The Nature of Risk

AMC Outdoors, November 2006

Risk isn't just for extreme athletes anymore. Under the influence of DRD4, the so-called "risk gene," we may all be hardwired to put ourselves in harm's way.

A fine mist has started to fill the air only a mile or two from the car. It’s the type of atmospheric condition that usually makes it an easy decision to turn around, call it a day, and return to the still-warm coffee and freshbaked banana bread that I left in the van. But I’m not turning around today, because as I mash against the pedals of my bike and climb slowly up the backcountry gravel road, the voices inside my head are starting to make noise.

Like the devil and angel that torment cartoon characters, this pair has begun their own unique and decidedly partisan dialogue. The good voice is trying to remind me that I am, for the most part, a moderately successful individual; that I have a family; that really I have nothing to prove in this life. The bad voice is on counter-point.

The good voice requests that I take a good look at the ridge—my goal for this ride. Draped in cloud, it’s easy to imagine that hail and/or snow are mixed with the obviously high wind raking the treeless terrain a few thousand feet above. As my pedal strokes slow, the good voice triggers my imagination. I picture myself exhausted and cold, fallen from my bike, injured and unable to escape what is surely to be a slow, pathetic, and completely avoidable hypothermic death. For good measure my mind punctuates the scene with newspaper headlines like, “Somewhat Experienced Mountain Guy Makes Fatal Error,” or the ubiquitous query, “Um, What’s the Point?”

The pitchfork voice laughs at such thoughts. “Questions?” he prods. “Is that all you’ve got? This guy’s life is filled with questions. What he needs is answers and they don’t happen if he turns around.” The bad voice goes on to remind me that I am a bit of a legend among my partners for my ability to spot the smallest cloud and use it to justify a hasty retreat from any ridge, and that when I’m not around they have a special name for me.

Suddenly all the great images from outdoor literature flood my mind—references to men stomping to the summit with the wind in their teeth, Joe Simpson escaping the void—classic melodramatic hyperbole. Then to cap it off, the bad voice offers a purely hypothetical point. “Seriously,” he starts, “how many people come to mountains with less experience than you and survive?”

Lightning rips the air above me as I leave the gravel, shift to my granny gear, and start the mile-long grind to the ridge. By now the voice of reason has been reduced to a whisper. “You can still turn around and tell people that you made it to the top.” But all I’m hearing now is the bad voice who has started calling me “dude”—a juvenile tribute to the badass I’ve become since leaving the minivan. “Dude,” he says, “this is going to be epic.”

Twenty-five or thirty years ago the idea of a mid-life crisis speeding across a mountainous ridge would’ve been mocked, or cause for an intervention. It would have, perhaps rightly so, been seen as a useless, selfish activity of zero benefit. And at the time psychiatrists would have agreed that riding such sketchy terrain is an adolescently rebellious thing to do, an example of an unevolved consciousness or suicide wish.

Thankfully for those of us who need to justify our love of dangerous things, some risk-takers actually grew up to become psychiatrists, geneticists, and scientific researchers. They pulled back the layers of hubris to explore risk from a different angle, seeking the biological and psychological explanations for the voices in our heads.

Turns out even something as wonderfully esoteric as risk can be explained through banal biological technicalities. It starts with the adrenal glands, two fleshy bits found on each kidney that serve as the trigger point for our fight-or-flight response. When entering a situation where peril—or more appropriately, risk—is in play, it is their job to release adrenaline into the blood-stream. Left alone adrenaline is not a good buzz, it is simply buzz—feelings of anxiousness and fear, or a very intense focus. In fact, people who thrive in the buzz state of adrenaline are commonly referred to as sociopaths. Noradrenalin is the yin to adrenaline’s yang—and it interacts almost solely with the parts of the brain that control emotions and good feelings.

In an early study, one group was stressed without warning, and their response was virtually 100 percent adrenaline-based. As such, they responded like meatheads. The other group was given a warning prior to the stress and their response was far more weighted on the side of noradrenalin. They were far more able to cope with the situation and seemed to enjoy it.

The takeaway is that with warning, as in a situation of selfimposed stress (like riding my bike into a storm), we are able to minimize adrenaline and maximize noradrenalin. It would seem then that extreme athletes are actually noradrenalin junkies, which just doesn’t sound as sexy as the alternative. Lemmings aren’t sexy either. But it seems that aside from these arctic rodents who amass and throw themselves off cliffs, humans may be the only species that intentionally puts itself at risk. The idea is that in a twist of Descartes logic, lemmings leap therefore they are, or perhaps, are not. Recently according to geneticists, humans take risks, therefore we are.

The idea that some of us are simply hardwired to take risks has been supported by recent discoveries about our DNA. Extreme risk-takers display a change in the DRD4 (Dopamine Receptor D4) gene. The theory is that if you have this mutation, you’re more likely to do riskier things. The DRD4 gene is linked with dopamine, a brain chemical that, like noradrenalin, is a trigger for good feelings. Other dopamine triggers include food, sex, and the risky act of falling in love. Studies have also shown a similar dopamine effect brought on by deep meditative states, like those found during yoga practice. So perhaps it isn’t the thrill of risk, but rather the deep, zone-like concentration needed to handle it.

Geoff Powter is a clinical psychiatrist, climber, mountaineer, and author whose book, Strange and Dangerous Dreams (The Mountaineers Press), offers an analysis of the motivations—and demons—that drove several well-known adventurers. Powter has concerns about too much credit being given to a risk gene.

“The best way I have of understanding it, and I think it’s an important distinction for most outdoor folk, is that the risktaking gene best explains why people are going to try bungee jumping. It explains less well why you are going to become a committed BASE jumper or sky diver.”

The Nature of Risk, cont'd>>