Three routes exist and one does not. Free peer meetings run daily online through Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous, which names compulsive chatbot use directly. A GP conversation, framed around sleep, mood or isolation rather than around the app. And Samaritans on **116 123**, free, any hour. What does not exist is an NHS pathway for this.
What is not there, said plainly
Better to know now than to spend three weeks looking.
There is no diagnosis. The American Psychiatric Association is explicit that gambling disorder is "the only behavioral addiction (as opposed to chemical substance use disorders) identified in DSM-5-TR", and that its proposed gaming condition "is limited to gaming and does not include problems with general use of the internet, online gambling, or use of social media or smartphones". Companion chatbots are not in any manual anywhere.
Which means no NICE guideline, no NHS service, no referral pathway and no clinician with a script for it. NICE has nothing on screen time or social media either. The NHS runs a national centre for gaming disorders and a gambling clinic, and there is no equivalent here.
There is also no prevalence figure. Nobody knows how many people in the UK are in your position, so treat any number you are quoted as invented until someone shows you the source.
None of that means what you are dealing with is not happening. It means the system has not caught up, and the routes below are what exists in the meantime.
Free peer meetings
**Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous** is the one fellowship that names this directly. Compulsive chatbot use sits in the digital compulsions it covers, alongside social media, gaming, online shopping and dating apps.
What to expect. Meetings are free and open to anyone who struggles with compulsive internet use. Most are online and they run daily, so you do not have to wait for a date. There are in-person groups in the UK, including London, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Oxford.
Newcomers are "encouraged to try attending six meetings in a short time frame" before deciding whether it suits them. That is a fair ask and it is worth taking literally, because one meeting tells you almost nothing except whether the format is strange, and it will be.
**SMART Recovery UK** is the other free route: secular, based on cognitive behavioural principles, and organised around skills rather than steps. Its published list of behaviours names gaming and does not name this, so you would be bringing something the group has not written material about. In practice the four-point programme is not compulsion-specific. Their number is **0330 053 6022**.
A GP conversation that goes somewhere
The mistake people make is walking in and leading with the app. There is nothing a GP can do with that, because there is no code for it and no pathway to refer you to.
Lead with the measurable things instead.
- **Sleep.** "I am going to bed at three and I cannot function." This is the strongest card you have, because it is a real clinical conversation with real options.
- **Mood.** Low mood, anxiety, or a drop in how much you are doing.
- **Isolation.** "I have not seen anyone outside work in two months."
Then mention the app as context rather than as the request. That gets you into the conversation that does exist, which is about loneliness and mental health, instead of the one that does not.
Some areas have social prescribing, where a link worker connects you with local groups and activities. Ask about it by name.
Paying for therapy, without being sold a package
If you go private, two things are worth knowing.
There is no guideline for this, which means nobody can claim a validated protocol for it. Anyone advertising a specific treatment programme for chatbot dependence is describing their own approach rather than an established one, and being straight with you about that is a good sign.
Check registration with a recognised professional body before you pay for anything, and be wary of residential packages sold with urgency. The presenting problem for most people here is loneliness, low mood or social anxiety, all of which are things therapists genuinely work with, and framing it that way tends to get you better matched than shopping for a specialist in the app.
The route most people actually need
For a large share of readers, the honest answer is that the support required is not addiction support at all. It is company.
That means anything recurring with humans in it at a fixed time, which is the thing an app is standing in for. A class, a volunteering shift, a choir, a sport, a weekly game night, a group with a set meeting time. Recurring is the operative word, because the whole problem is a repeating empty hour, and spontaneity does not fill a repeating hour.
[Talking to real people again](/guides/ai_chatbot/talking-to-real-people-again) breaks that down into steps small enough to actually start, and [what the chatbot is giving you](/guides/ai_chatbot/what-the-chatbot-is-giving-you) helps you work out which need you are trying to meet before you pick something.
If it is heavier than a habit
If you are thinking about ending your life, or you are closer to that than you have told anyone, ring **Samaritans on 116 123**. Free, 24 hours a day, and you do not have to explain why the reason sounds small.
NHS 111 has an urgent mental health option, and 999 is the number if someone is in immediate danger.
That this has no diagnosis attached does not make the distress less real, and no helpline is going to tell you your reason for calling does not qualify.
Common questions
**Is there anything on the NHS for this?** Not specifically. There are NHS services for gaming and for gambling, and nothing for companion chatbot use, social media or phone use. What is available to you is the general route: a GP, and whatever mental health support your area provides for the underlying difficulty.
**Are the peer meetings religious?** The fellowship above follows a twelve-step format, which has a spiritual framing that some people find useful and others do not. SMART Recovery is explicitly secular, so if that is the obstacle, that is the alternative.
**Will I have to talk in a meeting?** No. You can attend, say your first name, and listen. Most people do exactly that for the first few.
**Is it worth going if my situation is not that bad?** Meetings are free and there is no threshold to cross. Going early is considerably easier than going after two more years of it.
**What do I say when someone asks what my problem is?** "I use a companion chatbot more than I want to." That sentence is enough, and in a room built around compulsive internet use it will not be the strangest thing said that evening. If saying it anywhere at all is the hard part, [telling someone about your chatbot use](/guides/ai_chatbot/telling-someone-about-your-chatbot-use) is the piece for that.
Sources
- [Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous](https://internetaddictsanonymous.org/). The digital compulsions covered, that meetings are free and open, the UK in-person groups, and the suggestion that newcomers try six meetings.
- [American Psychiatric Association, Internet Gaming Disorder](https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/internet-gaming). That gambling disorder is the only behavioural addiction in DSM-5-TR, and that the gaming proposal excludes general internet and social media use.
- [SMART Recovery UK](https://smartrecovery.org.uk/faqs/). Free, secular, based on cognitive behavioural principles.
- [Computational analysis of a 27,000-member Reddit community of people in relationships with chatbots (arXiv, 2025)](https://arxiv.org/html/2509.11391v1). Reported benefits and harms, with the authors' selection-bias caveat.
