BLACK HAWK, Colo. — The dusty, shrub-dotted Utah desert, a deeply furrowed terrain, returned Ben Alexander to reality after he had spent 10 months in a fantasy world.
There, the words of the former UI student’s mother hung heavily in the air: “It’s hard for me to say this, but if you choose gaming, you will have to live on your own and support yourself.”
The 19-year-old began to sob.
His father sent a letter, too: “I am terrified and despondent that you will throw all of your advantages away for something that is not even real.”
The letters carried a message Ben could no longer avoid. He was lost amid a virtual landscape limited by the snaking wires of the Internet and the two dimensions of a humming computer screen.
Ben was addicted to Internet gaming.
The search for help was difficult. Though several professionals agree that many may suffer from unhealthy Internet use, they disagree about how to define and address it.
Ben and his family tried numerous treatment options, and finally in July, he became the first person in the nation to undergo in-patient treatment for Internet addiction at the Washington-based reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program.
The letters from his parents prepared him for that journey.
“The impact letter ranks right up there with the hardest things I’ve had to do,” said Ben’s mother, Linda Alexander, inhaling to brace herself for the force of the memory in her Colorado living room.
Ben’s counselors in Utah had advised both Linda and her husband, Peter Alexander, to be excruciatingly honest about how Ben’s addiction had affected them. So they filled their letters with hard-hitting descriptions of relationships Ben shattered, lies he’d told, money he’d wasted, and academic opportunities he’d left behind.
“They told us this needed to be the equivalent of hitting him on the head with a 2-by-4,” Linda said.
Her and her husband’s worries had begun months earlier.
Linda watched Ben, who once loved animals and spent hours enthralled with reading, become fascinated only with things captured on a computer screen.
“I saw his whole world just narrowing,” she said.
World of Warcraft eclipsed the rest. Users of this internationally popular computer game create personas that interact to complete quests and conquer enemies. Ben began playing during the summer between his City High graduation and his first semester at the UI.
The challenge and creativity the game required enticed him. He could strategically enhance his characters and equip them with the ideal weaponry. To Ben, the challenge of school often didn’t measure up to the rigor of gaming.
“Ben didn’t have to work hard in school to do well, which is a blessing and a curse, I think,” said his mother, her hands placed gently in her lap as she spoke.
Ben also felt more comfortable connecting to people online, using the chatting function in World of Warcraft. The prospect of giving up the game, then, was more disturbing to him than one may imagine.
Frantic, angry, bored, and withdrawn, he spent his time off-line planning his next moves online.
“It occupied a lot of my brain space,” the former biology major said matter-of-factly. Precise and reserved in his speech, Ben avoids personal details.
During his senior year of high school, he took several advanced science classes in addition to Honors German and orchestra. His first-semester UI schedule was significantly lighter.
He also had to adjust to dorm life in Burge, a world that lacked parental limits. The increased freedom he encountered was key, leading him to use the Internet excessively.
As the semester continued, Ben neglected schoolwork, preferring World of Warcraft to assignments. And with no one watching over him, his habits turned to excess.
Feeling helpless and confused, Ben called his father in October 2008. The family eventually agreed an appointment at the University Counseling Service was necessary. His counselor diagnosed him with depression and time-management problems.
Around the same time, his father found a website called Online Gamers Anonymous and read accounts of people suffering from an affliction he hadn’t yet considered: Internet gaming addiction.
Some descriptions of sufferers on the website paralleled Ben’s experience.
Eager to address the issue, Ben and his father approached his counselors to suggest addiction as a possible factor. However, University Counseling Service officials were not prepared to treat Internet-related addictions.
Sam Cochran, the director of the Counseling Service, said little information about Internet addiction is available. This may be because the condition is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Disorders, an 886-page book published by the American Psychiatric Association, he said. The manual is a guidebook for professionals to help them diagnose and treat disorders.
An increasing number of UI students have been coming to the University Counseling Service with complaints about excessive computer use, Cochran said, and officials are looking into available research to help.
Some have proposed adding a category for Internet addiction to the updated version of the manual, due out in 2012.
Including a diagnosis to better address Internet addictions may make sense, said Gregory Gullickson, a psychologist at Anderson Arnold and Partners LLP, 209 E. Washington St. Though Gullickson never worked with Ben, he and his colleagues have also recently seen an increasing number of clients with concerns related to the Internet.
