Why surfing is addictive

But what is it, exactly, that makes getting out on your board and catching those waves so addictive? According to science, there are several physical reasons that the surf-obsessed feel the way they do. Want to learn more? Read on! This results in you experiencing a flood of dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins. Once you feel the intense joy and pleasure, your body and brain want you to keep going back for more.

On the one hand, that Rasmussen would be dead just seven years later hardly seems surprising. Ziolkowski, a poet and a novelist, looks at some of the science behind drug addiction, and the solace that surfing provides. Photo by Gemma Ziolkowski, courtesy Harper Wave.

He falls in with a crowd of druggy dropouts, including his surf shop sponsor, who is put away after trying to sell pounds of marijuana to an undercover cop. As a surfer, I had always known that surfing had plenty of drug problems. But finding them compiled into one place, as Ziolkowski has done, leaves a powerful impression.

Not surprisingly, these are the strongest vignettes, none more so than the section on Tom Carroll, an Australian world champion who descended into addiction to coke, and then methamphetamine, after his professional career ended and the gilt of competition and adoration had rubbed off. Carroll eventually got clean, and is now open about his addiction and dedicated to helping others overcome theirs.

The pursuit of drugs offered him a fleeting, physical rush of relief, but was also clearly filling some deeper, unmet need. His journey takes him into the world of surf therapy, including a stint volunteering with the South Bay-based Jimmy Miller Memorial Foundation. They are the opposite of time in the barrel, a consuming onslaught of sensory stimulation that produces heart-pounding elation but also vague disappointment at the world outside the tube.

It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life. Writing about surfing has long suffered from inaccuracies and fetishizing that are difficult to avoid for the non-surfer covering something so different from life on land and supported by so insular a culture. The target, or sweet spot, or pleasure zone, got smaller and smaller, and I got tired of firing and missing. It dipped way below that 9-to-1 ratio, and I buckled. Same thing. I should have stopped two or three years earlier.

I went to Costa Rica for a week last May. No wife, no kid. If the wave lets me in early, and my feet land in the right place, and the section before me is generous — I still do it pretty well! I got to the end of 10 or 12 waves over the course of the week all smiling and fluttery, and once or twice walked back to my plush resort feeling very zen and stoked and well-connected to the whole wonderful impenetrable mess.

But mostly it was a shitshow. All those markers I had as a surfer, all my fixed points, are gone. Mostly it was a shitshow. Two trips. But yeah I quit surfing full-time, or however you want to phrase it. I quit my addiction. Did the decision to stop come at once or was it a slow build?

Can you describe the thought process? We moved to Seattle in October , which is the beginning of the surf season up here, and in San Francisco too, and for six months or so it was hard. Very withdrawl-like, in fact. But after that, and overall, not surfing a lot turned out to be way easier than I thought. Such a thing would give me nightmares. Me, too. I remember really clearly having dinner with August Hildago, my best surfing pal in San Francisco, this was around , and were playing out all the scenarios for our surfing future.

How long we could last, given a clean bill of health. August is still surfing all the time. New hip and all. Ocean Beach, Mavericks, all those shark-infested places north of the bridge. But the whole deal is just more balanced now. Every big thing I wanted, I got. Including a long wonderful messy surf life. Working on EOS, scrolling Instagram memes with my son, loosening my cravat just so before Jodi gets back from work — chasing and bagging little things really suits me at this age.

So to it goes, then, with weekend warriors that see surfing as a pastime, or a means to an end. To the Silicon Valley entrepreneur increasing his wellness. To the shred-sister washing off that ex. To the gym bro improving his core. Plenty of people fuck with surfing. Surfing becomes the end, and the rest of your life is a means to it. Narcissistic so actually, maybe Finnegan was on the money…. The master would walk on stage, tap the microphone with his knuckle, and promptly walk back off.

Lecture done. You can only know it by being it. What surfing means to me is different to what it means to you. Or the guy that devotes an entire lifetime to mastering that one slab of rock. Or the girl that kicks her board into the kook that has just dropped in on her.

Horror, too. But no narrative arc, or tale of redemption. No purpose. Only a surfer knows the feeling rings hollower than a WSL press release nowadays. WSL pleads the fifth. Gold Coast City Council is a bureaucratic nightmare that would put a Kafka novel to shame. Please hold my hand as we read together. Still, Snapper is on!