there aren’t any solid medical studies to support one method or another. In Fact, the jury is still out on whether someone can actually be addicted to a computer or whether computer use is just a symptom of some other trouble.

“There’s no question that there’s some people who are spiraling out of control,” said Malcolm Parks, an assistant vice provost for research at the University of Washington. “The question, to me as a researcher, is what would they be doing if they didn’t have the internet. Would they spiral out of control in some other way?

“It’s a reach to say the technology is the cause of the addiction,” he said. “Why not help them deal with the underlying issues?”

But Cash and Parker say they have seen too many Internet tragedies to dismiss it.

“The social consequences are enormous,” said cash, who has a doctorate in psychology and has treated patients for two decades. “When you neglect your spouse and develop serious marital problems, when your job is neglected, when your kids are neglected, these are serious consequences.”

The counselors acknowledge that there’s no consensus on how to treat the problem. So they plan to conduct a scientific study of various methods.

Parker thinks 12-step programs, similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, is the most effective. Cash will focus on a more traditional counseling approach. Which technique clients will use, to depend on their individual circumstances.

While temporarily abstaining from computer use is likely to be necessary to break the habit, both counselors acknowledge that computers are too ingrained in our world for users to become cyber-teetotalers.

“The goal is to have them use the computer the same way a food addict still needs to eat,” Parker said. “Our first goal is to get them off the Internet, then our second goal is to address the underlying issues.”

And, the counselors hope, they can learn to be like the millions of Web surfers who don’t let it rule their lives.
“They find a way to balance it in their lives,” Cash said. “That’s the difference between someone who becomes an addict and those who don’t.”

“But there really are people who don’t have any apparent pre-existing problems, and they get hooked. It’s something we don’t fully understand. But it happens. It’s a technology that is just powerful.”