Running Sober

I’ve read that there is no such thing as an “addictive personality.” There are many different pathways that can lead to addiction and many different personality types—- depression and anxiety can lead you to lean on addictive behavior, but so can narcissism, hyperactivity, or any other number of quirks, flaws, neurodivergences, etc. And of course, there is a substantial genetic component that goes beyond that type of psychoanalysis. I don’t know what exactly it is about me that makes me prone to addiction, but the results are what they are regardless. What I know is that when I was 22, the Montgomery County Court thought it would be a better idea to send me to a day of substance abuse training instead of putting a conviction for public intox on my record, and at that training the guy said, “Everyone, at some point in their adolescence, probably has an experience where they drink way too much and do something regretful. Some people wake up the next day and decide to never do that again. Other people wake up the next day and start counting down the days until they get to do it again.” I knew then that I was in the second group, but it took another twenty years before I was ready to do something about it.

Along the way to dealing with it, I went through that same pattern—- excess, consequence, repetition—- with a variety of other substances and behaviors. Quite a few of them were negative and destructive, but some were positive. I don’t know what it is about my personality that makes me susceptible to addiction, but I’ve learned that I can’t necessarily beat it, but I can try to use it to my advantage and get addicted to some things that make my life better instead of worse. This isn’t going to be a “drunkalog” essay about my years of drinking—- hearing others share their experiences with alcohol is tremendously helpful and I would strongly encourage anyone who has questions about their relationship to substances to check out an AA meeting and listen to what people have to say. But here, I want to specifically talk about the intersection of addiction, exercise, and health. Let’s talk about it.

I’ve been a runner since I was in junior high school. I distinctly remember being in about 6th grade, playing tag with my friends, and realizing I wasn’t as quick as some of them. “That’s ok,” I reasoned to myself. “I don’t need to be fast because I’m an endurance athlete.” I had not, up until that moment, shown any interest or aptitude for long distance running. But I made a choice to make it a part of my personality and lifestyle in order to help me deal with that frustration of not measuring up to others. From there, I joined the junior high track team and ran “distance” (the 800 meters) at a few meets, and felt like I was now an athlete., I would repeat this same behavior my freshman year of college when I discovered that drinking more than anyone else was a helpful personality trait to adopt when I wasn’t sure how to make friends and fit in. I discovered the ability to construct my self at an early age, but I didn’t always make the wisest choices about what pieces to add.

When I was started high school, I was less than 5 feet tall and weighed less than 100 pounds. I was moving to a relatively big public high school from a relatively small Catholic school, mixing in with a large group of incoming freshman who already knew each other from junior high. I knew a lot more about Start Trek and Mystery Science Theater 3000 than I did about sports. But I was going to be an athlete, so I started showing up to summer cross country conditioning in June. I don’t know how I would have navigated that transition into high school without XC, but it would have been a radically different experience. Running gave me a shake and bake set of friends—- good guys, too, who liked to have fun, didn’t take things too seriously, and were accepting of my personality quirks. I was kind of good at it—- I wasn’t a varsity runner or on track to get a scholarship, but I wasn’t slow either and was reasonably competitive at the JV races. It gave me a sense of pride and belonging, but also something to do with myself after school, a reason to be outside in the sun, and a healthy amount of exercise every day, all of which helped me stave off depression and anxiety issues that would be a problem for me later in life. By my senior year, it was clear I wasn’t ever going to be a varsity athlete, but I had turned myself into a lifelong runner by sheer force of will, and cross country had given me the framework to fit in in high school that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I learned to like running and it has been an essential part of my life and personality every since—- when I can’t run, I feel more depressed and more physically tired, and when I do run, it almost always makes me feel better physically and mentally. I’m addicted.

When I want to college, I added a second defining attribute to my personality. I became a drinker. I went to an all male school where almost everyone was in a fraternity, so I rushed with everybody else and ended up in the intense social environment of a fraternity house. I needed to find a way to fit in, fast—- or to stand out, but in a socially acceptable way. I was terrified that people in the house would realize that I was different and weird, and drinking beer became my best defense mechanism. Of course, they still thought I was weird and different, but they also enjoyed hanging out with me, so that was a win. Drinking in college was a readymade personality trait that told me who to hang out with, who to exclude, and how to identify myself in a new group. I was a drinking guy. After I graduated, I kept on drinking, even though I was no longer doing it to fit in. Over a period of years, I got to a point where drinking was an essential part of my life—- when I couldn’t drink I felt anxious and depressed, and when I did drink it almost always made me feel better, even if I did stupid things that I deeply regretted while I was drinking. I was addicted.

