Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [92]
All the factors that lead to HSS behavior are not yet known, but one source is clearly, and genetically, biochemical. In 2006, researchers discovered a gene, called D4DR, that helps regulates the body’s release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps keep us on an even keel. Those with an inordinately long version of this so-called sensation-seeking gene possess an exquisite, almost bipolar sensitivity to blood dopamine levels. At what most of us would consider normal dopamine levels, HSS subjects feel low, even depressed. When a heavy situation triggers a dopamine release, glands squirt out adrenaline, endorphins, and estradiol. The blood becomes a nitroglycerine stew, and this lights up pleasure centers of the brain, yielding a high those who have never tried crack or heroin would find difficult to conceive. “Adrenaline is actually a peripheral,” said Zuckerman. “It affects the muscles. The main neurotransmitters are noradrenalin or norepinephrine. When those are aroused, the whole brain is activated. Then dopamine also creates arousal—a pleasurable arousal. The heart pounds. Sugars are released. You can have the same level of heart rate and blood pressure increase as you would during an orgasm.”
And just like a drug addict, over time the sensation seeker often requires a bigger and bigger rush for a fix.
Parsons, Gerlach, Skindog, Slater, and Mel find Zuckerman’s ideas fascinating—particularly as they relate to fear and danger. For example, in most humans, a startling event—someone firing a gun nearby or jumping out and shouting “boo” from behind a door—would create a panicked increase in anxiety and heart rate. The high-sensation seeker will actually experience a decrease in heart rate and might actually find the experience pleasurable. At very high levels of danger, the sensation seeker becomes highly calculating, thinking several steps ahead, working out various survival scenarios at lightning speed. He becomes calm, even euphoric. Every sense is amplified. I’ve interviewed a few marines who are veterans of the Iraq War and who also surf big waves. They actually describe combat in a similar fashion. Of course, Jim Houtz described something very similar in himself while trying to motivate his fear-frozen crew on the deck of Jalisco.
“I remember everything in big waves,” Skindog says. “Every single thing. I get totally clear. You get this wide sight—you can see everything. When you put your hand down in a wave, you feel everything.”
Sensation seeking can be maddening, too. Some come to need either constant access to or the promise of impending danger just to get through the day. When he was younger, Evan Slater’s wife, Jennifer, found him almost impossible to be around whenever there was a chance Maverick’s might break. He insists that age and fatherhood have mellowed him a bit, but not entirely. “I’ve never been a fighter or very confrontational. But one thing I always did enjoy was going into a mosh pit and getting my ass kicked. Coming out of that at the end all bruised and beat up and, like, hugging everybody, going, yeah, that was sick. Big waves are kind of the same thing. Way more of a rush, and probably more healthy overall. Today, knowing that at any time I could go grab my nine-six [9-foot, six-inch surfboard] and put myself in that position is a good feeling. I have no problem being the guy to go and shop for gymnastic leotards for my daughters—all that domestic stuff. If that was all I did, I’d be pretty depressed. But big wave surfing makes me like, Super Mister Domesticated.”
Skindog’s wife, Annoushka, calls her husband a complete addict. “If he knows a swell is coming, he’s just so amped the night before,” she says. “He’ll have so much energy. Like a kid waiting for a Christmas present. I’ll be like, simmer down.”
“My heart’s beating a hundred miles an hour,” Skindog says. “But as you get older, too, you get conditioned for the hangover—the adrenaline hangover—that comes from a weekend of riding big waves. I’ve seen it with my friends.