Sabotage Times, We can't Concentrate so Why Should You?Sabotage Times, We can't Concentrate so Why Should You?

DIY Adrenaline: How To Get Your Buzz At Home

by Jonno Turner
29 January 2014

Adrenaline is dangerous and addictive and can lead us into some ball breakingly-stupid situations. Put the parachute away, there are plenty of ways to get your adrenaline fix at home.

It’s a funny thing, adrenaline. In his book, ‘God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’, Christopher Hitchens describes us as “partly rational animals, with adrenal glands that are too big and prefrontal lobes that are too small”.

As a drug, it is often the first ingredient delivered to a patient suffering a cardiac arrest, in the hope of kick-starting their ticker back into action. Fans of Tarantino’s deliciously violent ‘Pulp Fiction’ might recollect a frothing, OD’ing Uma Thurman taking a sharp-needled syringe of the stuff right to the heart. It is a medical intervention which saves lives every single day. But it is also bloody addictive, and the search for it puts humans in some of the most dangerous situations they will ever have to face.

For example, there is no feeling quite like unnaturally hurtling back towards Earth from 15,000 feet, with a 17 stone Australian bloke called Brad strapped to your back giving it the devil’s horns.

Up there, no one can hear you scream. Also, no one, except Brad, can feel the warm trickle of your shit seep through your hired jumpsuit as you dilly and dally and drop over the edge of a tin can - and let’s face it, it’s a miracle that the thing is airborne in the first place.

A quirk with skydiving is that every now and again, something WILL go badly wrong, and someone WILL become human soup. Major buzzkill. That’s where indoor skydiving comes in: a facility offering “incredible, adrenaline filled fun” (them, not me) which allows you to feel all the freedom of “a bird in flight”.

A bird, yes - albeit an overweight bird, sporting face-crushing goggles and a smelly jumpsuit, floating magically half a dozen feet above the ground in the middle of a Milton Keynes warehouse.

What they seem to miss is that a massive part of the attraction of proper skydiving is the possibility that you may actually die in this moment.

Now - I’ve not verified the EXACT amount of adrenaline generated by the indoor equivalent, but I’m about 98% sure that if, in mid-flight, you suddenly realised you might have left the backdoor unlocked at home, the amount of adrenaline flowing through your body would probably multiply thrice.

More…

Extreme Videos Of People Doing Crazy Things

Horseback Riding Through The Masai Mara

It is an example of humans tailoring and taming experiences to suit our fears - but without the risk of death. All it creates is a thick paste of beige adrenaline flavoured sludge.

I do wonder whether we should take a more drip-fed approach to sourcing our adrenaline, though. As the old saying goes, ‘everything in moderation’, and perhaps we should turn to activities which deliver a regulated, measured thrill, rather than jumping into balls-out death stunts which cause life-threatening explosions of adrenaline and jizz.

It is, after all, possible to feel the warming touch of adrenaline-fuelled ecstasy, without running the risk of becoming a sloppy stew of blood and bones in a car park somewhere.

Answering a phone call from an unknown number.

Putting salt and sugar in unmarked, identical shakers.

Carelessly reheating chicken

Consuming out of date milk without nasal verification.

Running from the bathroom to the bedroom…naked.

Not checking for toilet roll before you “go”.

And of course, the age old favourite of schoolboys and old men at bus stops nationwide - the danger wank.

These are all familiar fight or flight scenarios which challenge us on a daily basis - and the beauty is, you don’t even have to get out of your slippers to confront them.

Simply put, they are modern day, moderated shortcuts to Buzzville. I christen them, DADrenaline rushes.

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