seek out unusual experiences drives them to try dangerous things.
And sometimes it just doesn’t work out so well. Zuckerman found
that curiosity, pleasure, and avoidance motivate sensation-seekers
to use addictive substances, whether tobacco, alcohol, or illegal
drugs such as cocaine or heroin.CURIOSITY
Nearly everyone, at some point in their life, has wanted to feel
something different than what they were feeling at the moment.
Maybe they’ve wanted to chase away the morning fog, or escape
stress, or feel excitement or joy instead of being down in the
dumps. Or maybe they’ve wanted to enhance the way they’re
already feeling. Imagine how these feelings might be intensified
for the sensation-seeker. Imagine the profound curiosity they may
feel about how LSD would make them feel or how cocaine might
break up the boredom. This curiosity phase of substance use
involves wanting to instantly summon that desired feeling. Even
without having tried any of these substances before, many of us
have seen or heard about their effects on others – for example, the
relief on someone’s face when they take a drag from a cigarette, or
TV and movie depictions of the excitement of a night of club
drugs. You may have found yourself thinking, “I wonder how
THAT feels?” That’s the curiosity phase. Still, while a lot of people
are curious, they won’t try these drugs.Afterall,cocaine,heroin,
and methamphetamines don’t have the best reputations as life-
improvement elixirs.
For some sensation-seekers, though, curiosity wins out over
the potential risks. Devin was curious about the effects of drugs,
and the potential risks didn’t persuade him to stay away from them.
“I knew how real the consequences were, and I’ve seen other people
before me go down the same path, but I rationalized it. I told myself
I wouldn’t get that bad or I wouldn’t end up like that.” As
Zuckerman found, sensation-seekers are more apt to give in to
their curiosity about drugs.
Social factors are also related to substance-use curiosity.^22
Our attitudes and beliefs about substances are influenced, in part,
by who we hang out with. I never saw either of my parents go near
an alcoholic beverage. My parents seemed convinced that, in an
instant, you could get hooked on nearly anything, including Advil.
I remember my dad requiring me to explain to my third grade
teacher that my orange Tic Tac capsule-shaped candies were not,146 / Buzz!Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:20:10, subject to the Cambridge