Addictive behaviors have negative impact on all aspects of life and victims should seek professional help, a social work body said yesterday.

From April to August last year, Caritas Family Service surveyed 198 people who sought counseling services from Caritas, said Paulina Kwok, supervisor of Caritas Family Crisis Support Centre.

Among them, 49.7 percent were addicted to playing computer games, 46 percent to the Internet, while other types of addictive behaviors included drug abuse, gambling, compulsive shopping and alcoholism.

About 22.7 percent of the 128 respondents who had a job said they would spend at least half of their income on their addictions. Those who had no income presumably relied on loans or family for their addictions.

She said such obsessions would affect one's health, personal relationships, work or study, and could prompt people to break the law or commit suicide.

She called on people with addictive behaviors to seek help or call the Caritas hotline at 3904 3098.

Lily, a married woman in her 30s, has a 5-year-old son. Though earning merely HK$10,000 a month working as a clerk, she had a strong penchant for buying clothes and at one stage had a credit card debt of over HK$100,000. She tried to settle the payment but failed.

Law Man-chung, 32, is, however, an example of how people can get rid of their addictive behaviors.

He started using drugs at 12 and hung out with the wrong people. He was arrested many times and was sent to a rehab center once. For four years afterwards, he voluntarily went to a rehab. He quit using drugs and is now working at Caritas as a counselor .

(HK Edition 04/23/2008 page1)