At $86,000 a week, Clinic Les Alpes is one of the world’s most expensive rehab centres for class A drugs and eating disorders. Now it claims it can treat another problem: screen time. Guinea pig Georgina Roberts checks in.
It is a misty Monday morning in the Swiss Alps and I am trying to spot Lake Geneva, 800 metres below me, through the fog. I have just arrived at Clinic Les Alpes, a swish wooden chalet in the mountains, which costs £40,000 ($86,000) a week.
My suitcase is taken from me and whisked up to my room. Each guest’s luggage is unpacked for them, not as a luxury perk, but to check whether they have hidden drugs or alcohol in their bags.
Clinic Les Alpes is not a swanky five-star hotel but one of the most expensive rehab facilities in the world. The elite clientele who come here can afford the £160,000 ($345,000) bill for the recommended 28-day stay. Some need so much help that they don’t leave for five months. Many of them are hooked on drugs and alcohol. Some are depressed; others have eating disorders, anxiety and burnout.
The clinic also treats more niche behavioural addictions such as shopping, work, social media and technology. I have come here to try to break my addiction to my phone and stop scrolling social media for hours on end. The week before I arrived at Clinic Les Alpes, I picked up my phone 234 times a dayand then spent 5 hours 13 minutes on it on average. Two hours of that was on Instagram and TikTok.
On bad nights, I flick mindlessly through social media until 1am. I often fall asleep gripping my phone, with a TikTok video still playing. The next morning I wake up exhausted, full of regret and self-loathing.
While phone addiction cannot be clinically diagnosed yet, there are behavioural signs that help to identify an unhealthy relationship: spending excessive time on devices; difficulty reducing screen time; neglecting responsibilities and personal relationships. The emotional red flags are feeling anxious or irritable when not using technology, and using screens as a primary source of pleasure or stress release. I tick all these boxes. Can my four (free) days as a guinea pig at the clinic start to change that?
Much of Clinic Les Alpes looks like an English country house hotel, with giant fireplaces, cosy armchairs and prints of flowers on the walls. I am being shown around by its Irish-born founder, Patrick Wilson, 59.
Today, Wilson looks like any successful, well-groomed businessman, with his coiffed blond hair, signet ring, navy gilet and blue shirt. But 20 years ago, he was struggling with his relationship with alcohol. If he hadn’t checked in to a rehab facility in Sussex on Christmas Eve in 2005, he believes he “would be six foot under”.
“I was a physical, mental and emotional bankrupt,” he says. “I’ve been in the blender and I’ve come out.”
Some guests use a hidden entrance that leads straight from the drive into two detox suites. This entrance is reserved for the very famous, who often check in under pseudonyms, and the very unwell. The staff to patient ratio is high here (about four to one), and the nursing station outside the detox rooms is manned 24 hours a day.
My treatment begins with a one-on-one psychotherapy session. We dig into why I hate my relationship with my phone — it keeps me up at night; it’s a waste of my time — and why I feel the urge to scroll at night when I’m anxious.
My therapist, Maureen, points out that I keep glancing over at my phone lying on the table and wonders whether it’s a nervous tic. She explains that I don’t have to demonise my relationship with my phone, just the parts that feel unhealthy. So replying to friends is fine; scrolling for three hours is not.
After psychotherapy, it’s time to hand over my phone to the nurses for the next four days. This is a form of exposure therapy, which makes you confront your fears. This will be the longest I have been “off grid” and completely uncontactable since I got my first smartphone, aged 14. It’s daunting.
I am scared to surrender my phone and relinquish my only way of communicating with the outside world. What if I go stir crazy and need to talk to someone? What if something bad happens to my family and they can’t contact me? Luckily, I don’t have time to stew on it, because I am marched off to music therapy to bang a drum.
That first night, I pace around my room, not quite sure what to do with myself without my phone. I keep tapping my pockets, instinctively reaching for it.
Sitting with my thoughts in absolute silence, without social media or music to drown them out, I suddenly feel homesick and alone. I am in a strange place, far from home, talking about my feelings all day and I can’t message anyone about how bizarre this all is. I well up when I read a goodbye note my boyfriend wrote in my notebook. I have never had a chance to properly miss him, or anyone else before, because we have constantly been in contact via our phones.
My phone is also my alarm clock, so housekeeping have to bring me an analogue alarm. After 30 minutes of reading my book, I drop off at 9.45pm, two hours earlier than normal. At 7am the next morning, I only snooze the alarm once, compared with the usual ten times, because I don’t know how many snoozes an old-school alarm clock allows.
The days here are long, packed and much harder than I had expected. I don’t like having no control over what I do with my time. It feels like I am back at school. But I barely have a minute to think about not having my phone during the day, because I’m rushed between back-to-back therapies from 9am to 6pm.
Some of the treatments for my phone addiction are pretty left-field. I do music therapy and “tension and trauma release exercises”. I paint a portrait of myself with my phone in art therapy, and am asked what my purpose in life is in a spirituality class. These activities feel quite woo-woo and less directly linked to phone use, but it is nice to do something with my hands that isn’t scrolling.
In a more practical psychoeducation session, Brittany Hunt, a mental health and addictions clinician, gives me strategies to reduce my screen time. They are not new to me: track screen time, set specific times for phone use, create tech-free zones in the house and set time limits on social media apps.
