SEATTLE (CNN)—Do you spend countless hours surfing the net?

Would you rather send an email or a text message than meet in person?

Do you sometimes fall asleep at your keyboard?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you may have an internet addiction.

“It fairly quickly got to the point where it was out of control,” said Ben Alexander, 19.

Alexander is a talented musician but he almost gave up his music, and even had to drop out of college in a quest to master the online game “World of Warcraft.”

“At the most, it got up to about 16 or 17 hours a day,” he said.

Alexander is an Iowa teen addicted to internet gaming.

He’s already completed several addiction treatment programs in several different states, and for the last three and a half weeks, he has been part of an online detox program, the first of its kind.

The Restart Internet Addiction Recovery Program is located on five acres, just a few miles from Microsoft’s headquarters.

“You know, we’ve really moved into an Internet nation,” said Cosette Rae, executive director of the program.

Internet addiction is a growing problem affecting as much as 10 percent of the online population.

“Our program’s really designed for somebody who’s kind of lost complete balance,” said Rae. “Everything is done online and the things that they might have liked to do in real life, they’ve forfeited doing those things.”

The 45 day program focuses on helping internet and video game addicts overcome their dependence on gaming, gambling, chatting, texting and other aspects of internet addiction, by helping them get excited about things they used to be passionate about.

Now Alexander says he looks to the future. He wants to be a microbiologist and tutor kids.

He’s even back to playing his violin.

“I think I’ve made a lot of progress towards just being able to get back to my life and be successful,” said Alexander.