Heavensfield Retreat Center, home of the reSTART program, outside Redmond. (Image courtesy of reSTART)

A new addiction treatment program unlike any other in the country opened recently outside Redmond. This new program, reSTART, aims to heal a malady created by the digital age: Internet addiction. Though similar centers exist in Asia and online, reSTART is the first of its kind in the United States. Patients pay $14,500 to live at Heavensfield Retreat Center for 45 days. They participate in individual and group counseling, outdoor activities, life coaching and a variety of other programs.

So how do you distinguish between healthy Internet use and an addiction? According to an article in the American Journal of Psychiatry by Jerald Block, a Portland psychiatrist who specializes in this field, symptoms of Internet addiction include excessive use; feelings of anger or discomfort when away from a computer or portable device; the urge to increasingly buy better software or technology or to expand usage; and negative impact on quality of life; including sleep deprivation, poor performance at work or in school and lying about how much time one spends online. Internet addiction generally falls into three categories: gaming, sexual content and email or text messaging.

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