Chasing that dragon. Photo: Tom Woods
Consider your friendly neighborhood crackhead for a moment. The poor bastard has given up everything: career, home, relationship, you name it, in pursuit of a little psychoactive rock that makes him feel like a million bucks. Now ask yourself: Is the hardcore surfer so different?
Compare the amount of time a surfer spends in surf-related activities like going to the beach, reading surf magazines, paddling out and checking conditions to the amount of time a surfer spends actually riding waves in a typical session. I’ll estimate that for every second a surfer spends standing on a wave, a solid 200 seconds are spent thinking about surfing or engaging in some surf-related activity. Surfers, like the aforementioned crackhead, are often all too happy to forego economic stability, health, and even human interaction in the name of wave riding.
Indeed, a narcotic high is eerily similar to a good wave–intense, incredibly pleasurable, and far too brief. And, no matter how good the high, the fiend quickly forgets and pursues another fix.
So what’s going on? Does surfing, like drugs, make us high? And do surfers have a special predisposition to this high? My answer to both questions is a resounding “yes.”
Research indicates that surfers unlike, say, golfers are motivated to participate in their sport because of the sensation that wave riding provides. In other words, surfers surf because it feels good as opposed to other common motivations for sport participation such as a pursuit of six-pack abs or a love for crushing one’s opponent (though Kelly Slater may disagree on the latter assertion). A quick flip through your mental Rolodex provides other sensation-motivated sports like skiing, skateboarding, and racecar driving to name a few.
So what is that feeling, that elusive, all-too-brief sensation that surfing provides? It starts in your brain with a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Dopamine is responsible for our experience of pleasure. Whenever we do something that feels good, such as eating a good meal or having sex, our dopamine levels rise in our brain’s Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA) and let us know that whatever just happened was a good thing, a thing that should be repeated in the future. Dopamine is necessary for our survival in this way because it incentivizes crucial behaviors.
Unfortunately, the dopamine train can be hijacked. Drugs in particular can elevate dopamine to unnatural levels, tricking the brain into believing that the drug, even more than food or sex, is crucial to survival. For instance, crystal methamphetamine has been shown to elevate dopamine levels in the VTA at a level approximately twelve times greater than sex. We know what follows: ruined relationships, wrecked health, criminal justice involvement and economic ruin, all in pursuit of the all-consuming high.
Surfing feels good. Really good. Drug good. Surfing in no way furthers our survival, at least not in the way that food or sex does, but damn if we don’t build our lives around it. So is surfing a drug? Not quite. Unlike drugs, surfing generally improves the participant’s health, primarily through regular exercise. And as bad as a surfing addiction can get, many landlocked surfers exist with no withdrawal symptoms beyond a few extra pounds and a bad t-shirt tan. No, it seems that surfing is good, old fashioned, mildly addictive fun.
Yet our sport abounds with cautionary tales, and some of our brightest stars have succumbed to drug use. Furthermore, empirical research indicates that surfers are in fact more inclined than the average Joe or Jane to at least experiment with drugs. So what gives?
Surfing appeals to people who really, really like the sensation that wave riding provides. And this urge, this hunger, doesn’t simply dissipate when the surfer leaves the ocean. Thus the surfer may be more inclined than the average athlete to reach for a little pick-me-up at any time. Unfortunately, we know how it often ends: the chemical high, with its unnatural elevation of dopamine levels, quickly surpasses the natural high, even making it appear weak by comparison. It’s a quick slide downhill after that.
Mental health professions have a name, a diagnosis even, for highly sensation-bound folks, and indeed this population’s need for stimulation has them engaging in behaviors which gets them in all sorts of trouble. We call it Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD for short, and I will explore ADHD among surfers in depth in future writings. Until then, feel free to drop me a line at benlevin78@gmail.com and happy surfing.
