It’s December 2006 and I’m running in Central Park. I’ve been running for about five hours now, and my calves’ ache, my knees hurt, my arms burn, my feet are sore, my lungs sting. I can feel all this, but I just don’t listen to it. I listen to the beat of my heart in my ears: the regular, rhythmic tread as sneaker hits earth, my breath perfectly timed with the regular swing of my arms, the beautiful moment in running when you hit routine. Somewhere near the 72nd Transverse, a girl jogs past me. She’s brunette, pretty, clear-skinned, sunny, smiling. She looks like the kind of girl I want to be. She probably has a pretty one-bedroom with hardwood floors in the West Village, a good job at some hip magazine, a great wardrobe, and a kind, sexy boyfriend who went to Yale. Alternatively, she may be a part-time tweaker, but let’s persist in the belief she’s a beautiful person. She jogs right up close to me, looks at the New York Road Runners ticket pinned to my chest, and says in the sweetest voice: “82184! You’re my hero!” and runs on. Being a bit of a pussy, high on adrenalin and endorphins, tired and emotional, I weep for the next 20 minutes, but keep running. I finish the 60km Ultra-Marathon in six hours and 59 minutes.
Five months earlier, I was working four nights a week in a strip club called VIP, drinking a bottle of vodka a night, smoking 40 cigarettes, and snorting coke whenever it crossed my path. I wasn’t anyone’s hero—least of all my own.
“Sports helped me change my self image, and repair the shame, guilt and self loathing of being a former addict.”
The benefits of physical exercise in sobriety are pretty obvious: we need to get physically fit to counteract all the crazy shit we’ve poured into our bodies and prevent diabetes, heart disease, liver problems, and more. But as New York-based Fitness trainer and recovering addict Trevor Graves points out, “Exercise helps to get the mind trained and it builds self-esteem, so you can actually look in the mirror and feel proud of yourself. In that sense, it’s essential to long-term sobriety.”
Graves credits his exercise regime with helping him to maintain his sobriety. He admits he tried several times to get sober and says that it wasn’t until he incorporated an exercise regime alongside his 12-step program that he began to take his recovery seriously. “When you’re an addict, the receptors and endorphins in your brain have been compromised significantly,” he explains. “Years of natural endorphins have been used up by chemicals like heroin and cocaine, leaving you depressed and anxious. Cardio will raise your endorphin levels naturally, relieve stress, alleviate cravings—and most importantly, give you something to do with all the spare time you have in early sobriety.”
But where to start? As an addict or alcoholic, you’ve probably spent a good chunk of time in bars, crack dens, or on the couch. Embarking upon a fitness regime, whether you’re 18 or 50, alongside people who embody the opposite ideals of the life you’ve been living, is pretty terrifying. Also consider the fact that the addict brain is hardwired to demand results as quickly as that needle hits the vein and the additional fact that exercise demands commitment, routine, patience and time. Graves suggests first checking in with your doctor to see what you should or shouldn’t be doing, and then starting gently with three 20-minute cardio sessions a week. “Just hit the gym and mix it up with different forms of cardio: the bike, the treadmill, Elliptical, whatever,” he says. “You won’t see significant changes on day one, it may be uncomfortable the first few times. But you will feel great afterwards.”
I can’t afford a gym! I hear you cry. So leave the car in the driveway and walk to the store to get a coffee, walk to work, skip the subway, be conscientious about it. Maybe when you’ve spent a couple weeks doing this, attempt to jog places. A bunch of sober people in Venice Beach, where I live, hold a “swim club” on the beach twice a week, and commit to cycling down there before they swim. They also go hiking every Friday. Absorbing yourself in a community of people who’ll call you up and remind you of what you should be doing will make you more likely to get your ass of the sofa, quit feeling sorry for yourself, and do it.
This is the reasoning behind Phoenix Multisport, a group for those “committed to living a sober lifestyle.” A non-profit organization based in Boulder, Colorado, the center hosts more than 40 athletic activities a week that are free to the public as long as they’ve been sober for 48 hours or more. These activities include more extreme sports, such as yoga, cycling, ice climbing, snowboarding, and hiking, or gentler activities like neighborhood walks. It even incorporates purely social events such as BBQ’s. The emphasis at Phoenix isn’t on recovery, addiction, 12-step programs—they leave that to rehabs, A.A. and sober livings. Many members do not even identify as addicts or alcoholics—they’re simply “committed” to living sober. As founder and former addict Scott Strode explains, “Sports helped me change my self image, and repair the shame, guilt and self loathing of being a former addict. The community Phoenix provides gives those who choose a sober lifestyle an instant support network and an identity they can be proud of.” Unlike the anonymity favored in 12-step groups, Phoenix members are encouraged to wear shirts with logos that identify them as members to encourage openness about their recovery, while the emphasis on a community centering around healthy activities builds lifelong friendships with those who share interests that aren’t as amorphous and unspecific as simply sobriety.
It’s easier to commit to an exercise regime if you have an aim—whether it’s running an Ironman or jogging around the block without feeling like death. My goal was to do a marathon. I actually got rejected from the New York Marathon, the London Marathon and a couple others, which is why I ended up running a 60KM race instead—it was the only one that would have me! But the training—three runs and two weight-training sessions a week combined with yoga—filled up my time. It gave me a reason to be in bed at midnight on a Friday while the rest of Manhattan, including my old friends, were snorting coke and chugging cocktails. It gave me an incentive to avoid Trader Joe’s two-buck-chuck, my 2006 tipple of choice. Physical tiredness helped me sleep better and gave me less energy to focus on the insubstantial stresses I used to love entertaining in my head. Exercise relieved the unrelenting boredom, the newfound social anxiety I developed, the painful prick of loneliness that haunted me through long nights at home alone trying to avoid my ex-boyfriend, Booze. Running gave me a sense of belief in myself. This body I’d been abusing for so long—God damn it, I could say, look what it can do when you give it the right food, the proper diet, the recommend amount of exercise! It felt wonderful.
These days I don’t run anymore: I do intense Vinyasa yoga five days a week, a workout which combines enough strength training and cardio to give me all the physical and mental benefits I require to keep me on track. Martial arts became Robert Downey Jr.’s passion and helped him in his sobriety. Finding yours—whether it’s dance, swimming, Pilates, hiking, walking, or karate—may take time. But that’s kind of the point. Figuring it out along the way, especially if you’re in early sobriety, sure as hell distracts you from your head and that lurking, insidious desire to go back to an old life and an old way of thinking that simply doesn’t work.