Resident ‘wolf biter’ finds shock gadget not up to the challenge
There’s a scene in “Lethal Weapon” where Mel Gibson’s character is hanging from a rafter in a gloomy warehouse. The bad guys are hitting him with jolt after jolt of electricity in their attempts to elicit information from the beleaguered cop.
All they really elicit is rage – the Gibson character thrashes and screams, uttering vicious threats and guttural strings of profanity into the faces of his tormentors. Each jolt evokes new levels of rage and his protests become screams of fury.
It’s a beautiful thing. And that’s me with every zap from the Pavlok, a wrist-worn gizmo that uses electricity to aid the user in quitting a habit.
That’s the theory, anyway. And while I will grant you that poor Mel Gibson took perhaps 50,000 volts compared to my measly 300 or so, my reaction was no less severe.
PAVLOK: ZOT!
ME: “AAAARGH! I’LL KILL YOU! AAAAARGH!”
Clearly they should put me in the motion pictures.
All of this drama occurred over four or five days as I wore the Pavlok in hopes that it would curb my appetite for human flesh.
No, really. I’m what is known in fringe medical circles as a wolf biter. I don’t simply chew my fingernails, I gnaw at my hands like a predator trying to chew its way out of a trap. I’ve been doing it all my life and I’ve tried everything to quit: the gloves, the gross-tasting nail polish, the rubber band trick . . .
You name it, I’ve tried it, and all attempts failed to the point where I long ago quit trying to quit. Then along comes the Pavlok with its promises of pain-induced glory. The product lists nail-biting specifically as among the habits it can combat through the psychology of pain aversion.
Bite my nails, I’ll get a shock. Before long, I’d associate the habit with the sting of electricity and that would be that. No more chewing for me, my friends. Before you know it, my nails would be long and luscious, ready to pluck flat items off flat surfaces.
That’s the theory, anyway.
According to the Pavlok literature, the $199 device can easily help a person to quit his habit, be it chewing, smoking, oversleeping or goofing off. In fact, the company claims there are 173 bad habits they can help you to break.
“When it comes to breaking a bad habit, negative stimuli in connection with a bad habit will ensure that a negative association with the bad habit will be created,” according to createhabits.today, which promotes the Pavlok. “Let’s take the example of smoking: Every time you are about to light a cigarette, you get an electric shock through the Pavlok wearable. Very soon you will associate smoking with something rather unpleasant: pain. Chances are high that this will help you to reduce the amount of cigarettes you smoke, ideally getting down to zero.”
The Pavlok website is replete with success stories from users who claim they quit their worst habits just by strapping on this little gadget.
“Heather stopped nail biting!” declares one testimonial.
“Carlos quit smoking,” trumpets another.
“David watches less TV” and “Kang wakes up on time!”
So much love for a device that stings you like a bee in order to correct bad behavior. Why then am I still gnawing at my hands after nearly a week with the Pavlok around my wrist?
I’ll tell. But first, a little about the device itself.
The Pavlok is a small, rectangular square of metal worn inside a silicone strap. One can customize the experience through a series of button pushes on the device itself, but the easier way is to use the associated app on your smart phone or tablet using bluetooth technology.
Problem: The app wouldn’t work on my phone, a Samsung Galaxy SIII, which by the standards of modern technology is a relic. To use the app, I had to load it onto my wife’s Note, which also meant that she would be in charge of the remote deployment of electric shocks. But more on spousal cruelty later.
HIT HIM AGAIN, ENDO
With the app in hand, the Pavlok’s function is quite simple, at least in theory. You can set the level of shock from low (17 volts) to high (340 volts) and you can likewise adjust the levels of vibration and volume.
You can set alarms, chat with other Pavlok users, follow a five-day course to guide you through the process and set up a customized treatment plan to address your personal habit.
The Pavlok comes fully charged. How do I know this? Because it zapped me even as I was taking it out of the box, which is where the “Lethal Weapon” style shrieking began.
“ARGHHHH! SWEAR WORD! ARGHHHHH!”
The gizmo also has a hand-to-mouth feature: Leave your hand up near your mouth for more than a second or two and on comes the pain. This was the feature I was after because otherwise I’d have to manually administer the shock myself by pressing a button and let’s face it – who has the discipline to do that? If I lack the willpower to stop chewing my hands to begin with, how would I possibly summon the will to press that button every time I do it?
The hand-to-mouth feature should be just what the Pavlovian doctor ordered. Chew your nails, take a drag from a cigarette or pick your nose and a shock would be delivered – like the sting of a snapped rubber band on the low end, bordering on a bee sting at maximum power.
The problem was that the hand-to-mouth technology was not consistent. Sometimes I’d get a shock, sometimes I wouldn’t. Worse, every now and then the Pavlok would jolt me when I wasn’t doing anything at all. At other times it seemed like the shock was woefully delayed – I’d spend five minutes biting my hands without punishment but a few minutes later, while stroking the cat, the shock would dive bone-deep into my wrist.
“AAAAARGH . . .”
You know the routine.
It got to the point where shocks from the Pavlok were so erratic that I didn’t associate it with the bad habit at all. It was just randomly doling out punishment as if a sadistic man in a secret room was making wild guesses at whether or not I was chewing my nails.
Who needs it? If your dog piddles on the rug and you wait five minutes to punish him, is he going to associate the punishment with the piddle? No. He’s just going to swear a lot.