For a long time, my two addictions—- running and drinking—- played off of each other in weird ways. Obviously, getting drunk all the time makes it harder to exercise or exercise productively, but the two habits reinforced each other in some weird ways, too. Running a half marathon in the morning is a great excuse to drink a case of Coors Light over the course of the rest of the day. Running clubs—- or other cardio heavy activities I did, like rugby and judo—- are great opportunities to meet people who want to go get a drink with you. When I was thirty years old, I made up my mind to run a four hour marathon so I started cutting weight all summer, but I discovered through my calorie counting app that I could still drink as much as I wanted to as long as I exercised even more and cut out other indulgences. So I did. For a long time I was an athletic alcoholic, and even when I really started to slip into my genuine problem with alcohol, I kept finding ways to mix in exercise to hide the truth from myself and others. When I was drinking too much to go running consistently, I discovered I could get what seemed like a pretty good cardio workout shooting baskets in my driveway and chasing down rebounds, but, unlike running, I could drink beer while I did that. For the last year or so, when I knew I was an alcoholic and was probably killing myself with booze, I thought I could manage it by continuing to do healthy things like exercise. I deluded myself into thinking that my two addictions could somehow cancel each other out.

Things came to a head when we welcomed our second son home. At that point, I realized that I was going to either need to stop drinking, or probably lose my family. So I went to AA. It didn’t work right away—- the six months between deciding I needed to stop and actually stopping were the longest, hardest months of my life. I hated myself for drinking, but I kept doing it. I kept making promises to myself and others that I would turn around and break. If I could have switched back to the place where I thought I didn’t have a problem, I would have, but once that truth was incepted into my brain I couldn’t get rid of it. Finally, my wife said the right things and I ended up in the right AA community and I haven’t really looked back. It’s been three years plus of sobriety for me now, and I feel better about it today than I have at any other point in the past. I’m one day at a timing it like everybody else, but that’s easier to do when you’ve got a thousand and some-odd examples of days where you didn’t drink.

I give a ton of credit to my AA community, my wife, and my family for helping me to quit drinking. But I don’t think I could have silenced that addiction without indulging in my other one: running. When I stopped drinking I was able to start running, and I kick started a positive reinforcement cycle where the more I ran, the healthier I got, the more weight I lost, which made it easier for me to run even more, all of which made it less and less likely that I would start drinking again. And since I have an addictive personality, I started to need to run more and more to get the same feeling. I ran 5ks, half marathons, and then full marathons. I ran trail races, and then trail races at night in the winter, and then trail races that advertised themselves as “brutal.” And then I got hurt.

Seven weeks ago, I had to stop running, three weeks before a marathon, because of pain in my ankle and foot. I got an xray and was told I had a stress fracture. Goodbye running endorphins, hello walking boot. It made me miserable. I missed my running endorphins, missed being outside, missed having time to myself, all of it. I started putting weight back on. I didn’t have big races to look forward to. I didn’t have that sense of controlling something—- that I had a plan and a goal and knew how to execute it. I worried about starting drinking again, but I didn’t. I tried to indulge some of my indoor, low impact addictions—- video games, reading, jigsaw puzzles. And I invested a lot of time building this website and planning my grand running adventure for next summer. I didn’t kick my running addiction, but I didn’t want to. Instead, I white-knuckled my way through those seven weeks and have come out the other side, slower and heavier but sober and ready to get started again.

I’m now putting my plan to run 5 half marathons in 5 states in 4 weeks next summer into motion. It’s a charitable project, and if you’ve read this far I’d really appreciate it if you donated even a little bit to help me raise funds the National Diaper Bank Network. I’m still addicted to running, and I still need to set challenges for myself. After the injury, I hope I’ve learned to manage my running addiction a little more carefully. But time will tell—- I’m out here one day at a timing it, just like everybody else.

If you would like to donate to my project, you can use the Donate button at the top of this page, or access my GoFundMe directly using this link: https://gofund.me/0e379e8f