What It's Like To Be Sober And Running Over The Holidays

You’re starving, your stomach is empty, growling like a hungry tiger, and you just finished a 15 mile run. You haven’t eaten a thing in hours, and your house is full of the scents of a pot roast, pizza loaded with toppings, or barbecued ribs melting off the bone.  Your mouth waters and you sniff the aroma deep into your lungs hoping it fills up your stomach. It doesn’t. You’re hungrier than ever.

 Got that?  Well, that’s what it’s like to be an alcoholic around Christmas time, except the air is full of vodka and beer and wine and rum, and there’s little devils on your shoulder in the form of family drama and stress and finances and black Friday ads and tangled Christmas tree lights, all whispering in your ear asking you to partake in some holiday cheer.   Just look around. You can’t throw an olive in the air without it landing in the martini of a holiday reveler.

Trying to navigate through the holidays being newly sober is tap dancing through a minefield. It’s begging for trouble.  It’s the Lion laying down with the Lamb, it's, it's, it's..…. ‘gulp.’

When I first got sober, the whole idea of staying sober for even one day was anathema to my existence. It was not in my reality.  It was like asking a fish to fly or an eagle to swim.  To live without drinking wasn’t going to happen. I’d rather not live, in fact. But the drinking didn’t kill me quickly, only made my insides bleed out ever so slowly, so something sparked and I started to believe in miracles and that I wasn’t born to die this way.

After much B.S and false starts, I started a genuine effort to live with and accept the fact I was an alcoholic and could never drink again.  Some of my earliest concerns were: Whaddya mean I can’t drink on my wedding day? Whaddya mean I can’t drink watching a hockey game?  And..

Whaddya mean I Can’t drink on New Years Eve?

 Yes, holiday cheers means cheers. Not only on Christmas day itself, but all the parties, all the out of town friends who are back in town, all the bars and uncomfortable situations that came with squeezing family together closer than usual.  Family may be the main source of Joy during the holidays, but it is also the main source of stress and drama and all that baggage you’ve been dragging around for years. Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight a long time.

 All of that and facing it stone cold sober without social lubricant.

That is Nucking Finsane. That’s getting a wisdom tooth out without anesthesia, and that’s just not fair.

Of course, once you focus on “one day at at a time,” the miracles happen down the road and you get to the point where ‘not drinking’ come as natural as drinking used to, there’s not enough time in the day to do all that you want to do, but this takes a while to evolve.

Especially with Christmas. Christmas was drinking for me. They were equivalent. The joy of Christmas was the joy of drinking. They were one in the same. Whatever spirits you could suck out of a bottle was what Santa brought you, and the birth of Christ and possibility of salvation was a cold case of bud-lite and a full evening ahead.

New Years Eve was the time to not only drink but contact the local dopeman and order a bevy of supplies, since sick and suffering folks like me could blend in a little more with the weekend warrior addicts and alcoholics.

So, if just being awake is a trigger to drink, then being awake and conscious during the holidays is aiming the trigger right smack up into your open mouth.

When alcoholics watch others drink in a manageable way, it simply does not make sense to us.  “How the hell do they do that? Put a drink down before it is finished? finish a drink and not keep drinking? walk away from a table with a beer half empty?”  It doesn’t make sense and never will. Imagine watching someone just suddenly walking up the side of the wall and then onto the ceiling. That’s what it’s like for me to see someone walk away from a half full drink.  

But today instead of having envy, I am grateful. Grateful for where my recovery has taken me, that my fulfillment doesn’t’ come from the bottle, and I don’t need to drink just to tolerate my own pathetic self, and I’ve become grateful that I can handle cravings easy as blinking an eyelash. Yes, they are still there, but in a sense, it is helpful to still have them. Just reminds me that I’m still an Alcoholic and can’t drink, because if I do, I’m not stopping. Cravings I’ve come to take as second nature, but they are immediately squashed and sent back to the hell from whence they came.

But this confidence wasn’t always there, and the first holidays of my sobriety I decided to ‘just get by.’  I just figured if I woke up on January 1^st and I had stayed sober this was a success.

But just ‘getting by’ isn’t staying sober.  White knuckling leads to ‘regretting’ that you can’t drink. Sitting on your hands and watching others drink, and letting yourselves ‘envy’ them is an invitation to end up with a pile of empties and a pile of remorse. And if you are just enduring then you aren’t really learning how to enjoy life sober, how to deal with life on lives terms, and how to grow to the point where you just don’t need to drink.

Having an escape route from a holiday event is so important.  Not just in case you feel you might drink, but if you are not having a good time, and are ‘resentful’ that you can’t drink, you’re in a bad spot. Get the fuck out of there, bail, leave, make a scene or slip out quietly. They will miss you less than you realize, but they will notice you more than you feared after you relapse, and the misery will come back with extra vengeance.  Expectations for holiday fun that go unrealized can cause huge resentments as well.

