Apparently a gamer detoxing centre has opened in Amsterdam. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2006-06-08-video-game-addicts_x.htm?csp=34 The consultants who operate it say gaming may look harmless but it’s “as addictive as gambling or drugs.”

Well, OK, if I was the director of a spurious clinic to treat an invented addiction, those might be my very words. I thought conning money from the gullible was supposed to be the sort of behaviour associated with addiction to gambling or drugs. I realise that there is a serious new social problem here. The desire to treat any behaviour as an addiction is obviously a dangerously habit-forming thing.

And I can offer a solution.

So I am offering the services of my new state of the art detox centre to any of the unfortunates caught up in the web of offering detoxes for anything that used to be considered a choice or a hobby. Only £6k a week, all in, introductory offer.

You are also included, Carol Vorderman. Offering detoxes for everyday life is surely the ultimate goal of every therapeutic grifter*. You can’t charge as much per “patient” but you have the whole population as potential customers.

* Source- the Simpsons. Before you ask, I don’t know what it means either.