Spanish rehab centre offers four-week course for crypto-trading addiction

The Balance rehabilitation centre has begun offering treatment for dependence on trading digital assets. BBC reports.

The Swiss centre, headquartered on Mallorca with branches in London and Zurich, offers a comprehensive treatment programme. It includes:

• cognitive behavioural therapy;
• motivational interviewing;
• psychoanalysis;
• wellness procedures (yoga, massage and others).

The programme lasts four weeks; the cost of treatment exceeds $75,000.

One of The Balance’s clients, who was spending up to $200 000 weekly on crypto trading, told BBC about the course that helped him “kick the crypto habit”.

According to the patient, he lived at a private villa, where he was cared for by a personal butler and a chef. The treatment included therapy, massage, yoga and bicycle rides.

Professor of Psychiatry at Stanford University, Anna Lembke, said the course resembles treatment for gambling addiction. She called the high cost unjustified. She was joined by Liya Nover, head of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers School of Social Work.

“Regardless of whether you are addicted to cryptocurrency trading, sports betting or lottery games, your symptoms and treatment will be largely similar,” she explained.

According to a publication on the site of family addiction specialists Lin and Aaron Sternlicht, about 1% of cryptocurrency traders will experience a serious pathological addiction, while a further 10% face other problems beyond financial losses.

Regulators from different countries have repeatedly compared trading of digital assets with gambling. There have already been cases of relationship breakdown due to cryptocurrencies.

In March 2021, a Reddit user told of family problems caused by his decision not to sell Bitcoin at the $60,000 level. According to him, his wife did not approve of the decision and left.

In September of the same year, another Reddit user reported a broken engagement because of his involvement with cryptocurrencies. Instead of an engagement ring, he gave his fiancée NFT, which, as he believed, held a meaning understood by both. Not long before that, the couple clashed over losses from investments in Dogecoin.