The Drop: How the Most Addictive Sport Can Help Us Understand Addiction and Recovery explores surfing and its relationship to drugs. It presents the sport as a natural way to heal addiction and trauma, two things that millions of people are struggling with.

Too often, the treatment for depression or anxiety is medication. Ziolkowsky is offering something different. His vision includes surfing as a form of therapy for veterans and surf camps to teach children the benefits of going offline and into the water.

Ziolkowski argues that surfing, like drugs and alcohol, offers passage into a “liminal state.” It’s a place in between heaven and earth. Drugs and intoxicants also offer an escape to an in-between place but in a far more dangerous and deadly way.