In other words, wear a parachute to Christmas parties so you can jump, and expect nothing and you won’t be let down.

I used to rely much more heavily on AA to get through the holidays. I have left a thanksgiving party early to go to an AA meeting, I have gone to a Christmas ‘alcathon’ which, if you are not a friend of Bill W., or an enemy of his (since they know just as well) these are meetings that occur around the clock, every 2 hours during the holiday season.

As time went on, and as my natural highs grew ~ and by natural I include spiritual highs ~ the idea of drinking left me. It didn’t’ happen the first Christmas, didn’t happen the second, but by the third I could look forward to each event with confidence and got to experience some real joy of the holiday season.

These days I often rely on my runs for my highs. There is something special about a holiday run. I feel lighter, the world feels more alive, the streets are a bit more clear, and my legs feel more energetic, fresh, and crisp.  A Christmas Eve or Christmas morning run is the highlight of my season. I run through the streets like George Bailey screaming ‘Merry Christmas’ to old man Potter.

And as a symbolic gesture, I like to get up early on January 1^st, probably only an hour or two after the time I used to go to sleep/pass out, and put in double digit miles before the new year is ten hours old.

Christmas memories are often filled with runs, and one Christmas day trail run remains imprinted in memory. Snow was coming down in big, fluffy flakes, floating ever so slow but thick, making everything a perfect powder to run through. I ran through the trails, the green trees full of fluffy white, visibility hampered by huge cottony flakes, and came home with frozen red and smiling cheeks. Christmas day churches don’t’ always have pews and parking lots.

This year, I plan to run with just as much fervor. Grateful that after years of drinking and drugging and chasing a dragon who I nearly caught, but if I had, it would have killed me, but now I’m chasing a whole new high, full of joys and love and sugar and spice and everything nice, and I do catch it just enough to know that’ I’m loving life.

I did not forget how to run after not doing so for many years after a pretty successful track experience in high school.  And I have not forgotten how to drink despite not doing so for the last 20 years. The urge to do so still exists in my gut, I still feel the tug of a shot of liquor in my throat, and I can’t watch somebody do drugs in a move scene without feeling an electric shot in my spine.  But I’ve come to learn how to enjoy life without it, thrive without it, and the holiday season just magnifies how the natural high of running helps me to get the most joy out of life all year long.



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Feedback On '9 Reasons Recovering Addicts Run'

Yes, I'm an egomaniac with an inferiority complex, so I love to get feedback on my posts. No article has received as large a response as the post:   '9 Reasons Recovering Addicts Run'
 
The post made it in Predawn Runner as one of his highlights of the month.  I was contacted by a 1/2 way house who had used the article for a group therapy session, it was posted on 'Treatment Talks' facebook page, and Yahoo bought it off of me for the price of a 12 pack of soda water. (For the article on Yahoo, click here)

Ironically, I wrote the article in a manic rush since I was about to read "Running Ransom Road" a book which traces a self-described "ex-addict's" journey through his past through marathoning. I'd been wanting to write on the subject for quite a while, and didn't want to unconsciously plagiarize the book, so figured I should get it out of the way. Yes, I typed away Jack Kerouac-style minus the Benzos.

Before I brake my arm patting myself on the back, here's a response I received from a runner/recovering addict who had written from the same experience: (posted here with permission of the author.) To me, it shows how pervasive running is as an outlet for those with a history of addiction,

It's a touching read with some very sharp and very personal observations.  (Thanks Eric)

A Running Addiction 
Eric Stanley

A while ago I found myself in the middle of a dusty trail marathon.  The forecast had said the day’s high was going to be 87 degrees.  It was currently approaching 90 and not yet 10:00 AM.  I had run the first half of the race well within my capabilities… far beyond, in retrospect, what conditions allowed.  I was on my hands and knees on the side of the trail vomiting watered down Gatorade, dully aware I was not sweating anymore and was getting goose pimples. 

The occasional runner would pass and shout a word of encouragement.  One asked if I was alright.  I mindlessly waved him off and allowed him to continue his own race… it was the least I could do.  Standing up I experienced tunnel vision, and a contrasted view of the world where the brights were too bright and the darks were too dark.  I made the decision and began heading back to the last aid station.  My race was over. 

When I made it back to the aid station I found out that the staff I took for granted when I filled my water bottle, was made up of high school students with no knowledge of what an unhealthy runner looked like, no first aid skills, and no way to communicate with “real” race officials.  Instead, I was greeted by cheers since I was the first person returning from the out and back section of the course.  I explained I was dropping out, and needed help.  I was rewarded with blank stares and directions on how to get back to the starting line. 

