dangerous sports and recreational drug-use: rationalizing and contextualizing risk

Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology

J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 14: 215–232 (2004)

Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/casp.770

Dangerous Sports and Recreational Drug-use:Rationalizing and Contextualizing Risk

MICHAEL LARKIN1* and MARK D. GRIFFITHS2

1Discourse and Narrative Research Unit, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK2International Gaming Research Unit, The Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

ABSTRACT

This article reports upon the Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of a small number of

semi-structured interviews, conducted with persons engaging in either recreational drug-use (pri-

marily identified here as Ecstasy-users) or dangerous sports (primarily identified here as bungee-

jumpers). Our analysis focuses upon the manner in which these participants make sense of their

initiation and maintenance experiences, and the means by which they understand and make sense

of risk. In particular, we draw attention to the distinctions between our participants’ rational and

contextual reconstructions of risky decisions. These distinctions indicate that our participants are

able to draw upon a complex cultural and relational understanding of risk and pleasure, and are thus

able to deal quite effectively with the contradictory experience of taking ‘non-volitional’ action.

This exploration of persons’ strategies for displacing agency in relation to potentially negative

outcomes may have implications for research and practice in related areas. Copyright # 2004

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Key words: Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA); qualitative; extreme sports; substance

use; Ecstasy; risky-but-rewarding activities; addiction

INTRODUCTION

Large-scale research in the area of young people and risk-taking has tended to focus on

‘risk-takers’ (e.g. Plant & Plant, 1992). This term clearly situates the ‘risky-ness’ within a

particular kind of person, and captures only the negative aspect of such behaviours (i.e.

risk). We purposefully use the term ‘risky-but-rewarding activities’ in this article for two

reasons. Firstly, this term situates ‘risky-ness’ within activities, rather than the persons

engaging in them, and secondly, it captures both the positive and negative aspects of such

activities (i.e. risk and reward). That said, in this article, the focus of our analysis is centred

upon risk, with reward addressed principally as its counterpoint.

* Correspondence to: M. Larkin, Division of Psychology, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, HawthornBuilding, De Montfort University, Gateway, Leicester, LE1 9BH, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Accepted 4 February 2004

Douglas (1994) sees the term ‘risk-taking’ as a means by which central, powerful com-

munities can express disapproval, and control the activities of any ‘dissenting enclaves’

within them (p. 105). Activities are thus defined as ‘risky’, and can be subjected to poli-

tical and legal control, whenever they are judged to be morally unacceptable. Douglas’

level of analysis is broad, economic and political—persons are understood collectively

and through their actions only. However, these actions are interpreted as having rational

intentions or preferences—and this has limitations. For example, Douglas discusses the

reaction of the ‘central community’ to AIDS, and describes the formulation of ‘safe’ and

‘unsafe’ sex practices and ‘segregated mini-communities of homosexuals’ as a means of

policing a ‘sexual cordon santitaire,’ (p. 115). One must suspend some scepticism about

the shared status, voice and interests of such a ‘community,’ which are taken-for-granted

here. Douglas’ approach fails to capture the variability of responses to AIDS within both

non-heterosexual and heterosexual communities, or to adequately assess the consequences

of adopting safe sex practices (characterized by Douglas as practices which promise ‘no

passion, no ecstasy, no abandon’, p. 118) by presuming that the only possible response is

to accept risk-taking as normal. This provides little insight into how persons make sense

of, or manage their risk-taking, or the rewards which they receive from it.

Ultimately, this is because Douglas’ view of the person rests upon Dennett’s minimal

model of persons as mere ‘intentional systems’ (e.g. Dennett, 1998). Subjectivity is

entirely absent from this model (e.g. see Searle, 1998). It is our view (developed in part

from a reading of Elster, 2000) that persons should be understood as conscious, intentional

and embodied beings, situated within an interdependent framework of cultural resources

and social relationships. Thus persons are engaged in processes of action, and can be seen

to make decisions in relation to these actions and their subjective experiences. Such deci-

sions may be rational and/or volitional by varying degrees—and persons may neverthe-

less understand some actions to be non-volitional. We have argued elsewhere (Larkin &

Griffiths, 2002) that it is vital to acknowledge the subjective experience of some actions as

non-volitional, if we are to understand complex processes such as those found in experi-

ences of addiction and recovery.

Furthermore, in contrast to Douglas’ reading, it seems possible that risk-taking can also

be understood as a mode of expressing resistance to ‘central’ cultural norms, which could

be adopted by these same ‘dissenting enclaves.’ Reversal theory (Brown, 1988) provides

us with a partial view of this. The theory postulates individual differences in arousal pre-

ferences, which are characterized as preferences for either ‘telic’ or ‘paratelic’ states. For

example, in a comparison of three ‘risky health behaviours,’ Kerr, Frank-Ragan and

Brown (1993) use reversal theory to interpret risk-taking activities in the context of

rewards (their potential for shifting subjective experience between telic and paratelic

states of arousal) and contextual meaning (their potential for expressing either conforma-

tive or negative motivations towards the world):

For example, unhealthy risk-taking behaviours in sports and bulimia are thought to be associatedwith the paratelic state. In anorexia, risk-taking seems to be associated with the telic state. In gaysex, risk-taking seems to be associated with the negativistic state. (Kerr et al., 1993, p. 79)

This offers some improvement upon Douglas’ approach, but it is still an oversimplifica-

tion, particularly in relationship to reasons and motives for taking risks, and the range of

purposes of mood modification. Oversimplification may be an outcome of the constraints

of reversal theory itself, or simply of the structured methods which are used by Kerr et al.

to investigate it. A more open and qualitative approach is provided by Flowers, Smith,

216 M. Larkin and M. D. Griffiths

Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Community Appl. Soc. Psychol., 14: 215–232 (2004)

Sheeran, and Beail (1997), and their work reveals something of what is omitted here.

Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA, see later), Flowers et al. have

shown that gay men’s engagement in ‘unsafe’ sex practices may be understood in

negativistic terms (through ‘detached’ and casual sexual encounters), but only in certain

contexts. Their analysis suggests that gay men’s motives for engagement in unprotected

sex are best understood in emotional and relational terms (through a ‘romantic rational-

ity’). The simple, bipolar account of meaning (i.e. conformity/negativity) which is

offered by reversal theory is neither flexible nor sophisticated enough to capture this

complexity.

