An Associated Press story from Beijing describes the country's first "officially licensed clinic for Internet addiction". The story's headline at Yahoo News misleadingly refers to "addicted video game players"; while the story mentions that much of the time the heaviest Internet users spend at their computers is playing games, the clinic itself does not appear to be specific to games but rather to Internet use in general.

Patients ranging from early teens to early 20s pay $48 per day for 10-15 days of treatment, which consists of therapy, acupuncture, and sports. Some receive unspecified intravenous drugs to "adjust the unbalanced status of brain secretions" and each day apparently begins with sessions on "a machine that stimulates nerve impulses with 30-volt charges to pressure points".

(Anybody find this regime of treatment scarier than being unable to disconnect from the Internet for hours on end?--Ed.)