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Amsterdam-based Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants is opening Europe’s first detox clinic for video game addicts. They plan to offer in-house treatment for people who cannot seem to leave their joysticks alone.

Video games may look innocent, but they can be as addictive as gambling or drugs — and just as hard to kick, says Keith Bakker, director of Amsterdam-based Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants. Bakker already has treated 20 video game addicts, aged 13 to 30, since January. Some show withdrawal symptoms, such as shaking and sweating, when they look at a computer console. His detox program begins in July. It will run four to eight weeks, and will include therapy sessions, wilderness excursions, healthy lifestyle workshops and possibly medication.

Research into video gaming is still in its infancy, and researchers haven’t agreed on how to define addiction. But many experts say it’s clear many of the young people who show dependency on video games are in trouble. Bakker said he has seen signs of addiction in children as young as 8. Bakker, however, says symptoms of addiction are easy to spot. Parents should take notice if a child neglects usual activities, spends several hours at a time with the computer and has no social life.

“We have kids who don’t know how to communicate with people face-to-face because they’ve spent the last three years talking to somebody in Korea through a computer,” Bakker said. “Their social network has completely disappeared.”

Jeroen Jansz, associate professor of communications research at the University of Amsterdam, estimates about 80 percent of boys aged 8 to 18 play some type of video game. Forty percent play at least 2 1/2 hours a day. In a 2005 study, Jansz said gamers are overwhelmingly males, especially in violent games where adolescents find “a safe private laboratory where they can experience different emotions.”

About a dozen clinics already exist in the United States and Canada, and even one in China, as excessive gaming increasingly is being recognized worldwide as an ailment requiring treatment.