A study by Celsi, Rose, and Leigh (1993) further illustrates the value of an open

approach to such activities. In an ethnographic account of a sky-diving community, they

begin by pointing out that, ‘as with most deviant or semideviant activities, the initial deci-

sion to skydive has a strong normative, as well as the expected hedonic (thrill), character’

(p. 10). In Kerr et al.’s study, sky-divers are characterized by reversal theory as paratelic-

dominant—i.e. arousal-seeking. In Celsi et al.’s more detailed account, sky-divers can be

seen to interpret their ‘mood modifying’ experiences in more complex ways than this. Of

particular relevance here is the observation that the initial ‘hedonic motives’ for sky-

diving are directed towards ‘thrills’, and ‘fun’ (suggesting arousal-seeking). However,

as acculturation into the activity and its community continues, sky-divers are increasingly

directed towards ‘flow’ (the transcendent low-arousal state described by Csiksentmihalyi,

1974) rather than ‘thrills.’ Celsi et al. also point out that an identity narrative and greater

‘efficacy’ are also important elements in the process of continued engagement in the activ-

ity. This demonstrates the value of an open approach in accounting for the meaning of

such activities as they are understood by persons engaging in them.

In our study, we have used semi-structured interviews and IPA (Smith, 1996) to explore

the experiences and understandings of two small groups of participants engaging in either

dangerous sports or recreational drug use. These two sets of activities are characterized

here as ‘risky-but-rewarding’ activities, and they have been chosen because they provide

an opportunity to explore an interesting psychological question: how do persons evaluate

and understand the relationship between risk and pleasure?

METHODOLOGY

Participants

Five bungee-jumpers (referred to here as Emily, Gary, Keith, Lee and Phil), and six

Ecstasy-users (referred to here as Alasdair, Patrick, Wendy, Tim, Alison and Dannii) were

interviewed. All participants had what can best be described as ‘non-problematic’

relationships with their respective activities (i.e. they did not consider themselves as

‘addicted’—and nor did they appear to be, according to component criteria—see Larkin

& Griffiths, 1998).

The bungee-jumpers’ interviews were conducted on the same day, in two offices, at the

site of a bungee club then based in London. All five bungee participants jumped or had

jumped many times; all five had involvement in other ‘dangerous sports,’ and all five had

some professional or competitive involvement in the sport, and/or the bungee club. This

group were aged from their early twenties to late forties.

The Ecstasy-users were interviewed shortly afterwards. They were interviewed over

two consecutive days, in two houses in London where some members of the group then

Dangerous sports and recreational drug-use 217


lived. All six used or had used Ecstasy many times, and all six used or had used other legal

and illegal substances at one time or another. This group were all in their mid-twenties.

Semi-structured interviews

Interviews began with the question, ‘What is the story of your involvement with (the activ-

ity)?’, and were then led largely by the respondents. The interviewer had recourse to prompts

and probes, which were developed in order to re-direct or further explore the respondents’

comments. In particular, there were some key issues which we were keen for all the respon-

dents to address during the course of their interviews. These were: initiation and mainte-

nance; risk and reward; identification as a ‘user’ (by self, and/or others); and the concept

of ‘addiction’ as it might apply to them and their activities (as opposed to others).1

Consent was obtained verbally. All respondents were assured that their accounts would

be anonymized, and reminded of their right to withdraw their participation at any stage.

All respondents were provided with contact details, should they wish to withdraw their

participation at a later date, but none did so.

Analytic procedure

In IPA, the analyst is directed towards a primary emphasis on the participants’ attempts to

make sense of their experience. A second level to the account then draws upon broader

aspects of the data to interpret and contextualize these experiential claims. The following

protocol was used:

(1) I (first author) read and re-read each transcript, and produced a series of first-order

codes as I did so, making notes in the left-hand margin of each transcript. These

first-order codes aimed to summarize and describe the concerns and experiences of

each interviewee, and to do so in terms broadly consistent with those that they had

used themselves.

(2) Using the other margin, I then produced a series of second-order codes. These second-

order codes aimed to capture something of the meaning and context of the concerns

mapped out in stage 1 (which is where the process becomes explicitly interpretative).

Some of these codes were unique to individual participants; others drew on

concepts developed across the transcripts, and some utilized theoretical concepts from

psychology.

(3) During stages 1 and 2, I also took note of possible patterns of commonality and diffe-

rence across the corpus. In stage 3, these patterns were developed into themes.

Themes in this sense are just categories of codes, held together by an interpretative

rationale.

(4) A ‘family tree’ structure was developed to illustrate the shape and content of the ana-

lysis. This structure, and the trail of data excerpts supporting it, were reviewed by the

second author, and discussed by both of us before we moved on to stage 5.

(5) The analysis was written up in various formats (as a conference paper, transfer docu-

ment, journal paper (unpublished), and finally as a Ph.D. thesis chapter), and feedback

from these and other sources was incorporated to produce this final account.

These stages follow the basic process of inductive movement, from the particular to the

general, which is the underpinning of IPA. They are derived from those outlined by

1Elements of the data more pertinent to the last two of these are discussed elsewhere (see Larkin, 2002).



Osborn and Smith (1998), Flowers, Smith, Sheeran, and Beail (1997), Smith, Osborn, and

Jarman (1999), and Willig (2001). Furthermore, in developing an account which focuses

first upon experience (phenomenology), and then upon a wider range of epistemological

approaches to the accounts (narrative, discourse, cognition, affect) we have also adhered

to the principles of IPA, as outlined by Smith and Osborn (2003).

ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

A general discussion of two of the main themes2 now follows. This involves drawing com-

parisons between the accounts of the Ecstasy-users and those of the bungee-jumpers, with

particular regard to issues of risk and reward. It should not be assumed, however, that were

no differences between the accounts of the individual participants—there were several.

Wherever our focus on the commonalities between the accounts has allowed it, therefore,

we have tried to include a flavour of the diversity in the accounts, alongside the common

elements. This is consistent with a stated aim of IPA: accounting for what is shared in the

data, whilst also identifying what is distinct. In this section we will describe the key fea-

tures of two of the principal themes which emerged from the analysis, and illustrate them

with extracts from the interview transcripts.3 These are:

* initiation and maintenance of use;

* managing risk and pleasure.

