Thrill-Seekers at Higher Alcoholism Risk
Barry Williams said:
I believe strongly (and I have nothing to back this up but my opinion!) that people that enjoy any kind of an "extreme sport," or might be called "thrill-seekers," are much more "obsessive-compulsive," than so-called "normal" people.As such, it is a given that we would fall more into a "Type A" category, which can be the realm of people who live a "roller-coaster" type of existence, as it relates to alcohol/drugs/depression/bi-polarity and other forms of mental illness.
This might be the "elephant" in the living room but I think that the "mental" make-up of the roller coaster enthusiast is a terrific topic for discussion. I find coaster enthusiast events to be a formidable place for psychological evaluation and observation. Let's face it: we can be an interesting bunch, both visually and physically. . .
And any conversation that starts with, "Hey, did you know that the wheels were made in Stuttgart and. . ." is proof enough that we are DEFINITELY a tad left of center. . .
I've watched fellow enthusiasts try and "convert" other GP and regular-Joe riders over to their side, often with comic hilarity and amusing results. Often their eyes are glazing over while the enthusiast regales them with their tales of conquest of infinite ERT and numbers-of-rides taken on X ride. . .
Sometimes the poor GP rider passes out and is left comatose in the queue while the enthusiast simply steps over him/her and continues on to their next unsuspecting victim. . .
Normally, I never repeat the whole entire quote, especially one as long as this, but I'm going to make an exception for "Dr." Barry Williams-pyschologist to the coaster enthusiast. I'm going to address Barry's comments paragraph by paragragh:
1) I don't think we're anymore obsessive-compulsive than normal society. Does knowing a lot of facts and figures make you obsessive-compulsive? I have yet to see an enthusiast repeat a series of events before they'll ride something (ex. must kiss wood in queue of Voyage 10 times before riding).
2) I certainly would qualify under the Bi-Polarity comment, as my first episode happened while we were in Texas (Barry and 2Hostyl will remember that well). Was it all the adrenaline? Were there other factors at play? I got serverly manic on the trip, and obviously rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, which I wish I could go back and change, but when you're in the eye of the storm, you don't know what's going on. No one really knows what caused my first episode to happen at 31.
3)I don't think that having a conversation about where a coaster wheel is made is all that unsual. When I was younger, I used to wonder how in the world my fellow classmates who were really into sports would remember all the stats and figures of a game like Baseball for example. So, it cracks me up sometimes when I'm talking to someone and I'm saying something like "Millennium Force is 318ft. tall with a 300ft. tall drop and goes 93mph. The ride is stopped by magnetic brakes and is two-minutes from station to brakes," or something like that. That I can do that for a multitude of rides (I usually don't remember times unless it's something at my homepark, or a ride like KK) says that we're really not that strange. Go and watch Sportscenter on ESPN one day, and you find out that we're really quite normal. Keeping track of sports figures may be more socially acceptable, but when people have fantasy football leagues, you got to wonder...
4) I will agree that it is hard to convert someone whose not that interested in all the figures, but the GP aren't all that stupid either and do they do find some of it interesting. The Discovery Channel and related channels wouldn't have shows if it was just us watching them. It wouldn't make any money.
As an example of someone who likes amusement parks but doesn't know a whole lot concerning figures etc., I showed my sister a picture of the train in the station of Vertical Velocity at SFGAm. I asked her if it looked like anything else she had ridden. Within five seconds she said "Volcano." When the Amazing Race was at Fuji-Q-Highland, I asked her if the one coaster looked like anything she had ridden. Again, very quickly she said "Hypersonic." So while they might not be able to take in everything, the GP isn't stupid either.
They wouldn't put up signs on rides like Nitro about all the construction materials and stats etc., if no one was going to read them. The big difference I suppose is that we absorve the material, and the GP don't. One really great example of a sign that helps the GP to understand a ride and its historic importance is the ACE sign in front of Batman at SFGAm. That to me is better than any enthusiast trying to spout the same stuff.
In response to Jeff's comment about how the coaster community for the most part is a lot larger and out of shape, all I have to say is that I lost approximately six pounds on my weeklong trip, and my friend eight pounds. We ate fast food, and we sure ate a lot of food at Beastbuzz. So what was different?
When I was severely manic and flying high, some people will remember that I was pushing the I-Fan diet where you walk around the parks at a fast pace and you lose weight. Guess what? Now that I'm balanced I can say for sure that it does work. Granted we weren't moving at the same pace as I was back then, but with the combination of really high temperatures, drinking lots of water, walking all over the place at a swift pace (ex. PKI is a huge park), and lots of adrenaline, we lost weight. If you had a pedometer on us, I'm sure we walked an insane amount of steps that week, and that includes a two-mile trek through Mammoth Caves in KY.
Please be seated.
How may I help you today? What, you are suffering from extreme over-analytical behavior, you say? Perhaps a few pages of single-spaced typing would help set you straight.
Ah, my peppy, overexcitable one. . .Alas, sometimes the mind tends to cogitate and churn and produce great results in the form of diatribes and screeds that require much scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling.
We must try and prescribe something for that; perhaps you need to ride The Raging Bull a couple of hundred times or shout "El Toro" into the nightscape. . .or perhaps take a magical, mystery tour on The Voyage. . .
Memory Lane getting you down? Ah, mon ami, remember this: the mind can play terrible tricks on one. You probably had a better time on that trip to Texas than you may at first recall, eh? I know for a fact that you were Schlitterbahnned to within an inch of your life, and, well, er, that's NEVER a bad thing. I even seem to recall you shivering with anticipation and glee as the water trickled down and dripped off the end of your elfin nose. . .
As for conversion of people to your own world view? Not to worry. All of us here are in complete and total agreement with you about all things. We might offer up an occasional qualifying statement but know that, at the end of the day, we're all going off the rails together. . .
Finally, yes, it is certainly true, my little papi, that people have all kinds of hobbies that they can recite many different kinds of statistics and espouse much in the way of arcane trivial data about that hobby; to wit, I don't recall anybody ever saying that was a BAD THING, just an AMUSING ONE. Be it baseball or football or Andy Griffith Episode #74, well, we all have our areas of speciality. . .
I don't want you to worry your pretty little head a bit, my mashugana Intamin Fan. I love you for the guy you are/were/and will always be. . .
Sweet dreams and come again. . .
Well put, Dr. Barry!
And yes, getting Schlitterbahnned was a lot of fun!
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