Thanks for your reply.

I wonder whether this next would be considered by you as merely treating the symptom of addiction:

Joe notices that most of the time he spend on the web is wasted time. So he cancels his home internet connection and relies on his connection at work to get done everything that needs to get done on the web. For example, at work he downloads movies and TV shows from the iTunes Movie Store (or whatever they're calling it now) onto his MacBook for watching at home. (or he uses youtube-dl to download Youtube and Daily Motion videos.)

Is that in your opinion uselessly treating a symptom of addiction?

If it was that easy for Joe, he wasn't addicted, and it was his integrated recognition of the problem, and not the ritual he imposed as a result, that substantiated the change.

If he was, he found something else to replace it, and is no better off.