People can become addicted to behaviors as well as substances (Marks, 1990; Brown, 1997; Elster, 2000; Ranieri, 2011; Berczik et al., 2012; McNamara and McCabe, 2012; Lichtenstein et al., 2014). Behavioral addictions may have social as well as endocrine components, and may include antisocial activities such as crime and gambling, relatively neutral activities such as videogames and internet use, and positive addictions such as sport and exercise (Lichtenstein et al., 2014). Here I argue that participants in many forms of adventure recreation also experience particularly powerful behavioral addictions. This leads them to devote continually increasing proportions of time and resources to carrying out their preferred activities at higher and higher levels of skill, with higher and higher physical risk.

High-risk high-skill adventure recreation has been analyzed previously from the perspectives of commercial tourism products (Buckley, 2007); participant emotions and personalities (Faullant et al., 2011; Pomfret, 2011; Houge Mackenzie and Kerr, 2013), and participant motivations and experiences (Buckley, 2012, 2014a, b, 2015). Behavioral addiction has been diagnosed and examined for addiction to exercise (Berczik et al., 2012; McNamara and McCabe, 2012; Lichtenstein et al., 2014), but not specifically for high-risk adventure activities. Here, therefore, I test the behaviors of adventure participants against medical, mental-health and sports-science criteria for behavioral addictions (Marks, 1990; Brown, 1997; Elster, 2000; Ranieri, 2011; Berczik et al., 2012; McNamara and McCabe, 2012; Lichtenstein et al., 2014).