[ke88y]

Yes, it's a lot like an addiction. Perhaps literally.

This also gets talked about in climbing quite a bit -- people who find their path out of alcoholism or other drug use and into climbing. I'll emphasize that this is now about climbing in general, not free soloing per se.

Climbing (especially with protection) is healthier than drug addiction, in some sense. But it's displacing one addiction with another. Or introducing addiction as a coping mechanism, in the case where the pain doesn't originate from another pre-existing addiction.

But sometimes cope is healthier than the alternative, and coping can play an important role in "getting you through to the other side". As long as you do actually make it through, of course, both in terms of not dying and in terms of getting to a healthier place where you don't need the coping mechanism.