> In one tale, the entire crew of a spaceship deliberately infect themselves with the common cold just to feel something.

I mean, I'll sometimes take a mild poison for fun, too (that's what alcohol is). I don't think, in a circumstance where you could just have it go away when you're bored of it, that recreational common cold thing is _that_ weird.

> In another story, people turn off their safeguards and go rafting on a lava stream, causing themselves intense pain and even dying, only so they can finally experience some real excitement.

A little under a thousand people attempt to climb Mount Everest every year. About 3% of them die while doing this. That's way, _way_ worse odds than the lava rafting people were getting. It's just an extreme sport. And, like, presumably it was a minority interest, just as dying halfway up a mountain is today; most people would not be lava rafting.