The Thrill of theThrill Is Not for Everyone

What is it about zip-lining, ice-climbing and snorting cocaine that is irresistible to some people and extremely resistible to others? OK, forget the cocaine part; that was inappropriate. What is it about zip-lining, ice-climbing and high-stakes gambling that is irresistible to some people and easily resistible to others?  According to psychiatrist and New York Times contributor Richard A. Friedman, the attraction has less to do with the activity itself than with certain efficiencies of chemical functions in the brains of the participants. Friedman, who thinks that thrill seeking has been institutionalized in our culture, tell us that the root of the thrill-seeking experience lies in an ancient neural circuit buried deep inside the brain that is intimately involved in pleasure, reward and novelty seeking. This system, he writes, runs on dopamine, a neurotransmitter whose release just happens to accompany many of life’s greatest pleasures, such as sex, food, recreational drugs, and yes, thrill seeking. Some people–Friedman calls then the chronically under-aroused–have a harder time getting their dopamine up, but when those people finally find a way to do that, like jumping off a cliff or snorting a line of cocaine, the fun begins. And so, possibly, does the addiction. Read more.