Chapter nine focuses mainly on two characters, Angie Bachmann and Brian Thomas. Both of these people suffer from habits that inhibit their everyday life.
Angie is a stay at home mom that finds herself intensely bored day after day. She has nothing to fill her hours while her husband is at work and her daughters at school. To treat herself one afternoon she decides to get dressed up and go to the casino. She started doing this every Friday afternoon as a once a week reward. Angle went with strict rules for herself.
Once Angie’s parents got sick in 2000 she started flying to Tennessee to see them every other week. When she would return home she felt like her family didn’t need her, the only way to ease the tension was to hit the casino.
At this point Angie has been gambling for years and gambled Monday, Wednesday, Friday. She didn’t have to think about her actions while paying anymore, she acted automatically. Harrah’s (her casino of choice) gave her a dangerous line of credit. These strict rules were no longer in place.
Angie had a compulsion to gamble. She hardly knew it was a problem until it took over her life.
By the summer of 2001 Bachmann was in $20,000 of debt that she kept secret from her husband. After this she tried to clean up her act, she thought she beat the compulsion, but she hadn’t. A couple years later she declared bankruptcy. Angie’s lawyer argued that she gambled out of habit, not choice.
Three years after this both her parents died. She inherited $1 million. Pain stricken and feeling desperate Angie and her husband went to the casino for a “one time thing”. She was recognized by one of the managers at Harrah’s and immediately told them her whole story. Soon after this she started receiving offers from Harrah’s that she was unable to resist, free limos, airplane rides, suites, concerts, anything she wanted.
March 18, 2006 Angie flew to Harrah’s on an invitation and lost everything her family had, including their house. Angie was found guilty for her habit in court.
In 2010 Reza Habib, a cognitive neuroscientist, conducted a study. He observed brain activity as both social and pathological gamblers watched the wheels of a slot machine. There were three outcomes, win, loss, and near miss. To a pathological gambler, the wins looked the same as a near miss. This is because the near miss triggers their habit to put down another bet. The areas of the brain that Habib watched in this experiment were the basil ganglia and the brain stem, the regions where habits reside (as well as behaviors related to sleep terrors start).
Which brings me to Brian Thomas. Brian was married to a woman he loved for 14 years. He also suffered from sleepwalking. He woke up one night to his wife dead on the ground, and he had killed her. He had been sleeping and mistook his wife for an intruder.
While you are sleepwalking the part of your brain that monitors your behavior is asleep, but the parts that control complex activities are awake.
Thomas was tried as not guilty. Technically he was not aware of what he was doing. In his case his habit was so powerful it overwhelmed his capacity to make choices.
During this episode Brain was actually having a sleep terror. This is when the brain shuts down except for the most primitive regions. The brain under a sleep terror looks very similar to the brain following a habit. The behaviors of people during sleep terrors are habits. The fight or flight habit is cued and there is no possibility of conscious decision.
The judge found Thomas not responsible for his habit, innocent.
Some of the same arguments that were made for Brain Thomas were also made for Angie Bachmann. They both were under the power of habit, both unable for decision making to intervene, and both felt a sense of extreme guilt.
There was one difference though, Angie was aware of her habit. The main point of this chapter, and book, is to explain that once you are made aware of your habit, it is your responsibility to change it. Any habit can be changed once we know how they function. To take control of your habits you need to understand your cues and rewards that drive them, and find an alternative. Both Angie and Brain acted automatically, but only Angie had the ability to change.
Emily Fjeldheim 