GIVE YOUR MARRIAGE A JOLT
Through the Pavlok app, shocks can be administered remotely at the push of a button. This is a great option if you want a trusted friend, a drinking partner or a stranger off the street to manage your pain.
“If you see me chewing my nails,” I told my wife, “zap me.”
I chewed my nails. My wife pressed the little icon on her phone, the one with the little lightning bolt through it.
I winced. Waited. Nothing happened.
Until 30 seconds later, when I was doing nothing at all to warrant the electrical slap on the wrist. Apparently the voltage went buzzing around in space for a while before coming back to earth to spear into my flesh.
PAVLOK: “ZIT!”
ME: “ARRRRRRGH! SWEAR WORD! SWEAR WORD! ARRRRGH!”
The Pavlok has some cool options and it has apparently worked for some. For me, though, the delays and other glitches completely negated the Pavlok’s stated capabilities. If anything, it caused me to chew my hands more aggressively. Ultimately, I would have been better off going low tech and sticking to the simple rubber band, manually thwapping the tender skin around my wrist instead of relying on the erratic jolt of the Pavlok.
Or, you know. I could try a little willpower.
Unfortunately simple willpower has never been a strong ally to me. The nasty habits I HAVE quit, I managed only because those habits became impossible to sustain or because someone made it ridiculously easy for me. Smoking, for instance – every attempt I made to quit those beasts ended in shameful defeat. Then along came vape and that beautiful technology made quitting smokes so easy, it felt like cheating.
To gain a better insight into good old-fashioned, white-knuckle willpower, I asked our readers about their experiences with stomping down a bad habit.
Results were mixed. Bruce W. Grant, of Auburn, put his iron will to work and quit all kinds of nasty stuff.
“Drugs: beat it. Chewing fingernails: beat it. Drinking soda: beat it,” Grant says. “Cigarettes and cigars? Not a chance. Have tried hypnosis – can’t be hypnotized. Nicotine patches, gum, Chantix . . . nothing worked. Maybe I’ll quit when they put the last nail in my coffin.”
“Swearing. Smoking. Cheating on my diets,” says Jeanne Marie, of Lewiston. “I’ve tried willpower. I lack it.”
“I stopped chewing my fingernails,” says Melanie R. Janisch, of Nashua, N.H., ” by getting those horrible big clunky ugly fake nails attached. I think they called them acrylics and I chewed them off and then I got them put on again and that time it worked.”
For some, nothing beats plain old fear to conquer a habit that seemed unconquerable.
“I smoked for years and tried many times to quit with all the available products and also cold turkey,” says Wally Ritz, of Mexico. “Then came Dec 19, 2013. Woke up not feeling quite right, at times shaking uncontrollable as if being cold. At lunch time I went outside for a smoke, put it out halfway through. Later that day I ended up in the hospital with various life-threatening problems, heart attack being one and the first they treated.”
Ritz ended up with a pair of stents in her heart that night. She hasn’t had a cigarette since and hardly suffered any withdrawal pain at all.
There’s probably a lesson to be learned there.
“I think in part, it is a state of mind,” Ritz says. “Suddenly wanting to stay alive takes over and becomes the most important thing.”
Is the low-voltage shock therapy offered by the Pavlok a good idea, even if this particular gadget has its flaws? Not everyone thinks so. One writer penned a very long piece criticizing the concept and Pavlok directly.
But hey, somebody wrote those testimonials. Clearly there are people out there whose bad habits are so deeply entrenched, they require miniature lightning to set them free. And if it works, more power to them.
Me? Like Mel Gibson, I ultimately wriggled free from the pain of voltage. Mel did it by employing some impressive movie fu and disabling his tormentor. I did it by simply unstrapping the Pavlok and moving on with my life, free to chew my hands like a hungry rodent any time I please.
Pick your poison: The most common bad %!$#! habits
Swearing: Cussing is easily the top bad habit listed by the readers who responded to our query. As it turns out, most of them aren’t looking to curb their profane ways at all. In fact, a few consider themselves black belts of swearing. We’re telling their mothers – they won’t think they’re so cool when they have mouths full of bar soap.
Smoking: There are two types of reformed smokers who responded to our query: those who used vapor technology to easily quit the habit and those who had to rely on white-knuckle willpower. The latter group also tends to swear a lot, according to my findings.
Goofing off: Several of our readers admit that they spend too much time tooling around online and wish they could cut back. Careful what you wish for there, Sparky. If everybody gave up messing around on the web altogether, where would we go for cat memes?
Diet cheating: I know a woman who tried using the Pavlok device to maintain discipline on her diet. She ended up spreading mustard on the gadget and eating it in one bite! OK, not really, but wouldn’t that be a hoot if it was true?
Drinking too much: A bunch of our readers admitted to this habit. But when we went back to talk to them about it, they didn’t remember admitting any such thing. Seriously, people. It’s intervention time.
Nail biting: There are plenty of nail biters among our readership, as it turns out. I hear their pain. This is exactly how I lost my future as a hand model. And while most of us have tried all the traditional attempts to quit, one nail-chewer reports that he was cured the very day he started working in the sewers. Handle enough of that crap, he says, and you’ll never put your hand anywhere near your mouth again. Just don’t take up chewing somebody else’s nails to ease your pain.
Knuckle cracking: It’s a habit that annoys many and which is apparently very hard to fix. But if you don’t crack your knuckles, how do you know when you’re about to play piano, defuse a bomb or engage in fisticuffs?