Home / Behavioural addictions / Internet and social media addiction treatment
Behavioural addictions
Internet and social media addiction treatment
Residential treatment for compulsive internet and social media use at a licensed centre in the Málaga countryside, where the phone is not in the building and something else fills the day.
Checked for accuracy on 29 July 2026. Next review due July 2027. This page is general information about our programme and is not a substitute for advice about your own situation.
Compulsive internet and social media use is treated at Sierra Recovery as a 28-day residential programme, published at £9,900. It is worth being honest about the diagnosis: unlike gaming disorder, there is no separate ICD-11 category for internet addiction, and clinically the internet is usually the vehicle rather than the addiction. It is how gambling, pornography, shopping and gaming are now delivered, and it is also where compulsive scrolling, social comparison and validation-seeking live in their own right. We treat it as part of the whole picture rather than as a separate diagnosis, and we would rather say that than sell you a condition.
Programme
28 days residential
Published price
£9,900
Group work
3 sessions a day
Room
Private, as standard
Language
English throughout
Registration
N.I.C.A. 67331
What we actually mean by it
Three different presentations get called internet addiction, and they need different work.
- The internet as a delivery mechanism. The compulsion is gambling, pornography, shopping or gaming, and the phone is simply how it arrives. Here the internet is not the target of treatment; the behaviour is.
- Compulsive scrolling and social media use in its own right. Hours lost with nothing to show for them, checking as a reflex, mood tracking the feed, and a specific kind of flat, agitated exhaustion afterwards.
- Avoidance. The device as a way of not being in your own life, which is the version most likely to sit on top of depression.
What it looks like clinically
- Time distortion. Intending twenty minutes and losing three hours, repeatedly, and being unable to account for what happened in them.
- Checking as a reflex rather than a decision. The phone is in your hand before you have decided to pick it up.
- Mood tied to response. Likes, replies, or their absence, running the day.
- Sleep sacrificed first, then concentration, then everything that requires sustained attention.
- Failed self-imposed limits. Screen time limits, app deletions and digital detoxes that last days.
Why four weeks away works when app blockers do not
Every self-directed attempt happens with the device present and the internet one tap away, which is like attempting alcohol abstinence in a bar. Residential treatment removes it entirely, and then, crucially, puts something in the space: three therapy groups a day, individual work, other people, meals at fixed times, and outdoor activity. Boredom is the thing that ends most digital detoxes, and boredom is precisely what a structured residential day does not leave room for.
What the four weeks are actually for is finding out what the scrolling was doing. In assessment the usual answers are loneliness, avoidance of a decision, unprocessed anxiety, or simply having no other source of reward left.
Where it overlaps
If what you do online is gamble, treatment is gambling addiction. If it is pornography, it is compulsive sexual behaviour. If it is gaming, it is gaming disorder. Naming which one it is changes the treatment, so the assessment before admission spends time on exactly that.
Not sure whether residential treatment is proportionate?
Nerea, our director and a registered psychologist, will tell you honestly, including when the answer is that something closer to home would serve you better. No obligation, and no referral fee is paid to anyone for sending you here.
What a day here looks like
| Time | What happens |
|---|---|
| 08:00 | Breakfast, cooked by our Michelin-trained chef |
| 09:15 | Planning: the day is set out together |
| 10:30 | Process group, the harder one |
| 12:00 | Therapeutic group |
| 13:15 | Lunch |
| 14:30 | Psychoeducation, working through the curriculum |
| 16:00 | Group activity, often outdoors or with the horses |
| 18:30 | Dinner |
| 20:00 | Day closing, together |
Saturdays turn to holistic and body-based work. Sundays are a supervised excursion, because reconnecting with the world outside a clinic is part of the treatment rather than a break from it.
What the treatment actually involves
The programme is the same one everyone here follows, because the machinery underneath a behavioural addiction is the machinery underneath a substance addiction. What changes is the content of the work, not the structure of the week.
- Three structured therapy groups a day, five days a week. Group is where a behaviour that has been private for years stops being private, in a room where nobody is shocked.
- Individual therapy three times a week. Enough to do trauma work properly where trauma is part of it, which it often is.
- A seventeen-module psychoeducation curriculum. Module seventeen is cross-addiction, which matters more here than anywhere: behavioural addictions very commonly surface during recovery from a substance, because the need for regulation has not gone anywhere.
- Equine and holistic work. Useful for people who have spent years in their own head and need a way back into their body.
- Aftercare agreed before you leave, with a written handover to your GP with your consent.
What we are, and what we are not
Sierra Recovery is a registered health centre authorised by the Junta de Andalucía under N.I.C.A. 67331. It is not a hospital and not a detox unit. That rarely matters for a behavioural addiction on its own, but it matters a great deal if alcohol or a drug is also in the picture: where a medically supervised withdrawal is clinically needed it is completed in an appropriate medical setting before admission and billed separately.
We do not admit anyone who is acutely suicidal, acutely psychotic or in psychiatric crisis, anyone needing hospital-level monitoring, or anyone whose primary condition is a severe eating disorder. If that is the situation, we will say so on the first call and point you somewhere that can help.
The therapies you will actually receive
Three group sessions a day, five days a week
The day opens with a process group at 10:30, a second therapeutic group runs at midday, and a psychoeducation session follows lunch. A group activity fills the late afternoon and the day closes together in the evening. That is roughly fifteen structured group contacts a week, which is the part most people underestimate before they arrive and value most afterwards.