I have experienced all the physical side-effects of excessive phone use Hunt mentions: eye strain, headaches, poor posture and sleep disturbances. Last month, doctors reported a rise in patients seeking Botox jabs to cure “tech neck” (the pain, inflammation and muscle spasms brought on by hunching over smartphones and laptops). In my Pilates session two days later, sports educator Flavio Dias works on releasing tension in my neck, which has not been helped by scrolling at awkward angles.
Each therapist escorts me to my next session. To protect the privacy of the other patients at Clinic Les Alpes, huge efforts are made to keep us apart. I am told I am not allowed to interact with any of them and I eat all my meals separately. So who checks in here? Wilson refuses to name names, but does admit, “We get people in here that everyone would have heard of. This fame, wealth game isn’t what it appears from the outside.”
Next is hypnosis. As I lie on a lounger, Dr Randolph Willis, medical director of the clinic, asks me to imagine my life as a VHS tape, then rewind to the happiest memories. I am supposed to revisit this “safe place” when I feel the urge to scroll to relieve stress.
I find psychotherapy the most practical and helpful treatment for combating the root cause of my phone problems. Over four hour-long sessions, Maureen helps me to realise the reason I scroll for hours at night is to drown out my anxious thoughts. It is my coping mechanism.
So we do cognitive behavioural therapy, to help me learn how to deal with those intrusive thoughts, rather than scrolling on my phone to distract myself from them. I come away with five techniques to use when I feel anxious at night, from writing down my worries and the proof that they are real, to calming breathing techniques.
Maureen asks whether I enjoy watching sad TikTok videos that make me cry because I find it hard to express my emotions in real life. She could be right. When I cry in one of our sessions, clinic protocols kick in. She asks if I have suicidal thoughts and, even though I don’t, she tells me I can call a nurse at any time throughout the night if I need to.
On a visit to a nearby town, Montreux, a gaggle of Swiss teenagers boards my train. Every single one is glued to their phone, playing games or watching videos. If I had my phone, I would be the same, frantically trying to get the best photo of Lake Geneva to post on Instagram. Instead, I just enjoy the view.
The nights here are still tough and lonely, but I begin to enjoy not having the responsibility of having a phone. I don’t have to reply to any work emails or bombarding group chats with friends, both of which stress me out.
It is easy to be healthy when you have a private chef, but I am noticing my habits changing for the better here. I am assigned my first 90 minutes of free time on day three. Without a phone to keep me entertained, I am craving exercise for once and swim 30 lengths in the pool.
The biggest change in my phone-free four days is how much earlier I fall asleep. At home, my book lies untouched on my bedside table, because I’d rather laugh and cry at TikTok videos until 1am. At the clinic, I am asleep by 10.30pm every night, because I get into bed and read, which knocks me out. I have so much more time in the evenings when hours are not eaten up by scrolling. I do a skincare routine, have a bath, then read.
Patients here get a full health check. A scan reveals my metabolic age, muscle mass and fat levels around my organs. My blood is taken to check for deficiencies, and a nutritionist tweaks my diet. I have never missed my girlfriends more than when I have to provide a stool sample to assess my gut health and I can’t message them to laugh about how mortifying it is.
On the final day, I can’t wait to get my phone back. Not to scroll, but to be able to talk to everyone again.
My phone is given back to me in airplane mode and while I’m desperate to talk to my family, I do feel relieved not to have to read and reply to hundreds of messages and emails. I decide to leave it in airplane mode until I am back in London.
At the airport, however, I start making excuses for why I need to go on my phone. What if my plane goes down and I didn’t message the people I love? So I turn it on to tell them, yes, I am alive, and no, it wasn’t a cult. When the plane is delayed, I start scrolling Instagram stories at the gate. It’s muscle memory. But I catch myself after five minutes and remember my therapist saying, “Is it a need or is it a want?” I listen to a podcast instead.
It was easy to have zero screen time when I wasn’t allowed to touch my phone at the clinic, but how will I fare once I’m home?
As a first step, I put 15-minute daily time limits on Instagram and TikTok. I now know my trigger for scrolling (anxiety) and when I do it (in bed at night). So next, I focus on changing my night-time routine.
I want to recreate the clinic conditions, where I didn’t have my phone in my room at night. I buy an analogue alarm clock on my first day back. It is the biggest and easiest change I make. At 10pm, the scrolling danger zone, I leave my phone charging in the living room, because I don’t need it to be my alarm.
Don’t underestimate the power of laziness. Some nights, I feel the urge to scroll, but it’s too much effort to get out of my warm bed and go downstairs to get my phone. So I read my book instead.
One evening, I get into bed and feel my chest getting tight and my heart thumping. Anxious thoughts start whirling round my brain and, with them, the old urge to scroll as a comfort. I try to remember the techniques my therapist gave me. I write down all my worries on paper and the “proof” for them being real (most aren’t). This makes my eyes tired. I do calming box breathing (breathe in slowly for four seconds, hold my breath for four, exhale for four, hold for four), list five things I can hear, smell, taste and see and nod off.
It has now been 11 days since I was at the clinic. My screen time has halved. It is down to an average of 2 hours 44 minutes a day. Only nine minutes of that is on Instagram and one minute on TikTok. I’m not scrolling and feel like I have clawed back hours of my life.
I was bragging about my massively reduced screen time at the pub at the weekend. My friend butted in and said, “I already knew all the tips the therapists there told you. I wouldn’t pay for that.” She has a point. But she still spends two hours a day on Instagram.
Written by: Georgina Roberts
© The Times of London
