Actually an interesting observation on how difficult it is to draw the line between obsession and passion. It seems that she (can devlop) an extremely high level of focus, something that what would probably regarded by many as a trait for becoming successful in a specific discipline.
What I'm wondering is if we could extract some positive gain from this. Maybe there's a way to gamify certain activities so that people could hook themselves on something positive. I know this has been done for certain types of exercise (I can't recall any webapps right now but a simple search for mobile apps should show a hundred or so.) I'm curious if it would work for such things as meditation, self-study, diet, social activity, etc.
I get the feeling there's a lot of research out there about gamification, but I wonder if there are any webapps out there allowing people to gamify <whatever> in their life so as to allow the person to more efficiently build positive habbits. If it hasn't been done, maybe this is a new market niche to be taken advantage of.
If anyone finds anything or is interested in potentially collaborating, let me know. I'll be looking into it myself in the meantime.
EDIT: After reading a bit, I just remembered https://chains.cc/ was posted to HN a while back.
Focus/Dedication is something you can choose to do, it's a tool you can use (though some people's tools work better than others). When you need to stop you can and then move onto other things.
Obsession is something that controls you, you are the tool being used, and when it's time to move on the obsession continues to control you keeping you under its thumb.
If only she could bring herself to getting hooked on a creative endeavour, she would achieve remarkable results.
"a puzzle game on her phone that she would play obsessively* -- forgetting to eat, sleep, show up for work, having basic human interaction and even requiring physical therapy at one point for the muscle strain of sitting in the position to play the game for hours on end."
What we are probably dealing with here is more than a simple addiction (to which your suggestion is good and would definitely be in the right direction). What we have is a mental problem that includes addictive traits.
After all the DSM is fairly arbitrary (as are medical definitions).
Reminds me of the famous toddler marshmallow experiment - how kids able to endure delayed gratification tend to be more successful later in life.