≡ Menu

Adrenaline Rush: Adventure, Stress, and Extreme Sports

Fear of falling from high heights is supposedly one of our primal, “non-associative” fears—an instinctive reaction developed evolutionarily to protect us from dancing carelessly on cliff edges we could fall from, thus damaging our chances of reproducing and continuing the species. So it’s fascinating to peer inside the psyches … and physiologies … of people whose idea of fun is to leap off 4,000-foot-tall rock cliffs in Norway. Or out of airplanes, for that matter.
Most lay people, without a single scrap of scientific evidence to back them up, would watch a film like the IMAX production Adrenaline Rush and conclude that there is something different going on inside the brains of people who live for that kind of cliff jumping or extreme skydiving. But they might think it’s a psychological difference, not a physiological one. The term “adrenaline junkie” has been around for a long time (much longer than the British reality TV series by that name), but it’s generally used to describe someone who seeks or craves risky, adventurous activities—not a true “junkie” in the physical addiction sense of the word.
In some cases, however, it seems there really might be something physiologically different about people who resist fear and handle stress better, as well as those who seek more “high-risk” thrills and activities.

The IMAX film Adrenaline Rush: The Science of Risk—which notes, by the way, that humans are the only animals who seek danger and risk their lives for fun (some interesting food for thought there)—looks at what goes on inside the human body during adrenaline-producing activities. In between some impressive skydiving and BASE jumping footage, of course. The idea I found most intriguing was that people who pursue and enjoy that kind of high-wire action fun seem to have significantly lower levels of an enzyme called monoamine oxidase B (MAO B) as compared to the rest of the population. As a result, these people may have a higher resistance to arousal of certain sections of the brain, meaning that it takes a higher amount of stimulation (see: BASE jumping off a cliff or skyscraper) in order to get the same level of excitement and pleasure others get out of less extreme activities.
That same point is also made in a book called Being Extreme: Thrills and Dangers in the World of High-Risk Sports, by Bill Gutman. Gutman interviews a range of extreme athletes to find out what drives them and intersperses their responses with information on psychological and physiological aspects of risk-taking and extreme sports. I think the book could have benefited from a bit more journalistic persistence in questioning or countering the athletes’ self-descriptions or assumptions, but it’s still an interesting read, in terms of getting inside the athletes’ heads.
In addition, Gutman discusses the role that not only monoamine oxidase B, but also a neurotransmitter called dopamine, may play in risk-takers’ decisions and passions. Some genetic research has indicated that people drawn to high-risk activities may have a gene that makes a part of their brains—the part that responds to sex or high-thrill activities like jumping out of an airplane—especially sensitive. As a result, they’re more motivated to pursue that kind of activity.
But wait, there’s more. We all apparently possess an amino acid called neuropeptide Y that helps regulate our blood pressure and appetite and acts as a kind of natural tranquilizer to control anxiety. And not surprisingly, according to a recent Newsweek article, successful candidates for the Army’s elite Special Forces possess higher-than-normal amounts of this chemical in their brains.
There are undoubtedly other psychological and life factors that go into the equation of why some people seek out jobs like being a Special Forces soldier or sports like BASE jumping or sky diving. And excelling at a sport or challenge doesn’t necessarily mean you crave it. Not every risk-taker has an equal love of every risk, either. I fly small airplanes. But I have absolutely no desire to jump out of any of them. I’ll jump out of an airplane the day a) the plane is on fire or b) the wing falls off. Not before.
Clearly, there’s lots more to the question of how and why individual humans take on the particular risks that we do. But if differences in chemistry play a role in the equation, it might help rationally explain at least a part of the gap between those who look up at a cliff and say “COOL!” and those who look at that same cliff and say “You’ve gotta be frickin’ kidding me. Not for all the money in the world.”