Initiation and maintenance of use

There are six sub-themes illustrating key features of initiation and maintenance experi-

ences. They explore the participants’ explanations of how and why they became involved

in their activities in the first place, and/or the participants’ accounts of how and why their

subsequent relationships with those activities developed:

* rational decisions and contextual decisions;

* identity and inclusion;

* anticipated regret;

* collecting experiences;

* learning to like it;

* learning to control it.

Rational decisions and contextual decisions. There are two common and distinctive

representations of agency in the participants’ accounts of initial use. All of the bungee-

jumping participants present their involvement in the sport as a consequence of their

own instigation, albeit a consequence which frequently occurs within the context of

related activities. Keith is fairly typical:

I just thought bungee-jumping was a good idea. Done st/Always done this sort of stuff. (Keith,bungee)

2We have chosen to focus on these two themes here because they allow us to develop a coherent and discreteanalytic account of one interesting aspect of the data: the development and management of risk and pleasure.3In the extracts, a capitalized word mid-sentence represents an excision (e.g. ‘So I said to him that Well its noteasy’). In most of these cases we have removed ‘affirmative continuity statements’ made by the interviewer (e.g.‘yeah’ or ‘mm’), in order to conserve space.



Here Keith is clearly saying that he decided that bungee-jumping was a good idea,

although that decision was based upon previous experiences of comparable risky activ-

ities. Similarly, Phil explains that he decided to try it (‘So I went to the governor and said,

‘Fancy doing a bungee jump?’) because he had previously been involved in other kinds of

fundraising activities.

It should be noted here, that much of the material in the next two sub-themes focuses

upon the Ecstasy-users. This is largely because the bungee-jumpers present more

‘straightforward’ accounts of their transitions from non-users to users. Perhaps because

Ecstasy-use is perceived as more risky, or perhaps because it demands a parallel transition

from minor to more serious illegal activity, the Ecstasy-users’ accounts are more complex,

and warrant more detailed analysis at this point.

Of the Ecstasy-users, Wendy, Patrick and Alasdair appear to claim different degrees of

agentic ‘ownership’ for their initiation. Alasdair offers an account, analogous to Keith’s

perhaps, of having ‘always probably been a bit of a substance-abuser or whatever’, imply-

ing that the decision was an implicit or inevitable consequence of an already-established

identity. Patrick speaks of a shared, but intentional, point of initiation: ‘Two of us thought,

‘‘Right, we’ll buy one, between us, and then we’ll take half each’’’. The recalled thinking

emphasised in ‘Right,’ seems a likely denotation of deciding. Wendy provides quite a

detailed account of the process of deciding, which offers a clue as to the purpose of the

other participants’ non-decisions:

I always knew at the back of my mind that I would end up taking E at some point, but at that time Iwas really like anti, like ‘No I wouldn’t do it, it’s really scary.’ You know, ‘People die’ and stuff. Iguess probably I was always waiting for somebody I knew to try it—and not die. And then thatwould be OK and then I’d do it Which is eventually what happened. Sarah had been to Glaston-bury during the summer and had taken it with Alasdair and—didn’t die, and everything was fine(both laugh), so I thought, ‘Ooh, well, yeah’. And I met Vicky and Vicky had been doing it foryears, and was always like, ‘Yeah, come on, this is great, this is really good’ so eventuallydecided that I would. Didn’t actually take that much persuading, too, cause sort of we’d met alot of other people through the dancier sort of scene who were doing/And who were saying ‘Yeah,this is a good thing, let’s do it.’ (Wendy, Ecstasy)

Here it is evident that two things helped Wendy to overcome her reservations about initia-

tion: firstly, having friends who had tried the substance with positive results and without

repercussions, and secondly, knowing that many other people use the substance with posi-

tive results and without repercussions. These references to the positive experiences of spe-

cific persons, and to the larger number of general unharmed users, as indicators of likely

pleasure and risk, are fairly common across both sets of accounts. The activity is thus con-

strued as engagement in a shared sub-cultural enterprise, and this allows risks to be shared,

too, and to some extent diffused:

I can cope with/the long-term/yeah the long-term risks—I’ll deal with that when it comes along/and the fact is most of my friends are going to be in the same position anyway so We’ll all go themental home together! (Wendy, Ecstasy)

The importance of friendship was emphasized across both sets of accounts. Identification

with, and by, friends can be seen to function as a reassurance against risk (if your friends

are OK, then presumably you are likely to be OK, too), as a guarantee of support in the

event of any negative consequences (knowing that someone will look after you), as a

means of sharing and broaching new experiences, and as a sounding board for estimating

risk. Friendship bonds can also provide a reason to continue with activities, to moderate

one’s use or to abstain. This is illustrated by an extract from Dannii’s interview, in which



she explains how she monitors her levels of engagement, and the kinds of activity in which

she engages, in relation to a friendship network for sharing such experiences:

I don’t know—sometimes I think I forced myself to keep on with it, because I didn’t like the firsttime so much or the other two, but that’s what my friends were doing so I suppose if I wasn’tgoing to do it, what was I going to do, sort of thing And like they didn’t drink very much, and Iactually gave up drinking when I started doing drugs, and I really got really snobbish about pubsBut then after a while You go back to the pubs and back to drinking and (pause) I don’t/I don’tthink I’d like to have just friends that all we did was go out and take pills And get wrecked/I’msure I could I fall into that if I did start seeing those sorts of people. (Dannii, Ecstasy)

So although some of the Ecstasy-users present their initiations in curiously passive terms,

this denial of agency is connected to friendship, and identity. In these ‘passive’ accounts

(Tim, Alison, Dannii), initiation is simply a consequence of relational sharing and

cultural immersion. It is understood here that one does not ‘decide’ to try Ecstasy (perhaps

such a decision might even be frowned upon as an unwarranted identity claim), but that

one eventually just finds oneself trying it, as an inevitable adjunct to the functions of

certain friendships, preferences (particularly musical) and activities (clubbing). We asked

the participants about ‘first experiences,’ occasionally prompting for an account of

