Can you feel a thrill

He particularly loves being underwater, where every experience seems new. Fackrell is what experts define as an experience-seeker.

All four subtypes on the Sensation-Seeking scale show elements of each — an experience-seeker is often also susceptible to boredom, too; those in the disinhibition subtype often also crave adventure—but for Fackrell the need for new experiences is paramount.

Fackrell is happiest in the water, where he never knows what to expect. During a day off during a work trip to Fiji, Fackrell went diving with a group of friends. A local guide steered them to an amphitheater of coral, then hovered in the center with a bin full of chum. Soon enough, the sharks arrived. It was a risky situation, but risk is not what defined the thrill for Fackrell: It was having the experience for the first time, a synching of mind and body that happens for him when he encounters something entirely new.

The following year in Fiji, Fackrell scheduled a scuba trip in a feeding zone known for tiger sharks. This April he spent five days on safari in Kenya and hiked through Patagonia. In Australia he came face-to-face in with a species of bug once thought to be extinct. Clint Kugler has been seeking out adventures for as long as he can remember.

There was a rush there. I remember a very visceral response. Instead, it was the understanding of where he was. What started in the depths of the ocean has since taken him to the highest peaks in the world, all in an attempt to recapture that feeling. Kugler, 28, is a hedge-fund analyst based in New York.

Most of his days are dedicated to researching investment opportunities for the fund, a job that he says satisfies his deep curiosity. His most recent adventure took him to the top of Volcan Cayambe in Ecuador. Kugler is what researchers identify as a thrill- and adventure-seeking subtype on the Sensation-Seeking Scale. Thrill- and adventure-seekers need the kind of physical activity that leads to a sense of exhilaration. On Cayambe, his team started its summit-day climb around midnight in order to get ahead of the other teams.

He lost sight of their headlamps at around 17, feet. There were no mountain goats. The rest is about prevailing through it and surviving. The summit is always amazing, he says, but he spends only 20 or 30 minutes at the top. The real work for him—and and therefore the adventure, the thrill—comes on the way down.

Kugler says his favorite part of any climb is the descent. Everest, he says, because the Matterhorn requires more technical ability than expedition-survival skills. Photo by Mat Rick. I don't know what city I'm going to be in, I don't know what airport I'm going to be in, and I'm always dealing with different people and different personalities. He made his life this way. Lee recognized early on that he is highly susceptible to boredom. He pursued a career in investment banking because he wanted a life of constant change.

Wakeboarding is the latest in Lee's long line of hobbies. Those in this category pursue novelty in any and every form. He started a breakdancing club while studying at Harvard University, for the challenge of the dance and the novelty of performing. The exhilaration came not from the physical effort required to stay upright, he says, but from seeing and experiencing the world in a new way—and in this case, being pulled by a boat at 40 miles per hour. He can jump a bit now, he says, but he wants to make the 8- to foot leaps that professionals can do.

The landing, for Lee, is thrilling. Tsingy de Bemaraha National Park, Madagascar. Photo by National Geographic. Writing for National Geographic takes year-old Neil Shea to distant, wildly divergent places: caves under the Mexican desert full of crystals the size of buses; the edges of the North Pole, where polar bears still roam amongst shattering sea ice; the war zones of the Middle East.

That variety affords him the same thrills that others seek, but for Shea the payoff comes from the people he meets in these remote destinations. It was something that was sort of like a flash, and then it was over. It was good, but I wanted some kind of a deeper meaning to the work. He has found that meaning in the conversations he has with people he would otherwise likely never have the chance to meet, as well as in sharing their stories with the world and seeing the response.

Those in this subtype pursue unique forms of social engagement, like the interviews that Shea conducts around the world. Shea has found that drawing helps root his subjects more deeply in his mind.

These are his sketches from a reporting trip to Ethiopia and Kenya. In , he spent about three months living among tribes in the deep bush of Ethiopia. Eventually, he became a familiar presence, and the locals opened up to him. One was a medicine man. Every full moon, he would perform a ritual in which he spoke to the crocodiles and magically sort of showed them that this territory was for humans only.

The man took Shea to the riverbank, cut boughs from a young tree, did a chant, spoke to the crocodiles, and laid the boughs in the river. He told Shea that no one had ever been taken by a crocodile at that part of the riverbank. He also said he had never shown this ritual to anyone before. For Shea, the moment was magical, about far more than the personal connection. It was, he says, getting a seat at the edge of a human drama—and then enjoying the thrill of giving it to the world.

In he reported his first Iraq war story for National Geographic, and it hit a chord with readers, especially the ones he wrote about. Soldiers and Marines wrote to say he had captured their experience and got the story right, and readers thanked him for giving them a new insight into what the war was like. Shea continues to pursue opportunities to meet others around the world.

The rush starts in the amygdala, a bundle of neurons at the base of the brain responsible for assessing the unknown. In a thrill-seeking situation—which almost always poses some kind of risk, whether perceived or real—the amygdala registers that risk, then releases a combination of dopamine, adrenaline, endorphins, and other chemicals in order to protect the body against it.

How much of each is released depends on the perceived level of risk. At the peak, every bodily function, chemical brain reaction, and sensory input is hyper-focused on the experience. By the s psychologist Marvin Zuckerman, Ph.

Explore the different sensation seeking types here. No matter what type of thrill a person is seeking, the reaction triggers an increase in testosterone.

Vision narrows. Adrenaline shoots into the body, which increases heart rate. With the heart beating faster, we get more oxygen. The body redirects oxygen to the brain as fast as it can. History and Etymology for thrill Verb Middle English thirlen, thrillen to pierce, from Old English thyrlian , from thyrel hole, from thurh through — more at through entry 1.

Learn More About thrill. Time Traveler for thrill The first known use of thrill was in See more words from the same year. Phrases Related to thrill cheap thrill get one's thrills less than thrilled. Style: MLA. English Language Learners Definition of thrill Entry 1 of 2. Kids Definition of thrill Entry 1 of 2.

Other Words from thrill thriller noun. Kids Definition of thrill Entry 2 of 2. Rowling , Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Medical Definition of thrill. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Test your vocabulary with our question quiz! Love words? Need even more definitions? Homophones, Homographs, and Homonyms The same, but different. Merriam-Webster's Words of the Week - Nov. Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs. What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? How 'literally' can mean "figuratively".

Literally How to use a word that literally drives some pe Is Singular 'They' a Better Choice? The awkward case of 'his or her'.