Gettinghooked
I CAME across an academic paper this week from Nottingham Trent University – Becoming hooked? Angling, gambling, and “fishing addiction”.
The author Mark Griffiths proposed to that there are similarities in the brains reaction to both of these and that you could be a bit of a fishing addict. ● In both activities, the participant repeats the same behaviour over and over again in the hope that they will attain something of material value. ● Both activities lead to mood modifying experiences and can be both relaxing and exciting. ● Both activities can result in the person forgetting about time and engaging in the activity for much longer than the person originally intended. ● Both activities involve “near misses” that reinforce the behaviour
● The “availability bias” comes into play.
More specifically, the few big successes (i.e., catching a really big fish or winning a large amount of money) are highly memorable while all the many other occasions when the person lost all their money or caught nothing are easily forgotten ● In both activities, when things are not going right (i.e., not winning, not catching any fish) the person then tries the same thing somewhere else (a gambler changes table or slot machines, or goes to a new gaming venue; a fisherman changes his bait or tries another spot). ● One win or one fish caught is never enough.
These ring pretty true, there is definitely a gaming aspect to fishing.
We all know someone that’s doomed to try a method over and over in the vain hope of repeating the success they had one day, or returning to that special spot that always holds a fish.
There’s little better than losing track of time when you’re out on the bank and I’ve definitely seen and done things that fall into a lot of these.
A whole field of research on what’s termed positive addiction, activities such as angling are used by organisations to help people cope with the problems of harmful addiction.
The NHS are running trials on prescribing angling as a behavioural therapy in the UK for people suffering PTSD, depression and anxiety.
These “green prescribing” solutions, link countryside pursuits with restorative effects.
Bill Glasser proposed that activities such as angling, hiking and others were positive addictions and were the kinds of activity that could be deliberately cultivated to wean addicts away from more harmful and sinister preoccupations.
I don’t think I need to go into fishing rehab just yet not when there’s evening rises just around the corner for and I might put some goods casts after bad trying to seek out a memorable fish to catch and blanks to forget.