‘significant’ experiences, and the responses seemed to imply that moving beyond those

substances which they considered normative (i.e. alcohol and cannabis) was the point

of ‘significance.’ So for example, Tim skates over his first experience of Ecstasy rather

quickly, but then identifies his first experience of another drug, speed, as the ‘pivotal’

initiation:

The first time I took speed was in Newcastle, we went to see er The Prodigy with a friend Whowas heavily into it And er he said ‘Take this’—didn’t exactly say what it was I sort/I sort of knewanyway, by implication, what it was And er I was quite happy dancing away, not thinking aboutanything. (Tim, Ecstasy)

Here the use is contingent upon context (‘in Newcastle, we went to see er The Prodigy

with a friend’), and Tim does not claim to have made a ‘decision’ as such. In fact, he repre-

sents himself as simply participating (‘quite happy dancing away, not thinking about any-

thing’), and implicitly, as choosing not to ask questions, gather information or make a

rational choice. A choice of some kind is made, but it may be understood as a ‘contextual,’

minimal choice, distinct from the commonplace understanding of choice as individual and

‘rational.’

This can be seen to make sense, partly because clubbing without drugs is understood

to be, at best, inferior, and more commonly, entirely meaningless, and partly because, for

these participants, drug-use is principally meaningful as a shared experience. So, ‘contex-

tual decisions’ can be understood to be made on the basis of opportunity, out of a

motivation to share experiences with friends, and because one must be seen to act in

contextually-meaningful ways, but they are presented discursively as ‘non-decisions,’

events which simply ‘happen:’

Its always the case with/with me that its/I do the drugs that my friends are doing, just simply/justbecause the opportunity exists. (Tim, Ecstasy)

Alison’s account provides further illumination. Alison discusses speed in her account and

seems to identify it as her primary ‘initiation’ experience. Certainly it is the first ‘serious’

drug which she used, and she accounts for the moment of initiation as a ‘contextual

decision’ (‘it wasn’t really a conscious decision’). Although Alison presents herself as



someone who actually prefers speed, she later went on to use Ecstasy as well. Here she

rationalizes that decision:

With Ecstasy I did have reservations about things to do with like long-term use And (pause) pos-sibly the health risks—the sort of immediate health risks where I wasn’t so concerned about thatas possible long-term effects but I think in the end it just happened to be, sort of like, ‘Well every-one else is at it, and well, you know, what the fuck, you know? (Alison, Ecstasy)

In these extracts, the initiatory experience of Ecstasy is still represented as a partial, ‘con-

textual’ decision (‘just ended up taking it,’ ‘just happened to be’). Alison’s reservations

about Ecstasy’s potential long-term effects allow us to see that these ‘contextual’ decisions

are not non-decisions, however. Because of their partial immersion in dance culture (or

for that matter, dangerous sports) our participants occupy a liminal zone (e.g. see

Czarniawska & Mazza, 2003, pp. 269–270). Occupation of this transitional time, space

and identity is not easily sustained under the kind of circumstances described here by

Alison (Wilson, 2003). Thus, various strategies are adopted to overcome reservations,

both at initiation, and at maintenance (see later).

Ecstasy does not simply happen to these participants—the moment of transition from

non-user to user is significant, a risky shift, but the transition is made easier by the aban-

donment of agency (‘what the fuck, you know?’), the contextualizing of the ‘decision’ in

terms of cultural meaning, and the normative influence of significant others (‘well every-

one else is at it’).

Identity and inclusion.

And I did used to sit there and think, ‘Oh God, they’ve left me behind, everybody else is reallycarried away by this’ and I/I just/and/and ‘I’m never going to be a part of it’—but I don’t thinkthat’s really what influenced me to/to try it. Erm. I think it was just a change in my perception ofdrug-use/and as I got more into the/And um the people I first took it with were a very differentgroup of people from the ones who’d been making me feel excluded by their use. (Alison,Ecstasy)

The preceding extract illustrates the extent to which participation signifies more than sim-

ply the ingestion of a substance. It grants access to an identity, and gives the user a voice

within a particular cultural frame, too. It is clearly understood in this account (and others)

that it is somewhat unfavourable to be seen to act purely out of the need to comply with, or

fit in with, other people. Alison is therefore careful here to claim a little more agency for

her initiation than she has previously done (‘I think it was just a change in my perception

of drug-use’). Thus, issues of identity and inclusion are inextricably linked to initiation

and maintenance decisions.

Across the Ecstasy-user accounts, references to other people’s use have multiple func-

tions, allowing users to rationalize both initiation and maintenance. It is understood for

example, that there is an intrinsic value in sharing experiences with other people, and this

value is seen to be amplified by Ecstasy because the substance itself is commonly under-

stood to enhance that experience. As well as sharing the Ecstasy experience, there are also

numerous valuable consequences of participation in a particular subculture, and some

anticipated negative consequences of exclusion from that subculture, as the extract earlier

implies.

The participants themselves acknowledged that identification with the whole experi-

ence could be important for maintaining involvement. In the heavily-involved, the inabil-

ity to identify with alternative activities was seen to contribute to maintenance: ‘In a way, I



suppose I’m addicted to pills because (pause) there’s nothing which/there’s no substitute

for them.’ (Alasdair, Ecstasy).

There are both similarities and differences here with the bungee-jumpers. Initiation into

bungee-jumping was presented as the consequence of an active, rational decision (see ear-

lier). Perhaps this is possible for the bungee-jumpers, in contrast to the Ecstasy-users,

because they have fewer reservations to overcome. Firstly, there seems to be no expecta-

tion of unknown, long-term risk associated with bungee-jumping, as there is perceived to

be with Ecstasy-use. Secondly, bungee-jumping does not represent an analogous ‘bound-

ary point’ between relatively minor involvement, and more serious involvement, in dan-

gerous sports, in the way that Ecstasy-use and speed-use may do within general drug-

taking activities. Thus, we can see that ‘contextual decisions’ may have a psychological

function for the user, as a means of overcoming reservations (through denial of agency),

and a discursive function for the speaker, as a means of rationalizing a ‘risky shift.’ How-

ever, even though bungee-jumpers did not utilize this strategy, they do still present their

activities as participatory, acknowledge that social elements contribute to the rewards of

the activity, and carry out a considerable amount of identity work in the interviews, which

collectively suggests that, as with Ecstasy-use, participation grants access to an identity,

and gives the user a voice within a particular sub-culture.