Groups are small, in English, and run by the clinical team. Hearing someone else describe your own thinking back to you does something that individual work cannot, and it is the fastest route out of the isolation that the behaviour builds.
A seventeen-module curriculum, not a rest cure
The psychoeducation strand moves through a fixed seventeen-module curriculum written by our clinical director. It is the core of what we call the Regulation Model, which is our adaptation of the PROMIS Clinics methodology to this centre rather than a model of our own invention. It covers skills training, communication styles, boundaries and decision-making, trigger recognition, self-esteem and self-concept, dual diagnosis, self-care and habits, emotions, crisis identification and management, suicide prevention, goals, grief, values, trauma and relapse, perfectionism, loneliness and isolation, and cross-addiction. Every module runs the same structure: check-in, theory, an experiential dynamic, shared reflection, and a commitment carried into the week.
The cognitive work uses the ABC model, the same structure that underpins cognitive behavioural approaches: the event, the belief you attach to it, and the consequence that follows. It is taught, practised, applied between sessions and reviewed, rather than talked about once.
Individual therapy alongside the group programme
One-to-one sessions run three times a week and are where the material that will not surface in a group gets worked. For most people that is the thing underneath the use rather than the use itself.
You are treated by the same small team throughout, in the same house. Nobody is handed between departments, and there is no rotation of therapists mid-stay.
Yoga, meditation and body-based work
Saturdays turn to holistic and body-based practice: yoga, meditation and mindfulness, breathwork, art, and time outdoors on the land. This is not decoration and it is not a spa timetable. Early recovery is a physiological event as much as a psychological one, and sleep, appetite and the ability to sit still are usually the first things to return.
The self-care and habits module runs alongside it, treating rest as a right rather than a reward and food as connection rather than control.
Equine therapy on working farmland
The horses live here, on the forty hectares around the house, and equine work is part of the working week. Horses respond to what you are actually feeling rather than what you say you are feeling, which is why the work reaches people who have learned to talk their way around a therapy session.
What happens when you go home
Aftercare is planned before you leave rather than mentioned on the last day. For clients returning to the UK, care continues online or in person at the PROMIS clinics in London, with a weekly session for a full year, more than 48 in the twelve months after discharge, and a written handover to your GP so nothing has to be explained from scratch. For clients elsewhere in Europe we arrange continuity online and help find local services.
Alongside that, mutual-aid groups are free, run everywhere, and are worth using whatever else you choose.
Who will actually treat you
Nerea Encinas Sánchez
Director · General Health Psychologist
MSc General Health Psychology. Leads clinical standards, the assessment you have before you travel, and admissions.
Berenice Paramés Jones
General Health Psychologist
Individual and group psychological work inside the house, crisis follow-up and coordination of the group programme.
Marta Leal
Social worker
Family mediation, links to services back home, and preparing for independent life after discharge.
Robin Lefever
Founder of Sierra Recovery; MD, PROMIS Clinics UK
Founder of Sierra Recovery and Managing Director of PROMIS Clinics, whose method this programme adapts. PROMIS has been treating addiction in the United Kingdom since the mid-1980s, and Robin has worked in addiction treatment for around 35 years, with thousands of patients treated with the PROMIS method in the United Kingdom.
Meet the whole clinical team and their qualifications.
How admission works
- Compare on licence, not on photographsAsk any centre abroad for its registration number and the register it sits on, then look it up yourself. Ours is N.I.C.A. 67331 on the Junta de Andalucía register.
- Get the medical picture togetherCurrent medications, any previous withdrawal, and any diagnosed conditions. This is what the pre-travel assessment needs, and it is what decides whether a detox is required first.
- Ask what the price actually includesOurs is published: private room, meals, the core therapy programme, and a year of weekly UK aftercare, with medical, psychiatric, laboratory and hospital costs quoted separately. You get an itemised written quotation before admission.
See the full gallery · how people get here.
Talk to a clinician today
You will speak to our admissions team, all of them clinicians. Confidential, no obligation, and we will tell you honestly whether this programme fits or whether something closer to home would serve you better.
Questions people actually ask
Is internet addiction a recognised diagnosis?
Not as a standalone category. ICD-11 includes gaming disorder and compulsive sexual behaviour disorder, but there is no separate internet addiction diagnosis, and clinically the internet is usually the vehicle rather than the condition. That does not make the harm less real, and we would rather explain the distinction than invent a diagnosis.
How is this different from just using my phone a lot?
Heavy use is not the same as compulsive use. The markers are loss of control, time distortion, sleep and concentration going first, mood tracking the response you get, and repeated failed attempts to cut down. If you can stop when you decide to and it is not costing you anything, it is not this.
Do I really need residential treatment for this?
Often not, and we will say so. If cost is the barrier or the picture is mild, start with your GP, a free local service or an outpatient therapist. Residential makes sense when self-directed attempts have repeatedly failed, when there is something underneath it that needs proper work, or when it sits alongside a substance.
Do I have to hand over my phone?
Phone use is structured rather than confiscated, and the arrangement is agreed with you at admission rather than imposed. For most people the relief of not having it is the point.
What does it cost?
The 28-day residential programme is £9,900, published in full, with a private room included as standard and an itemised written quotation before admission.
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Talk to a clinician today
You will speak to our admissions team, English-speaking clinicians who know the programme and the people in it. Callback within 24 hours.
Registered health centre. Authorised by the Junta de Andalucía, N.I.C.A. 67331.
