We're All Just a Bunch of Junkies, What's Your Next Fix?

Your regular thoughts dissipate. Your heart tries to leap out of your mouth. Your stomach wrenches into a ball of a thousand trampling unicorns. Palms sweaty, weak knees, wide eyed. Fear. Joy. Strength. Empowerment.

Adventurers: This is about you!

What is it about adventuring, or being in a completely foreign and new environment, that evokes these feelings? Why do we receive such high stimulants when venturing into the unknown or unexperienced? How do we control the thirst for those feelings and tame the addiction? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN!?

Remember the first time you swam in the ocean? Or the first time you skydived? How about the first time you saw Old Faithful erupt? We get this rush of emotions flowing through us that we can’t control. The unknown is an inherent concept that both fuels and flails our connection to the human psyche. It’s a direct factor to the yin and yang of new experiences.

A famous rock climber and extreme sportsman by the name of Dan Osman used to push the limits of life’s experiences with things like free solo climbing and rope free-flying off of mega cliffs. Though definitely more of an extreme example, the mentality he lived by is a perfectly magnified reason as to why we feel the way we do about these foreign things. “People always used to ask him if he didn’t have a death wish, and his most common response was ‘no he had a life wish,’ and it was just pushing the edge of life and finding out what happens there at the edge of life and death, at the edge of fear and joy.” – (YouTube: “Dan Osman’s fatal jump Nov 23,1998”)

We involuntarily feel and emote because we are reminding ourselves about the beauties and fears of life. It’s a constant way to keep our bodies and minds in a state of living because when the experience is occurring, we are hyper aware of our state of consciousness.

On a physical level, it’s no more simply put than “adrenaline.” It’s in all of us at one strength or another. When we “adventure,” we’re utilizing that adrenaline, or the need for it, as a tool to fulfill the mental state we’re searching for. Sounds like a drug. Well, by definition it definitely is a drug, and we’re all addicted. Hey there, all you junkies!

So the next time you experience the unknown — hiking a mountain you’ve never hiked, surfing a wave that’s bigger than you’ve ever surfed, or traveling to a city you’ve never been — and that state of adventure is streaming through your body and mind, harness it. You’re being given the opportunity to cross a threshold of power and consciousness in life that can only be obtained from within.

What’ll be your next fix?