Anticipated regret. ‘Anticipated regret’ is another strategy, adopted across all the inter-

views, for overcoming reservations about, and justifying participation in, a risky-

but-rewarding activity. Superficially, ‘anticipated regret’ is based upon the belief that

‘its better to regret something you have done, than something you haven’t done’.4 Our

participants downgrade the importance of any risks which might be involved in their deci-

sions to initiate or maintain involvement with their activities, by claiming to place greater

priority on the present than on the future:

But then um, the way I feel about this, if I get to eighty-odd and I’m sitting in the old folks home,at least I’ll have done everything. (Emily, bungee)

I can’t face sort of forty, fifty years of sitting there and just like being/going along on an evenkeel. (Alasdair, Ecstasy)

We say that the respondents make these claims superficially, simply because other details

of their lives are inconsistent with this. They maintain long-term relationships, commit

themselves to progress in their careers, imply that they take other, comparable kinds of

risk very seriously indeed, and in two cases, profess to strong religious beliefs. ‘Antici-

pated regret’ is not a general ‘rule for living’ but a psychological mechanism, or a discur-

sive technique, which may be used for overcoming very specific misgivings about specific

activities. This may be likened to a more common use of excuse-making in the area of

addiction. Kellet and Gross (1998), for example, have questioned whether joyriders’

claims that they become ‘addicted’ to stealing cars, ought to be taken at face value, or

whether claims for the status of ‘addict’ might be made simply as a means of abdicating

responsibility for one’s actions. The functions of anticipated regret, beyond providing an

immediate rationale for engaging in a risky activity, can only be understood in the context

4In this respect, we limit ourselves here to a discussion of regret as something which relates to a potentiallyproblematic target activity. In a wider sense, of course, regret may also relate to target activities which haveuncontroversial and desirable outcomes, and/or which deal with things left undone (saving someone fromdrowning, for example).



of individual lives, however. Expressions of anticipated regret may have wider meanings,

beyond the immediate function of displacing risk, and may also play a part in maintaining

commitment to a particular kind of cultural identity. In Dannii’s case, for example, the

strategy appears to be in conflict with her professed desire for a more meaningful and

responsible future (‘something that’s something’). This would be a different kind of future

to any that might be imagined or possible in her current self-narrative (‘I’m not one of

these people that wants to live to a ripe old age and be really, really healthy’). To some

extent, anticipated regret allows Dannii to disguise her dissatisfaction with the develop-

ment of this narrative.

Collecting experiences. Participants in both groups could—and frequently did—

supply a series of other, related experiences which they had acquired in the course of this

story, each indicating the potential for an alternative narrative account of ‘how they came

to be involved in’ something. Ecstasy-users were rather circumspect with these alternative

accounts, gradually introducing the stories related to their involvement with Ecstasy—

discovering a particular affinity for a particular kind of dance music, identifying them-

selves as a clubber, daring to try illegal drugs of any kind, and befriending the people

who later introduced them to Ecstasy—and scattering these elements throughout their

interview. A flavour is captured in the following excerpt:

Oh, well really it was because I started getting into dance music And the first time I ever reallywent out to a big dance evening I was with someone who was a/who’d been a long-term Ecstasy-user, and they actually scored some speed—so I tried speed first. And then it was much furtherdown the line, because I had quite a big reservation about taking Ecstasy, and then just ended uptaking it at someone’s birthday, in a fairly sort of subdued, comfortable situation, where I felteasier with it. (Alison, Ecstasy)

The tone here is suggestive of Harre’s (1983) ‘identity projects’, where identity formation

is a social process (‘I started getting into dance music ‘). This process is driven by both

material (‘subdued, comfortable situation’) and discursive (‘just ended up taking it’)

mechanisms. For bungee-jumpers these alternative accounts took on the simple, list-like

quality of what might be termed ‘collected experiences.’ For example:

Taught rock-climbing and canoeing and all that. In my youth . . .Er. Done sky-diving, free-fallparachuting, erm, skiing, motor-cross bikes. (Keith, bungee)

This pattern was very common. In these ‘collected experiences’ there is a further reminder

of the relevance of the ‘identity project’ concept. For Giddens (1991), late-modern

identities have at their core a set of consumption choices, with the aim of building a desir-

able and rewarding self. This is one way in which we might make sense of these lists of

acquisitions.

As with, ‘anticipated regret,’ these ‘collected experiences’ may be connected to the cul-

tural identity claims made by the speaker, and may also have a functional value in the

displacement of risk. Firstly, they are directly connected to anticipated regret, because

these are the experiences which one has to show for one’s risk-taking endeavours—the

trophies acquired in lieu of a more certain future. These are the ‘gains’ which would other-

wise be ‘losses’, and are thus the subject of potential regret. Secondly, one might presume

that the more ‘experiences’ which one collects without punitive consequences, the less

one is likely to be deterred by risk. Finally, the acquisition of a ‘good’ collection of experi-

ences demonstrates commitment to certain sub-cultural ideals and is likely to mean that a



speaker can make a more substantial claim to membership of a particular culture than

others. An example of the participants’ awareness of such tactics for identity management

is provided by Tim:

I’ve never felt hugely involved—I’ve wanted to be, but its such a counter-culture that there’s nohalf measures, or doesn’t seem to be any half measures. I mean Alison’s got friends at work whogo to these squat raves and what have you. That seems to be the culture as it were/I mean there’s/there’s people like me, who go occasionally And people, like friends of mine, who go everyweek, which I think is probably quite dangerous given what they do. (Tim, Ecstasy)

Learning to like it. As some of the preceding quotations imply, first experiences of bun-

gee-jumping and Ecstasy-use were often ambivalent, and sometimes even unpleasant.

