This post has been contributed by O'Flaherty via CBN

Okay, from Canada.com comes this little gem which got my blood ever so slightly boiling this morning.

Compulsive e-mailing and text messaging could soon become classified as an official brain illness.

An editorial in this month’s issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry says Internet addiction — including "excessive gaming, sexual pre-occupations and e-mail/text messaging" — is a common compulsive-impulsive disorder that should be added to psychiatry’s official guidebook of mental disorders.

Like other addicts, users experience cravings, urges, withdrawal and tolerance, requiring more and better equipment and software, or more and more hours online, according to Dr. Jerald Block, a psychiatrist at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland. Dr. Block says people can lose all track of time or neglect "basic drives," like eating or sleeping. Relapse rates are high, he writes, and some people may need psychoactive medications or hospitalization.

Dr. Block says about 86 per cent of Internet addicts have some other form of mental illness, but that unless a therapist is looking for it, Internet addiction is likely to be missed.

I am not a psychologist by any stretch of the word but am I the only one who thinks that this Doctor Jerald Block is grabbing at straws in order to make a name for himself.

I really think that what he’s describing here is not an illness in itself but simply the result of an existing psychiatric disorder such as OCD (Obsessive compulsive disorder).

My point here is that it’s not an addiction to the internet.

If you took the same person who is "addicted" to the interent, travel back in time and never let them have contact with the internet, I’m fairly sure that in all likelihood the person would have ended up addicted to something else.

The internet is not the addiction. The person is predisposed to addiction.

What do you think?