Last week, several social media platforms carried news of the sad death of ten mountain climbers in an avalanche in Pakistan. Sympathetic people posted their condolences to the victims’ families. Videos were shared showing clips of their previous adventures, and it was clear that this form of sport carries a great risk to one’s life. People expressed different opinions about the accident: while many praised the spirit of adventure, others called them “adrenaline junkies” who were needlessly risking their lives.
The phrase “adrenaline junkies" might be considered an accusation, yet it is not entirely wrong or an insult either. Psychologists call it “sensation seeking," which is defined as the tendency to pursue novel, intense, and varied experiences and to accept risk in order to have them. It is a normal personality dimension, partly inherited, and linked to how the brain’s reward system responds to stimulation. People with such a personality trait are not necessarily damaged. They simply need more input before life feels vivid. Many of them become surgeons, firefighters, pilots, emergency physicians, and war correspondents. Societies quietly depend on such people, then condemn them when the risk they carry becomes visible. Elite mountaineers are usually the least impulsive people you will meet. They spend years training, months acclimating, and days waiting for a weather window. They calculate oxygen, load, rope, and route, and a good climber is defined less by the summits reached than by the number of times he turned back. What killed those ten men was not recklessness but residual risk, the part that preparation reduces and can never remove.
So why are we so quick to judge? Partly because of hindsight. Had the expedition succeeded, the very same footage would have been shared as inspiration, and the very same men and women would have been called heroes. The outcome changes our verdict on a decision that was identical either way. I was discussing this incident with a friend, and he rightly pointed out that sometimes we tend to judge chosen risks far more harshly than habitual ones. He gave examples of how road accidents, smoking, obesity, and inactivity end vastly more lives each year than mountains ever will, yet nobody is called a junkie for driving too fast on a familiar highway or for a third cigarette after lunch. We reserve moral language for risks that are voluntary, visible, and unfamiliar to us.
None of this is meant to romanticise what happened. Ten families are grieving, and children have lost their parents. It is also worth remembering that the risk on such expeditions is not shared equally, as we tend to forget the local porters and guides who carry the heaviest loads through the most dangerous ground, for modest pay and without the fame that later attaches to the climb.
Perhaps my friend was right in pointing out that the deeper discomfort comes from the realisation that a life arranged entirely around the avoidance of risk is not automatically a safe life; it is often a small one, and meaninglessness carries its own mortality. Most of us settle somewhere between the mountain and the sofa, and we are not always honest about where.
In my opinion, when people die pursuing something that mattered to them, what is owed to them is condolence, not a verdict. May their souls rest in peace.
Dr Hamed al Sinawi
The writer is a senior consultant psychiatrist, SQU Hospital
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