ScrollCure

A gambler named Darlene posted the following activity log to an internet recovery site for gambling addicts:
3 a.m., was nearly alone, had to go to the bathroom, didn’t want to leave the machine
5 a.m., still there, choking on smoke, starving, cramping from bladder pain, butt hurting from sitting
6 a.m., finally got up, put my coat on but still couldn’t leave. Got attendant to watch machine while I peed. Almost cried with relief. Looked at myself in bathroom mirror, was shocked at what I saw. I do not ever want to look on the face of that woman again—the desperate one, the smoky, hungry one who doesn’t have the sense to go to the bathroom or go home. Continued playing—standing up, coat on
8 a.m., breakfast eaters arriving and I became terrified that someone I knew would see me. Finally left …
How did I get to this point? 15 hours? I’ve never done anything in my life for 15 hours straight, except take care of my babies. I’m well past that point in my life, could be a grandmother. And what kind of Grandma would that be? Some idiot with no self-control, who becomes paralyzed, hypnotized—by what? A machine? The music? The lights? WHAT IS IT??
I’ve lived a somewhat charmed life—never alcohol, never drugs, never running or being run on. Good and accomplished kids. Opportunities. Life has been sweet, wonderful and very blessed. I don’t understand this.
Responses to Darlene’s post of machine-induced abjection contained sympathy and words of encouragement, but her urgent query—What is it?—went unanswered. She restated the question:
You all say you’ve “been there.” Is that true? Have others experienced the same inability to move? Why does that happen? Can anyone explain the paralysis? The hypnotic effect it has on you? This is not my imagination; for me it was very real—I could not get up off my seat. Do you understand how powerful that is? I didn’t even have the strength to go to the bathroom!
Responses, once again, affirmed Darlene’s experience of seeming paralysis but did not answer her question. “I can relate to how you feel, I used to spend full days sitting in front of a video poker machine,” wrote one gambler. “I never could leave my seat at the machine either,” wrote another; “I was glued. I’ve sat for 10 hours straight, then barely could make it to the bathroom without an accident—and sometimes I didn’t make it.” And another: “I know the feeling. I used to sit in that damn chair in the casino and COULDN’T PHYSICALLY MOVE. Only when my money was gone could I leave, SICK TO MY STOMACH.”
Darlene, not satisfied with the empathy conveyed in these posts, pressed on:
I am still interested in the whole “hypnotic” phenomenon. Does anyone have any insights into how that works? Why do some of us get caught into a kind of paralysis that blots out time, responsibility, logic, even movement? It’s not normal to ignore the urge to pee, yet that is what happened to me and apparently to some of the rest of us.
One woman responded in a more diagnostic register, cataloging symptoms and their correlating physiological explanations:
The symptoms you describe—lightheadedness, nausea—after being at the casino for prolonged period of times are related to a combination of one or more of the following: no food, no sleep, too much caffeine, improper elimination, sitting too long, overstimulation (bells, lights) and the emotional upheaval of winning/losing. Interestingly, female compulsive gamblers often suffer from repeated bladder infections and yeast or bacterial infections (too much sitting, too little water, not urinating).
Yet these clinical speculations, like the preceding responses, failed to address the heart of Darlene’s query. She persisted:
I want to dwell a little more on the other thing, the hypnotic effect of the video machine. I refuse to believe that anything could be so strong, and yet something tells me that this whole package is designed to hook us and hook us good. These machines and the accompanying casino atmosphere must be calculated to throw us into some kind of trance.
Finally, a different kind of answer posted to the site:
Darlene dear Darlene,
Slot machines are just “Skinner boxes” for people! Why they keep you transfixed is really not a big mystery. The machine is designed to do just that. It operates on the principles of operant conditioning. The original studies on conditioning were done by B. F. Skinner and involved rats. I’m sure you remember this from grade school: The rats are in a box without outside stimulus (like a casino!). There is a lever (or pedal) in the box. When the rat hits the lever a pellet (food) comes out (like a slot machine and quarters). The rat learns that by pressing the lever he gets a treat (positive reinforcement).
Now comes the sneaky part. If every time the rat hit the lever he got a treat, that would be the end of it—he would just hit the lever when he was hungry. But that’s not how conditioning works. Enter the concept of intermittent reinforcement. Simply put, it means that the rewards (pellets) are dispensed on a random schedule—sometimes the rat gets none, sometimes a few, sometimes a lot of pellets (sounding familiar yet?). He never knows when he’s going to get a pellet so he keeps pushing that lever, over and over and over and over, even if none come out. The rat becomes obsessed—addicted, if you will. this, then, is the psychological principle that slot machines operate on, and how it operates on you.
Darlene wrote back:
!!! My God, what a response! I feel as if I’ve taken a refresher course in behavioral psych! Even not understanding how the conditioning and response dialog worked, I still knew that something sinister was at work here, enticing “normal” people into a snare. … You put into words what I knew to be the facts!
Perhaps we should form a splinter group, calling ourselves “The Rat People,” since we all know that when the pellets drop, they could just as well be cyanide as chocolate. In my mind’s eye, I see a 61-year-old Rat Woman, tired, miserable, hungry, thirsty, bladder full, hair disheveled, skin dried out and caked with nicotine residue, clothes wrinkled and baggy, hunched over some damn slot machine, pushing the endless lever, hoping for another pellet …
The post on intermittent reinforcement not only satisfied Darlene but went on to spark a cascade of behaviorist-inflected sentiments that had not previously found expression in the forum. Over the next weeks, rats repeatedly reared their heads. “When I gamble I feel like a rat in a trap,” commented a gambler. “Yes, I feel like a Rat Person, coming out of my dark hole to surface when the money is all gone,” said another. Rats—along with carrier pigeons, rhesus monkeys, and Pavlov’s salivating dogs—made continued guest appearances in gamblers’ posts. “I’m sure to be the first one in line to hit the lever to see what my prize is,” one man wrote.

– Referenced from the book Addicted By Design, Natasha Dow Schüll

The Infinite Scroll Uses The Same Mechanisms As Slot Machines