“Hey! Doctor?”
I was ready to leave when I just heard the voice. I looked up at the man in the blue shirt who stood in front of me. A person had called me in the morning and I guessed it was him.
“Mr. Joshi? Please take a seat.”
He sat at the other end of the table and fidgeted with his Rolex watch. “You’re a victim of some sort of compulsive habit, I presume?”
Puneet had some difficulty in making eye contact initially. Eventually, he straightened his back, took a deep breath, and spoke. “This is my first visit to a psychiatrist.”
“Understandable. You seem to be a balanced person.” The small talk worked and he loosened up. He told me about his problem and it certainly was an interesting one.
As an addiction psychologist, I had dealt with smokers, alcoholics, gamers and on one rare occasion, a cocaine addict. Cocaine addicts rarely gathered the courage to approach a psychiatrist. That had been a risky gamble for me but the Hippocratic Oath had echoed in my mind as I was about to turn him down.
Puneet’s addiction was a unique case though. “So you mean to say, you’re addicted to…”
“Ice-cream. Yes, Sir. Initially, it was just a substitute for breakfast, but now I’m not able to stop. I just can’t control myself and I’m worried about it…”
“But Mr. Puneet, you do realize that if I get rid of this addiction for you, you will most probably never be able to eat Ice-cream again? Are you really prepared for such a fate?”
“Yes, I have thought about it. I just want to end this. The damned thing is taking control of my life!” He quickly became conscious of his outburst and continued, “I’m sorry, I just want to be cured. You can surely do something, right?” He looked at me hopefully, convinced that I had an instant solution to his dilemma.
I was used to this. Faking a look of sudden inspiration, I pulled open a cabinet to my right with unnecessary force. I rummaged through it for just the right amount of time and took out a small cylindrical box with a flourish. Placing it on the table, I said “Take one of these every morning and night. Meet me again next week.”
***
It didn’t work. I hadn’t expected it to.
“It was a placebo, a sugar pill. I was trying to trick your mind into believing that it was an actual solution,” I explained to the confused patient. “Your addiction seems to be stronger than that. I’ve never heard of Ice-cream addiction. I’m not sure if there’s a chemical treatment for it…” Every pessimistic sentence of mine seemed to land on his face like a slap from his fifth-grade math teacher. No point in delaying further.
“But there is one thing we could try…” Hope in his eyes…. “Tell me to have you heard of Pavlov’s dogs?” Puneet squirmed in his chair. “I’m not very sure if I want to continue, Doctor. Dogs freak me out.”
I laughed spontaneously, to his relief. “We won’t be dealing with any dogs. But I guarantee that the treatment will not be very pleasant. We begin tomorrow.” He prepared to leave and I spoke again.
“Tell me…” He waited for the question. “Is there any particular sound you hate?”
***
His hand was trembling as it reached for another Ice-cream. At that instant, I clicked a mouse button.
Puneet shut his eyes and bowed down in sheer agony as the speakers echoed the blaring sound of a bus horn into his ears. Bus horns. The sound he hated the most.
“Stop! Stop!” he pleaded. I gave him a moment of respite and then I handed him another piece.
“Again.”
The look he flashed reminded me of Dumbledore pleading Harry Potter to stop, in the underground cavern. But like Harry, I had my job to do.
***
Suppose you had a dog. Suppose, every time before giving the dog its meal, you rang a bell. Then what do you think the dog would do the next time you rang a bell? That’s right, it would be drooling its jowls even if there was no food around. Turns out this works for humans too. With this seemingly simple observation, Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel Prize. And I cured my patient.
Every day, I placed different types of Ice-cream before Puneet and zapped him with his least favorite sound each time he ate a piece. By the end of the week, the sight of Ice-cream would honk bus horns in his brain. Even when I was not around.
***
“So, how do you feel now Mr. Puneet?” He smiled.
“Great, Doctor. I think I’m free of the addiction.” He had paid my fees a long time back and had dropped by just to thank me. Turned out that he was still able to eat Ice-cream though it wasn’t as enjoyable as before.
But there’s something I didn’t tell Puneet. You see, my clinic lies next to the main road. And I used speakers during the treatment, not headphones. Sigh.
Now, every time a bus passes by my window, horns at full blast, I reach fridge for Ice-creams or ran to the nearby Ice-cream parlor.
I had no idea that addictions were contagious.