This ambivalence was generally reported as leading to a stage of ‘learning to like it.’ This

might be considered a key process in moving from initiation to maintaining use. Both

ambivalence and ‘learning to like it’ are illustrated by the following excerpts:

I was really underwhelmed by it the first time I did it And then after/the time/I’d finished, I waswalking back to the tent and my eyes were just sort of rolling and I was like, ‘Oh great. So I get asort of mashed-up comedown bit and actually none of the fun bits.’ So I wasn’t all that impressedby that. I mean it took me, five or six goes before I actually sussed-out what was going on, whichis totally different to what everyone says about pills Because everyone else is like ‘No, the firsttime was amazing!’ And it was really getting on my nerves that I couldn’t get the point of this,and I couldn’t work out—(pause) And so I couldn’t put it in a box and say ‘Yeah, I’m rushingnow, this is great.’ I remember it was at Club UK that I did one and suddenly thought ‘Oh yeah,this is it. This is the sort of/the reason for it.’ (Alasdair, Ecstasy)

When I was skydiving, one of my first/my first/one of my first jumps, I mean I’m lying in/on myback, and I’m looking at the plane getting smaller and all of sudden its like (mimes sudden con-fusion) And I was giving it like this/arms sort of (waving arms)—‘Aaagh, I’m falling!’ And ittook me literally, 5 seconds to re/10 seconds to realize, ‘Yeah you are falling, calm down, justsettle down, put yourself in a nice position and enjoy the ride.’(Keith, bungee)

Ambivalence, fear, anticipation, unpredictability and unknowability appear to be common

features of first experiences. Perhaps it is indicative of both the commitment that has been

made in order to broach initiation, and the desire to understand the enthusiasm and experi-

ences of others, that participants persevere in their attempts to relate to the experience in a

more positive or appropriate way. To some extent this perseverance may also be connected

to identity management, in that it may be viewed as one element in a process of ‘encul-

turation’ (e.g. see Much, 1995). Much views cultures as overlapping ‘frameworks of

meaning’—the mechanisms by which we make sense of the world—and here we can

see that our participants are exploring new frameworks. Thus, the cultural aspect of ‘learn-

ing to like it’ is partly an exploratory process, and partly a process of testing new knowl-

edge. There is certainly an awareness of expectations (‘Because everyone else is like ‘‘No,

the first time was amazing!’’)’. There are also repeated references to ‘internal dialogues,’

perhaps as a result of conflict between the initial expectations and the experience itself

(‘Oh yeah, this is it. This is the sort of/the reason for it,’ and ‘Yeah you are falling, calm

down, just settle down, put yourself in a nice position and enjoy the ride’). Initially, the

‘shift’ in one’s experience, which is provided by these activities, is confusing. ‘Learning to

like it’ is thus a process of learning to identify those features of the experiential shift which

might be pleasurable.

Learning to control it. Accounts of the ‘learning to like it’ experience were frequently

succeeded by accounts of ‘learning to control it’ in both sets of interviews. The use of

control at this point does not imply any fear that the behaviour could become ‘out of



control’ (i.e. become an ‘addiction’). Instead, this position is particularly concerned with

maximizing the experience in the limited time available, as illustrated here by Emily:

The more jumps you do, the more aware you are of being able to somersault, or being able twist,or turn upside down, or whatever you want to do. You’ve got more control (pause) and the/the artof bungee jumping of course, is knowing exactly when you can do a somersault—in the rightpart of the recoil, because if you don’t get it right, then the rope’s too heavy, and then you’ll neverget yourself over. You have to do it in the moments when you’re weightless, its management ofthe time that you’re weightless—is the real art of it. (Emily, bungee)

These similarities between the activities during the stages of initiation and maintenance

are interesting, because one might expect experiences of the two to demonstrate more dis-

tinctive characteristics. On reflection, however, both activities would appear to contain an

element of the unknown—requiring a receptivity to whatever the experience might

offer—and both would also seem to offer increasing opportunities for control over the

nature of this experience to the more knowledgeable user.

This lends an interesting retrospective re-evaluation to some of the Ecstasy accounts.

Participants either recall their earliest use, and imply that it was unpleasant because they

had not yet learned to master the experience (e.g. Dannii), or else they reflect upon their

‘honeymoon’ period with some nostalgia, and dream wistfully of recapturing it’s intensity

(e.g. Wendy). So for example, Dannii says that ‘I didn’t actually have a bad time on it—

erm as that I didn’t like the feelings.’ For the bungee-jumpers these effects of ‘learning to

control it’ are manifest in a difference between those (such as Emily and Phil) who see

their skills as increasing, and who continue to aspire towards greater mastery of the experi-

ence, and those (such as Gary and Lee) for whom the direct pleasures of jumping have

been diminished, and who now seek them elsewhere, in other ‘dangerous sports.’ The

rewards of both activities may clearly be used as embodied, perceptual, mood modifiers

(indeed they appear to be ‘robust shifters of experience’—Shaffer, 1996, p. 464). For

these participants, however, the functions and purposes of use are various, complex,

and must be weighed up against a number risks, some more easily evaluated and managed

than others.

Managing risk and pleasure

Cultural and contextual differences play a part in the management of risk, and in the par-

ticipants’ understandings of appropriate and inappropriate strategies for achieving plea-

sure. Three main codes or sub-themes, which relate to this theme, are discussed here:

* costs;

* managing risk;

* pleasure, treats and binges.

Costs. Having already discussed the manner in which the participants overcame their

fears of the ‘unknowable’ (first experiences) it is interesting now to turn to fears about the

‘knowable’—or the ‘estimable’ at any rate—to consider participants’ assessments of the

risks incurred through maintenance of the activity. There are some distinctions between

the groups here. The bungee-jumpers tend to sidestep questions about risk by asserting

how ‘safe’ their activities are (while at the same time referring to them as ‘dangerous’

or ‘extreme’ sports) if they are carried out properly. Implicitly, however, they do acknowl-

edge potential risks and costs (injury, death) through their attempts to explain how

accidents might have occurred. The Ecstasy-users make numerous distinctions between



short-term costs (e.g. bad comedowns; risk of overheating; risk of allergic reaction; legal

risks) and long-term consequences (possible brain damage). They are generally quite keen

to discuss short-term risks, and their strategies for dealing with them, but more reluctant to

consider long-term risks, because these are unknown, and because they are potentially

more serious.