{ 4 comments… add one }
  • Edward Upton March 31, 2009, 6:10 pm

    It seems to me that an adventure consists in going somewhere where you haven’t been before, or doing something that you haven’t done before. But not every new place or new activity would qualify as an adventure. There has to be a certain quality of boldness to it before we would think of it as am adventure. The boldness has to do with the dangers or potential dangers you are getting into. I was going to say unknowns, but sometimes the dangers may be pretty well known. For example, if you climb Everest for the first time, or even Mont Blanc, you pretty well know what the dangers are. If you undertook such a challenge without training and without good equipment and without any experienced companions, that would be foolhardy rather than bold. But training or no training, it would still be an adventure.
    When people get married it is common to say they are starting a life-long adventure together. That is a somewhat watered down concept of adventure, but it certainly has the element of the unknown in it. Not only the unknown, but the fact that the two people are committed to that, and to each other — or so it used to be, anyway, in the days when marriage was generally a life-long commitment. But — admirable and inspirational as such a commitment may be, it is not in the same class of adventure as climbing a dangerous mountain.
    And one could say the same about visiting a new part of the world for the first time. Exciting, yes, and a good deal of unknown in it, but not much element of danger and therefore not much element of boldness.
    Still, when you return let us say from Katmandu, everyone will want to hear about your adventure, and no one would call it by any lesser name. However, if you had just been let us say to Denver for the first time, not many people would think of that as an adventure. If the adventure is travel, there should be an element of exotic locale in it, and that means foreign language and foreign customs, and not too many people of your culture going there. Like Ulithi, a very remote tropical atoll that I lived on for a year way back in the 1950s. No danger in it, but the way of life was totally new and strange.
    I would say there are three different levels of adventure in general. If it is just something new for you, but many other people have done it before or been there before, I would call that a personal adventure. Maybe a really exciting adventure for you, but there won’t be anything about it in the newspapers.
    Back in the days when much of the world was still unexplored, you might be the first person of your culture or nationality that ever went, say, across the deserts and mountains of Asia to China, like Marco Polo, or up the Missouri River like Meriwether Lewis. I would call that a national adventure, and place it on a higher level than the personal adventure. More unknowns in it, and more danger in it, and big headlines in it if it happened in the great age of newspapers. Like Henry Stanley in Africa, writing up his own news stories as he went. Everywhere he went he ran into Africans who had always been there, but to Americans and Europeans he was essentially the first person to sail the length of the Congo River.
    That kind of national adventure is now almost beyond our reach, since the whole of our planet is by now well explored. Still, Jacques Cousteau went where no man had gone before, with TV cameras no less, and the airing of it was immensely popular.
    But Jacques Cousteau really belongs on the next higher level of adventure, which consists of going somewhere or doing something absolutely new, never done before by any human being ever. I call that a cosmic adventure. Not only Jacques Cousteau but also Neil Armstrong, Robert Peary, Hillary and Tenzing. I would also put the adventures of Columbus, Magellan and Lindbergh in this class — not for exploring new parts of the world where no man had ever been before — which they didn’t — but for their feats of trans-oceanic navigation which were indeed something new in t he world.
    Cosmic and national adventures may be out of reach today, but personal adventures lie ready to hand on all sides for anyone with the spirit to undertake them. You could perhaps divide them into three broad classes of personal adventure: adventures of danger (the adrenaline rush), adventures of the unknown (often with elements of both danger and opportunity) and adventures of the exotic locale like Timbuctoo, or a descent into the ocean depths in the footsteps of Jacques Cousteau.

  • Bob Thomason April 8, 2009, 7:32 pm

    David Grann’s current best seller, The Lost City of Z, delves deeply into the phyche and physiology of famed Amazon Explorer Percy Fawcett. He was definitely wired differently and had a body that could withstand the tortures of the “Green Hell” better than ordinary men. Not only that, he was a junkie in the sense that he kept going back to the Amazon time and time again until it finally consumed him. I highly recommend this book for for an incredible portrait of an amazing adventurer.

  • John Castle May 3, 2014, 12:27 pm

    It all makes so much sense, rationally speaking: I tend to get out of my way to do a flip or jump off a bridge more than any other activity. The rush is what I live for, I have no fear of death or injury, which is why in my short 18 years of life I have never been seriously injured in attempting these stunts. I also get the same buzz from competing in 1 on 1 sports, such as Jiu Jitsu, Wrestling, and tennis. The whole idea of a huge crowd watching you perform sports and win is the best rush. I have been trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and I followed my instincts like I always have. I too want to be a pilot, commercial/pilot, everyday will be filled with adrenaline and that’s more than enough to keep me content:) Awesome source, I’m definitely quoting some of these for my final research paper! Thanks again.

Leave a Comment