I'm in therapy for my 14-hour-a-day phone addiction, and I'm determined to beat it

BBC

Marios's phone pings and lights up. He's just received a WhatsApp message from me asking for an initial chat about this story.

He wants to answer straightaway. The urge, he later tells me, feels overpowering.

However, he's currently in the middle of a therapy session about his phone addiction. He can't answer it now.

He holds his nerve. But as soon as the meeting finishes, he's back on his phone, and an hour later, we meet on a video call.

"I'm so sorry," I say. "The last thing I wanted to do was disturb your session."

"Don't worry," Mario sighs. "This is the feeling I've had for many years: this uncontrollable need to be on my phone.

"It's like carrying around your own drug dealer.

"My drug is always in my pocket, flashing, beeping me and reminding me to take a dose."

On a bad day, Marios, a personal trainer from north London, can spend more than 14 hours staring at his screen (Instagram, he says, is the killer for him). But now, he is trying a 12-session course of private therapy to try to curb this compulsion, which he believes is driven by loneliness.

One look at my screen time statistics tells me I checked my phone 116 times yesterday. I also spent over three hours gawping at it.

Is Marios addicted? Am I addicted?

It's difficult to know.

Marios says his phone helps numb the loneliness he sometimes feels.

Phone addiction does not yet exist as an official condition, but in a recent survey of 1 000 adults by Deloitte, 70% of respondents said they spent too much time on their phones.

As a growing number of academics warn that smartphones are changing our brain chemistry, addiction experts have told me they are seeing more clients completely dependent on their devices.

Primary addiction

Last year, one in three clients treated for drug dependency by UK Addiction Treatment Centres (UKAT), which supports 3 500 people a year, also had a secondary phone dependency. That's up from just one in 10 in 2019.

Some clients even back out of treatment for their primary addiction because they refuse to surrender their device when they enter the clinic, says UKAT.

But when does someone tip over from being an overkeen texter to needing professional help?

As I drive up the tree-lined driveway to Rainford Hall, I'm greeted by huge stained-glass windows dating back to Jacobean times, overlooking manicured gardens.

It's an unlikely venue for treating people with a digital addiction.

Rainford Hall treats people with different addictions but sees an increasing number who need help for phone dependency.

This Steps Together rehab centre in St Helens, Merseyside, also hosts people struggling with other addictions (including drugs, alcohol and gambling). Still, its therapists are seeing an increasing number of people who cannot switch off from their devices.

"It can affect anyone from any background," lead therapist Kelly Watson explains. "We all have phones, we all have similar brain circuitry, and so many of us can become addicted."

Part of our brains work on a reward system, she says. We get a message, a like on social media, or even read some new information on a website and then dopamine (a chemical messenger in the brain that regulates pleasure and motivation) is released.

Eventually, for some of us, the need for this hit becomes too much. It can take over, causing hours - or even days - of our lives to disappear into the online world, she explains.

James, who is being treated at another Steps Together centre in Leicester, knows how that feels.

The 48-year-old initially sought help for alcohol addiction, but it soon became clear his digital dependency was also out of control.

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