Cutting the course where I could, stopping to relieve myself when I was forced to, I managed to walk the 6 miles back to race HQ.  By that time I had recovered some, and was greeted with confusion and disbelief when I refused to cross the finish line and explained I had dropped out.

This story is familiar to some; you’ve read other reports of races gone bad.  Some of you have experienced similar occurrences in one form or another for yourself.  This is where, based on the title of the article, you expect a moral to the story, how I love running, how much running means to me, what I learned, how I got better.

I’m sorry to disappoint.  It was a clever title to make you read this far.

Although this is a true story, it doubles as a metaphor for my life.

I’m a recovering addict.

Two years ago my life had spiraled out of control.  Issues I had lived with most of my life had come to a head, and I was on the verge of losing my wife, my children, my home, my career.  Anything that had any value in my life was an eye blink away from being gone.  Forever.  And like a strained hamstring, or a tight IT band, that I needed to last for one more race, I hid it.  I hid it all.  I buried a damning dysfunction behind false smiles, trivial conversations, and the “healthy” habit of running.  All the while I planned how I was going to get my next fix.

I was on my hands and knees puking the guts out of my life, waving people on, telling them I was OK.  My smile was so sincere, they believed me. 

So, what happened?

I was saved. 

Not in a biblical, spiritual, Southern Baptist Bible beating, slap on the forehead, born again saving.  Although I’m sure there is a bigger plan in all of this.  I was lucky enough to have a wife who saw me at my lowest low.  Who took the worse psychological abuse I could dish out.  Who saw me as someone who apparently did not care about anything, and she decided there was something worth keeping.  She saved me.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not married to a saint, I’m not that lucky, but through a perfect storm of issues and resources, I was lucky enough to have a wife who cared enough to try to understand.  I can never give her enough credit.

I was given an ultimatum and a choice.

I chose to reach out and take the hand that was offered.  With my wife’s help I was able to find a group of people who were able to help start getting clean.  With a lot of really hard work, a strong support group, and a wife who loves me, I’m sober and healthy.

It’s not a happily ever after story.  There have been trials and tribulations.  There have been relapses and setbacks.  I’ve reached out to people who I thought were supposed to help and was rebuffed, and referred away.  By the time this is printed I will have a year sobriety.  My wife and I have a strong relationship that is healthier and better than ever; I’m a better father and a better employee.  But it’s a lot of work, and in some ways and at some times it is a daily struggle.

There are a number of elite and sub-elite runners, marathoners, and ultra-marathoners who are recovering addicts.  These athletes are normally the low-key men and women who are quick with a wave and a smile, can sometimes be within striking distance of a historic finish and are able to fade willingly into anonymity.  Running attracts addicts.  Look it up.  Once you get past all the pat-myself-on-the-back articles about being a “running addict” you’ll find hundreds of resources dealing with running as a therapy for addiction recovery, why addicts run, physiological and psychological benefits of running for addicts, entire programs set up to reach out to addicts to use running to help get them clean.

Why?  Lots of reasons.  At my worst it was an escape.  At my not quite worst it was an exercise of control – addicts like to have control, at least the illusion of it, and running provides the perfect outlet for exerting control in an aspect of your life.  You can make it all about charts and graphs, times and goals.  You can literally force your body to do things that it should not be able to do – run 16 miles with the last 4 at 10K race pace.  And addicts can get off on that.  For some, depending on the addiction, it can actually give them an outlet to delve deeper into their junk, to medicate without the drug of choice – then to medicate again with it.

In recovery running can be a therapy.  It can be a time for meditation, for prayer, a stress reliever.  Scientifically speaking endorphins and adrenaline can take the edge off of chemical dependencies or physiological behaviors.  Spiritually speaking it gives time to think, reflect, pray, commune, discover a meaning for your life, or any of a number of benefits that can be valuable to a person.

All I know is this.  Running alone is not a cure.  Running by itself cannot, by the sheer nature of its potential, be the sole answer.  Has it worked for individuals?  Sure… but so has cold turkey.

Think of your absolutely worst running experience.  Think of your lowest low.  Your hardest hurdle.  The biggest wall.  The most terrible cramp.  The career-ending injury.  Heatstroke.  Dehydration.  Hypothermia.  There are people out there, people you know, who are suffering much much worse… because someone they know has an addiction.  That is the suffering I caused my wife.

                For anyone reading this who needs a word of encouragement.  You are not alone.  There are people out there who want to help.  You are not the worst, not the first, not the only.  If you are curious about my story, or just want a sounding board for your own issues, I’m willing to listen.  And I’m always up for a run.

                Eric Stanley
             ericstanley1718@yahoo.com
                Sober since October 18^th 2011.