Good LA Times article

This is a pretty good article today in the LA Times. The writer's
email (at the end of the piece), is

The void calls

Why are some people compelled to rappel down slot canyons, surf big
waves or -- at the far end of the danger spectrum -- jump from cliffs
and bridges?

By Charles Duhigg, Times Staff Writer

It was a bridge like this that killed Karin Sako's boyfriend.

Seven months after his death, Sako stands on the wrong side of the
railing separating pedestrians from a 486-foot drop and leans into
empty air, her neon backpack stark against the gray canyon walls.

The arch bridge shakes as trucks rumble into Twin Falls, Idaho. Sako
glances right, where her friend Jeb Corliss is perched — also on the
wrong side.

Corliss was with Sako's boyfriend when he died. He wiped sweat from
his own cheeks and discovered it was his friend's blood. Now Corliss
looks back and he too leans over the emptiness.

Sako pushes onto the balls of her feet and tightens her hands on the
metal guardrail. If she falls unchecked, her body will hit the water
in just over five seconds.

A terrified gaggle of girls watch from the canyon's edge. Why are they
there? a pigtailed pre-adolescent whispers to another.

But if you pose the query to Sako, who has risked hundreds of jumps
like this one, she'll say only: "You never have to ask anyone that
question in this sport."

Pull of peril

Since Adam and Eve's slip-up in the Garden of Eden when mankind became
mortal, we have been fascinated by risk and its consequences. The
instinct to confront danger pushes skiers from the bunny slopes to the
double diamonds and propels day hikers to slippery granite peaks.

It's a fascination familiar to big wave surfers, deep divers,
backcountry boarders and people who like to jump from high places. In
the last decade geneticists, psychologists and armchair philosophers
have labored to understand why. Some say brain chemistry causes a few
to leap toward rather than avoid danger. Others say daredevils are
programmed by genes and childhood.

Ultimately, Sako and Corliss claim, simply asking the question means
you cannot understand its answer. It is a response clichéd,
inevitable, and ultimately, as dangerous as Adam and Eve's challenge
to God.

BASE jumping — the acronym refers to the Buildings, Antennas, Spans,
or bridges, and Earth, or cliffs, from which adherents leap — is an
amusement rooted in the possibility of death. For those who crave
flight, there are planes, hang gliders and skydiving. BASE jumpers,
however, typically leap from heights far lower than the 1,800-foot
elevation at which regulations require parachutists to deploy their
canopies.

Their flights last only seconds. An estimated one in 82,000 skydives
is fatal, reports "Parachuting, The Skydiver's Handbook."
Approximately one in 1,000 BASE jumps ends in death, according to
statistics complied by industry leaders. Which may be one reason why
so few people routinely fling themselves off cliffs, bridges and the
like — just 3,000 or so worldwide, says Todd Shoebotham, co-owner of a
company that produces parachutes.

Euphoria's slave

"It's what's known as a life experience," explains Corliss, describing
a jump from a cliff in South Africa where he broke multiple ribs, his
back in three places and sat immobile in freezing water for an hour
awaiting rescue while crabs ate the flesh around his back wounds. "Not
all life experiences are fun, but I wouldn't change it for the world."

Corliss, 28, is every parent's nightmare and many daredevils' idol.
His speech is a torrent of words punctuated by a high-pitched,
out-of-place laugh. He hasn't worn a piece of clothing in any color
but black since he was 12 years old, he says. He has a theory for
everything, all delivered at top decibels, and, due to contracts with
film and television producers, makes more money than some physicians.
He shaves his head and wears sunglasses that make him look like a bug.
He doesn't care what you, or anyone else, thinks of his choices. He
still lives with his parents.

Fifty years ago, Corliss' infatuation with dangerous sports would have
been dismissed as a death wish. But research in the last half-century
has challenged many of psychology's traditional explanations.

In the mid-1970s, psychologist Bruce Ogilvie tested 250 athletes like
Corliss from a variety of sports, including skydiving and race-car
driving, and found many risk-takers possessed superior intelligence,
emotional stability and independence when compared with the population
at large. He also discovered that, paradoxically, high-risk athletes
made concerted efforts to minimize the dangers associated with their
sports.

Ogilvie's findings are consistent with other studies. A 1994 paper
followed juvenile criminal offenders enrolled in a dangerous
cliff-climbing course. Graduates of the program reported higher
self-confidence afterward, and recidivism dropped by 50%. Another
study exposed single mothers on welfare who refused to enroll in
college courses to a four-day program of risk-taking activities.
Seventy-three percent of participants signed up for vocational
education afterward.

When people such as Corliss and Sako overcome dangerous risks, say
psychologists, it helps train the mind to overcome less-physical
fears, like self-doubt, and encourages a sense of possibility.
Evolutionary biologists suggest that embracing risk allowed Homo
sapiens to expand across the world and promote genetic diversity by
seeking out dissimilar sexual partners.

Risk-taking instincts have biochemical consequences: When humans
successfully overcome fear, the body responds by releasing
beta-endorphins that cause euphoria.

Risk is integral to exploration, discovery and progress, and almost
every celebrated hero became so by confronting at least one fear.

But when risk-taking becomes a primary source of self-worth and
happiness, say psychologists, it can induce counterphobia, the
near-obsessive need to confront fearful experiences.

A psychologist diagnosed Corliss as counterphobic in childhood after
he began collecting snakes, almost compulsively, in spite of a fear of
the animals.

