For a long time youth risk behaviours was the monopoly of psychological sciences, especially psychoanalysis. An anthropological approach can prolong and complete such analyses, provided it does not overspill into another epistemology and providing it withholds from borrowing conceptual tools from another discipline without knowledge of these concepts’ true significance and consequences. Risk behaviours are private rites ; they involve only the youth who enact them. Many ‘anthropo-logics’ are here at work, such as for instance ordeal, sacrifice and ‘whiteness’. Risking a part of oneself is what is needed to salvage oneself. This form of self-sacrifice produces power without the mediation of a tangible other, be it God or gods ; energy circulates from oneself to oneself. The reciprocity of giving, receiving and returning operates within a single existence in a quest of renunciation and that of another self.