However, because conditions such as anxiety and depression commonly occur alongside excessive Internet use, some practitioners believe it suffices to treat those problems alone, Gullickson said.
Lee Anna Clark, a UI psychology professor involved with updating the diagnostic manual, said officials should be careful not to add unnecessary disorders. A condition called “impulse control disorders not otherwise specified” already exists to diagnose those who engage in excessive amounts of a single behavior, she said.
Until more research becomes available, students using the Internet excessively who come to the University Counseling Service will likely be referred to other professionals.
In Ben’s case, counselors referred him to the UI Hospitals and Clinics.
The methods they used for treatment came closer, but still didn’t work. UIHC therapists recommended in-patient treatment in Washington, so Ben withdrew from classes, gave up the game, and boarded a plane in April.
The abrupt cut-off from World of Warcraft put Ben through an extremely irritable withdrawal.
“I didn’t want to listen to anyone, or do anything anyone told me,” he said. His next attempt at getting better was again unsuccessful.
Still, the Alexanders had hope, despite the thousands of dollars they’d already spent.
Ben moved on to Wilderness Quest in Utah, a program in which participants combat addictions by learning survival techniques in the desert.
Linda said the program helped him learn to socialize face-to-face again. In Utah, he was unplugged entirely from technology. A knife was the most advanced tool at his disposal.
With a bandana restraining his long, curly hair, Ben and the others in his group carried bare essentials in tarps on their backs. They hiked up to 9 miles a day, learning how to build traps and start fires with wood and a tinder bundle.
It had a strong effect on Ben.
“There’s nothing like being out in the desert for 10 weeks to make you realize there are things outside your control,” he said, his eyes downcast at the floor near his desk, his fingers constantly in motion.
Hilarie Cash, a psychologist who has spent 15 years researching Internet addiction, began the center with fellow psychologist Cozette Ray. They set up on a plot of lush, green land Ray owned in Falls City, Wash., and charge $14,500 for 45 days.
Ben was their first client.
Cash said addicts should abstain from the Internet while they deal with the problems that led them to addiction in the first place. She believes professionals should treat the problem with specialized methods and that it should be added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Disorders.
Based on her research, she said, it is likely that more people in the country suffer from Internet addictions than one may expect.
The numbers agree.
According to a 2009 study published in Psychological Science, roughly 8 percent of people aged 8 to 18 who play video games likely meet criteria for video-gaming addiction.
Doug Gentile, a psychology professor at Iowa State University, obtained the results by issuing surveys to 1,178 children. The surveys questioned whether the children met criteria for addiction based on guidelines laid out in the manual for pathological gambling.
According to a study in progress with a similar structure, he has found roughly 5 to 6 percent of college students at ISU who play video games likely meet criteria for addiction as well.
At reSTART, counselors helped Ben work through his problems, in part, by encouraging him to reconnect with former interests. The staff developed a running regimen with him, who had loved his time on the City High cross-country team. Initially, the staff members ran along. However, they eventually found they couldn’t keep up and brought in a marathon runner as a replacement.
At the end of Ben’s treatment, his mother noticed an uplifting change.
“I could look at him and see that Ben was back inside his head,” she said.
Ben and his parents empathetically agreed: Treatment at reSTART worked well.
Ben can use the family’s desktop computer to access the Internet — but no gaming sites — for up to two hours a day; he mostly uses the time for Facebook. Ben works at a Halloween store in the Denver area and volunteers at a nearby high school. And most mornings, he can be found on the winding, tree-lined roads that surround his home, jogging. He’s still learning to adjust his breathing in the thin mountain air.
Still, Ben looks forward to coming back to the UI once he’s earned enough money to cover his living expenses for a semester.
UI sophomore Owen Sessions, who has known Ben since junior high, looks forward to the return of his longtime running partner.
“It seems like he’s doing a lot better,” Sessions said, noting they talk several times a week. Ben and his parents hope he’ll be ready to move back within a year.
In the meantime, Peter and Linda said they are happy to see Ben thriving again as a more mature version of the quirky, intelligent boy they remember.
Over dinner at a remote mountain restaurant the Alexanders frequent, Ben and his parents joked about his favorite sitcom and poked fun at the eccentric décor adorning the walls around their booth.
Linda said she enjoys watching Ben make goals for his future. And Peter has been happy to witness his son’s self-realization process, trusting that Ben understands he can’t go back to gaming — even just a little bit: “I think he’s learned so dramatically how much he lost by being in that world.”