"The line between empowering risks and catastrophic risks is pretty
fuzzy," says Frank Farley, a psychologist with Temple University who
studies such matters. "Especially for someone who is seen as brave or
a leader because they've taken risks before. Overcoming a fear makes
you feel powerful. It becomes central to how some people see
themselves."

When Corliss repeatedly got into serious fights in his younger days,
his parents decided to teach him at home. He still thinks of children
as cruel, he says.

Only when he started skydiving did he find his place in the world, he
says. Playgrounds and birthday parties are minefields, unlike the
black and white simplicity of falling through air.

"A lot of people seem to think they have control over whether they
die," Corliss says. "I'm one of the few people who actually knows
where that control ends. There's nothing in my life that has given me
the same feelings and experiences as BASE jumping. No relationship
with another person even comes remotely close."

A deadly landing

Sako's boyfriend, Dwaine Weston, was one of BASE jumping's pioneers.
"He did things nobody else thought was possible until he did them,"
Corliss says.

In November, Corliss and Weston planned to impress a crowd of jumpers
gathered at a bridge over the Royal Gorge in Colorado.

Inside a low-flying airplane, Corliss and Weston donned wingsuits —
webbed uniforms that glide through the air — and jumped, floating
toward the crowds watching from the metal span.

Weston approached low, intending to buzz just feet above the heads of
the spectators. "He wanted to go for something a little more intense,"
Corliss says.

Corliss flew a few feet below Weston as they approached the bridge.
Then he suddenly veered, avoiding a falling obstacle. He would later
learn it was Weston's leg, severed when he hit the bridge's railing,
dying instantly, twisting the half-foot-thick railing as if it were
fabric.

Bored by the prospect of another weekend of jumping, Sako had stayed
in California that day to rock climb.

When she returned to Los Angeles, messages choked her voicemail. The
first was from Weston, promising he was remembering to be safe. The
rest were from friends in Colorado.

"It's hard to explain the transition from where life is normal to the
floor dropping out from beneath your world," she says, her voice clear
and unemotional. "We had both been there when friends had died, we had
talked a lot about death. But nothing fully prepares you for when it
happens to your partner."

Sako waited two months before jumping again.

Genetic distinctions

That seeming inability to resist a dangerous activity, some say, is
evidence Sako and Corliss are addicted to risky behavior.

"As they jump off the bridge, their bodies start producing chemicals
that are just like opiates," says Jay Holder, president of the
American College of Addictionology & Compulsive Disorders. "It is just
like if someone stuck a needle in their arm with heroin. There is no
difference in how they feel. It's the same uncontrollable addiction."

Holder, a chiropractor, generates lots of controversy on scientific
websites. Most researchers, however, agree addiction is partially
rooted in biology: Approximately 30% of humans have an allele on their
11th chromosome that appears to interfere with the levels of
neurotransmitters — particularly dopamine — in the brain.

According to a theory known as reward deficiency syndrome, people like
Corliss and Sako suffer from defective levels of neurotransmitters.
They experience "adrenaline rushes" differently than most people.
Rather than triggering a combination of excitement and terror,
exposure to risk floods their brains with chemicals that make them
feel more "normal."

This theory holds that the brain's reward system — neurological
pathways also associated with alcoholism, drug addiction and the
flushness we feel after eating or sex — spurs a neurotransmitter chain
of events. This renders some people who rock climb, kayak over
waterfalls or BASE jump chemically addicted to the feelings of calm
and control that come with almost dying.

Some jumpers agree with the theory. Jim Jennings, 35, quit the
activity and sold all his gear after nine of his friends, including
Weston, died in a 14-month period. His girlfriend, who previously
dated another jumper killed by a fall, gave him an ultimatum: If he
jumps, she leaves.

"I understand why she says that, but this is something I need to do,"
says Jennings. Then he adds that he is edging, inevitably, toward
jumping again. "When you get down from a BASE jump, you're shaking all
over. You feel like you've achieved something so big. That you've
accomplished something. It gives you a great sense of reward.
Everything else in life feels so pointless by comparison."

Others dismiss Holder's theories as simplistic. Instead, they point to
studies showing that risk pursuers — dubbed sensation seekers by
psychologists — typically have lower levels in their brain of MAO, or
monoamine oxidase, a molecule that regulates three neurotransmitters
that help elicit euphoria when someone confronts a new situation.

As a result, Corliss and Sako may achieve greater euphoria than others
when exposed to new stimuli, but that euphoria dissipates more quickly
because low levels of MAO interfere with neurotransmitter
reabsorption.

In other words, they are more easily excited by a new toy, and more
quickly bored by it. Sako and Corliss, according to this theory, don't
jump because it is risky, they jump because it feels new — at least
for a while.

Blurred figures

On the bridge in Idaho, the abstractions of psychology and genetics
cannot compete with the winds whipping around Sako and Corliss as they
hang over nothingness.

They both take deep, calm breaths, loosen their grips — and drop,
accelerating into a blur, tracked by schoolgirls enthralled into
silence.

"Since his death I've wanted so badly to feel happy," Sako explained
earlier. "When I'm falling, it's like I've managed to hold life in my
hands and compress all the beauty and the pain into one split second.
Nothing else matters. It's like he's still alive."

The observers watch and silently count. The jumpers, finally, release
small lead chutes from the bottoms of their backpacks. The tiny folds
fill with air and pull out larger canopies. The fabrics erupt with a
pop, flowers exploding into bloom. They float like delicate petals,
triumphant and glaringly fragile.