Ian Young spent £25,000 (US$45,815) overcoming his addiction to love. It took eight weeks of round-the-clock rehab and a further seven weeks of intensive therapy, but it was worth it: the addiction he claims almost destroyed his life is finally under control.
Some have accused the 32-year-old former disc jockey of mistaking neurosis for addiction or of giving in to outrageous self-indulgence, but he is adamant: in Young's eyes he is a recovering addict of an impulse every bit as dangerous as drug or alcohol dependency.
"It began when I was around 12 years old: it was essential for me to know I was surrounded at all times by people who loved me," he said. "That's normal for teenagers, but I didn't grow out of it.
"The need to be intimate with as many people as possible remained," he said. "I once went to a rave with my girlfriend and found myself in a room with six of my current mistresses. I'm not pretending that didn't feel fantastic, but it was completely out of control."
By the time Young was 29 he "realized I had to get help." He booked himself into the Promis Recovery Unit in Kent for treatment for drug addiction and stayed for 15 weeks.
"I eventually regained my sanity and that's when I realized the drugs had never been my primary addiction; that has always been love," he said. "I know it's an addiction rather than a neurosis because my need is completely overwhelming."
Young now considers himself to be a recovering love addict, permanently in danger of falling off the wagon.
"I realize I have an emotional disease; my brain is just wired differently to other people," he said. "I thank my lucky stars I discovered rehab in time; without it, I would never have survived."
Young is not alone in his praise: rehab has never been so used, by so many. The Priory Group is experiencing such a boost in numbers that it is planning to float itself on the stock exchange within three to five years, once it has doubled its 2,400-bed capacity and increased turnover, which has already grown from £108.9 million in 2001 to £120 million in 2002.
The Promis Unit books 3,000 addicts a week into its stringent six-week course. Rehab units in Britain's publicly-funded National Health Service, are just as busy, with £573 million spent on drug treatment and £95 million on alcohol treatment by the government each year.
But is rehab being abused? Are these figures proof of a sick society, desperate for salvation, or is the rush to rehab becoming an addiction in itself?
The answer divides psychiatrists into two camps: those who believe 21st-century society is spawning a new range of serious addictions focused around pleasurable activities, including mobile-phone texting, video games and eating fast food; and those who have no time for such dependencies.
Dr. Phillip Hodson, a fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, occupies the latter camp. "I groan to the bottom of my therapeutic shoes at this sort of discussion," he said. "It is misleading to ascribe the term `addiction' to emotions.
"As a therapist, I have the greatest problem with the glib labelling of behavior as `addictions,' where these have no obvious physiological component beyond a reaction to our own body chemistry," he said. "Our bodies contain any number of hormones that without self-control will `cause' us to rob, rape and kill. I don't think we really want to encourage the idea that our center of control, in many ways the essence of our very humanity, can be selectively disregarded."
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