Managing risks. All of the participants claimed to make informed and educated deci-

sions about the risks involved in their respective activities—even though there were var-

iations in each individual’s appraisal of how great this risk might actually be, and of how

well-informed they were:

I mean Alison works in pharmacology, I’ve got a background in biochemistry as well, so I meanwe’re both educated to what it does. We don’t drink very much so I think its the only really dan-gerous thing I do in my life erm we haven’t/therefore we don’t do it very often.’ (Tim, Ecstasy)

The processes of risk assessment as they are presented in the accounts are complex. Care-

ful discursive positioning is often required in order to justify some decisions as ‘reason-

able’ or ‘safe’. One common tactic might be described as ‘measured risk-taking.’ In the

illustration earlier, for example, Tim recognizes that there is a danger involved in Ecstasy-

use, but attempts to counter this one risk (a risk which he wants to be able to justify,

because he wants to take Ecstasy) by taking fewer risks of other kinds (risks which perhaps

it is not so necessary to justify, because he doesn’t particularly want to take them in the

first place, such as drinking alcohol).

Just as ‘anticipated regret’ provides a convenient rationale for initiation, this ‘measured

risk-taking’ provides a rationale for maintenance. Downward comparisons with the other

users and other activities play a part in this process. Logically, ‘measured risk-taking’

would have to be supported by the idea (implicit here in Tim’s account) that everyone

is entitled to take an equivalent and finite ‘amount’ of risk without encountering too much

opprobrium, and that individuals can control the way in which they parcel out this amount

by choosing their activities carefully.

The alternative to this position—embraced by comparatively few of the respondents—

would be to disregard the notion of risk entirely. Alasdair (Ecstasy) and Gary (bungee)

provide the only clear examples of this approach. Where Gary embraces risk-taking as

a life-affirming credo, and complains that most dangerous sports are not dangerous

enough, Alasdair admits that he prefers not to consider risks in case they interfere with

his enjoyment of the drug-taking experience. One might describe this as ‘explicit risk-

taking.’

Short-term risks were minimized in both groups through a combination of preparatory

information gathering, cautious practices and superstitious practices. Dannii provides a

good illustration of such tactics in her account:

And someone in this club was selling them—or the same name—so he bought two, and he hadone and his friend had one And they both came up very quick And they weren’t able to see any-thing and stuff like that, and then one of them collapsed? And he had to go out with the para-medics and everything, and his heart stopped beating for a five seconds or something. And er itbrought up this big issue of ‘You don’t buy it in clubs’ So I’ve kind of built up a set of little rulesfor myself that means I’m going to be safe Because I don’t buy in a club, I don’t buy off people Idon’t know, and (pause) you know, I’m sensible with the water thing And all the rest of it—don’tdrink too much, don’t/drink when I’m thirsty rather than because I need to. (Dannii, Ecstasy)

Dannii develops a post hoc rationalization here, such that a person unfortunate enough

to have suffered serious consequences is understood to have done so because he did not



follow the appropriate sensible practices (buying off someone he did not know was risky)

and semi-superstitious rituals (not buying in a club is actually no guarantee of quality, but

has meaning as a precaution nonetheless). We might suppose that one consequence of

these rationalization narratives is to reinforce the protective value of these same rituals

and practices, and potentially to promote an optimistic bias (Weinstein, 1987) with regard

to future risks to one’s self. We might also expect that personal experience of these kind of

events should contribute to some decrease in this bias (Weinstein, 1989). However, what is

striking about these narratives is the manner in which they demonstrate a moral judgement

about correct modes of engagement in the activities (e.g. Alasdair: ‘Without wanting to

sound arrogant, you do get some losers . . . ’). Bungee-jumpers utilize similar kinds of

strategies to suggest that serious costs are a result of inappropriate engagement with the

activity:

With sky-diving I think mainly it is irresponsibility, with people that don’t pack properly I mean,I’ve known people who’ve been killed who were perfectly good sky-divers With thousands ofjumps, and I’m convinced that they’ve just had a heart attack in the air, They’ve just not pulledtheir ripcord. Because they wouldn’t do stupid things like that Unless they have just become soblase with it that they have just (pause) got to the point where they just become irresponsible.(Emily, bungee).

The moral imperative of cultural membership is very strong here. We might infer from

these examples that it probably further reinforces optimistic bias.

Pleasure, treats and binges. Among the Ecstasy-using group, the separation between

short-term risk (where the respondents were always aware, and precautionary) and atti-

tudes to long-term risk (which was more complex) is interesting. Positions taken on poten-

tial long-term risk were closely associated with those taken on the available rewards. So for

example, those Ecstasy-users who were most clearly ‘measured risk-takers’ (e.g. Alison,

Tim, Wendy) thought of Ecstasy as a ‘treat,’ for special occasions, to be used sparingly:

I still wouldn’t do it every week—at all. Th/there’s absolutely no way I’d do that/because it alsostops being special, it stops being an occasion and a release—it just becomes the norm. (Tim,Ecstasy)

These participants understand their risk-taking to be informed, relative and acceptable.

They assert their right to take responsibility for it, and claim to do so. However, we have

already seen that denial of agency provides a strategy for displacing risk, in the accounts

of initiation experiences. So, it is not surprising that other respondents appear to use

Ecstasy in a more ‘binge’-like way (e.g. Dannii, Alasdair), justified by a more fatalistic,

and rather ingenuous position on risk. Both claim that they do not like to think about ser-

ious consequences because, as Alasdair says, ‘I think if you thought about anything—you

wouldn’t do it’. In this respect, a cost-benefit decision may still be made by these parti-

cipants, but they will not own it:

I don’t sit there and say, ‘On one hand this is a really good night, but on the other hand, you know,I’m risking long-term depression.’ (Alasdair, Ecstasy)

This is implicitly bound up with issues of identity. It seems logical to suggest that oppor-

tunities for expression, fulfilment and agency will be connected to risk-taking behaviour.

Thus, pleasures may provide what seems like a well-deserved reward or may act as an

escape route from self-consciousness; risks taken with the self may be taken carefully,

for their life-affirming and confidence-building properties, or carelessly, with the threat



of negation. The way in which these matters might relate to the distinction between

problematic and non-problematic behaviours is something which requires further atten-

tion. Such investigation will inevitably come up against the dynamic relationship between

person, society and culture.

FURTHER DISCUSSION AND SUMMARY

In the preceding analysis we have identified experiential, affective, cognitive, narrative,

and discursive elements in the data. ‘Anticipated regret,’ for example, could be understood

through any one of these frames. Smith’s (1996) IPA encompasses all of these issues—it

allows the analyst to integrate cognitive, affective and narrative-discursive elements, while

taking the ‘insider’s perspective’ to be the principal object of the interpretative work, and

placing it at the centre of the analysis. To some extent our use of two groups of participants

represents a novel use of IPA. Qualitative methods in general, and IPA in particular, are

not suited to the differential comparisons preferred by mainstream psychology. What we

have attempted to do here, however, is to examine one phenomenon (the experience of a

risky-but-rewarding activity) from two particular perspectives (Ecstasy-using and bungee-

jumping). It is certainly consistent with the phenomenological tradition (e.g. see Giorgi,

1995) to attempt to reveal a phenomenon under ‘some aspect.’ We have simply extended

this here, in line with IPA’s preference for inductive theory-generation, in order to inte-

grate two aspects, with a view to generating a richer and broader account. The preceding

analysis might thus be read as an argument that the term ‘risky-but-rewarding activity’

does indeed provide us with a meaningful description of the shared features of certain

kinds of mood-modifying experiences.

To accept this argument, one has to accept the broad comparability of our two groups of

participants. Much of the case in favour of their comparability is integrated into the pre-

ceding analysis, inasmuch as it stems from what they have in common. However, it may be

worth mentioning one important distinction. We might reasonably suggest that the identity

of ‘Ecstasy-user’ is both more diffuse (because Ecstasy-use is an adjunct to the identity of

‘clubber’) and more difficult to sustain across cultural boundaries (because it requires

transgression of explicit moral and legal codes), than bungee-jumping. There are a wide

range of cultural frames associated with Ecstasy-use and genres of dance music, and there

is clearly no such thing as a discrete Ecstasy-using ‘community’ (Collin, 1997). By con-

trast, there does appear to be something more akin to a coherent dangerous or extreme

sports culture, and within that the bungee-jumpers in our study clearly contributed to a

smaller community of their own. Thus, the populations in question may not be well-

matched. The specific groups in this study are quite well-matched, however, because

the Ecstasy-users interviewed here are, like the bungee-jumpers, all known to each other,

all able to draw on shared experiences and frames of reference, and all engaging in their

activities together, using shared resources.

A commitment to accounting for both shared and distinct features has been maintained

here, but with more emphasis on what is shared within and between the groups, and at the

expense of some potentially interesting individual variations. It is necessary, however, and

now conventional, for qualitative research to go further than this. We must balance our

accounts of ‘what informants are saying about the meaning of their experiences’ with

‘interpretations that may or may not conform to what informants have told us.’ (Kidder

& Fine, 1998, pp. 48–49).



Thus, our analysis of this data has sought to illuminate something of what it means to

take risks for pleasure in our culture. From this process, a number of insights have

emerged. Firstly, it seems that initiation into a risk-taking activity may require numerous

strategies in order to overcome one’s own reservations, and also to accommodate per-

ceived disapproval from others. These strategies include momentary denials of agency

(such as the construction of ‘contextual decisions’ rather than ‘rational decisions’),

emphases on the value of ‘inclusion’ for maintaining friendship and cultural identity,

the use of anticipated regret as a rationale for accepting possible consequences, and

emphases on the intrinsic value of collecting a broad range of experiences.

Secondly, while initiation may involve some denial of agency, once the person is

initiated, and it perhaps becomes evident that the activity can be maintained relatively

safely (costs; managing risks) and satisfactorily (learning to like it; learning to control

it), then engagement in the activity becomes more rationalized. This involves the acquisi-

tion of information about the risks involved, espousing certain practices in response to

those risks, and explaining accidents in terms of inappropriate engagement in the activity.

In these ways, short-term risks can be managed and accepted as appropriate to the pleasure

received.

These strategies may be less effective for managing long-term risks, particularly where

those risks are unknown. Here, risk management may be tied to an ideological commit-

ment to a certain kind of pleasure-seeking. In the interviews, there is a distinction between

those who accept that there may be unknown long-term risks (these participants ration out

their engagement with the activity as a treat, hence minimizing the risk), and those who try

not to think about such risks (denial of agency again—these participants binge on their

activity whenever they can).

There are implications for the study of other groups engaged in risky-but-rewarding

activities here. One interesting feature of the accounts is their positive, appetitive and wil-

ful orientation toward risk. Beck’s (1992) suggestion that the good citizen is a risk-free

citizen is under attack here. These participants articulate a relationship with risk which

allow us to see it as a source of pleasure and reward, cultural identity and social participa-

tion, but also perhaps as a means of expressing resistance, to conventional constraints. In

this respect, we are back with Douglas (1994), only with a more complex understanding of

the actions and processes involved. Risk-taking is not exactly ‘normal’ for our partici-

pants. Its very abnormality is part of its transgressive allure, but at the same time it is

mediated by attempts to adopt safe practices, and as such it cannot be understood simply

as negativistic action either. Instead, it makes more sense to understand the value of these

transgressive acts in terms of access granted to both desirable identities and modified

mood states.

There is clearly also an opportunity to learn more about persons who experience pro-

blems with risky-but-rewarding activities. The manner in which some of these participants

make sense of their actions (which they have experienced as ‘non-volitional’) by present-

ing certain decisions as contextual rather than rational, seems especially pertinent. In par-

ticular, it would be interesting to look more closely at comparable strategies for making

sense of ‘non-volitional’ action, and to do so in the accounts of persons experiencing

addictive behaviour problems. This approach may help us to understand more about

why people find themselves in situations where they maintain their risky-but-rewarding

activities even when costs have begun to outweigh benefits. We would suggest that further

examination of such strategies could identify some new mechanisms for clinical interven-

tion. Potentially, it seems reasonable to suppose that such a technique might form part of a



cognitive-behavioural or motivational interviewing approach, because these methods

ought to be able to engage with, and potentially change, such strategies.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank Derek Edwards, Paul Stenner, Jonathan Smith, Nigel

Hunt, Elizabeth Newton, and three anonymous referees for comments on earlier drafts

of this article.

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