Throughout the last several years,I tried multiple times to quit smoking pot and drinking. I eventually stopped smoking pot after getting married but substituted that addiction with more drinking. Alcohol was a lot tougher for me to shake free of. I progressed from being a weekend binge drinker to almost steadily drinking every night of the week. I tried several times to quit without telling my wife. I would take several days and not drink. Only to fail and drink myself silly after the brief time of abstinence. Then I would wake up, go to work, buy a six pack or two on my lunch break, and go home after work and repeat. I didn't think anything of it. I didn't think this behavior was abnormal. I was miserable and drinking was my way out of the misery. Actually drinking this much was what was causing me to be miserable. I just didn't realize it.
I would wake in the morning and feel like crap. But I was used to feeling like crap. I had conditioned myself to exist in a fog. A fog consisting of headaches and bodily pains. To take myself to the limits of alcohol poisoning and grow my tolerance to the poison. The addiction was ever growing and bigger than me.
Somewhere in the fall or winter of 2011 I was going to lay down after a night of sitting and drinking in front of the television. I woke my wife and confessed to her that I couldn't control myself anymore. It was impossible for me to have a beer or two. I had to have 8, then 10, then 14 all in a two to three hour span. Earlier in the day I bought two or three six packs of India pale ale that were supposed to last me for a couple of days. I drank most of them that night. She knew my addiction was out of control. I don't know how she lived with me. I was in denial of the mess that I had become. I was miserable and dying on the inside. Dying physically and, I guess, spiritually.
Sometime after my tearful confession she talked me into going on a trail run at the Paynetown state recreational area. The trail was hilly and long and I had no idea what I was in for. I spent the rest of the day recovering on the couch. My legs and body were spent. I believe we went the following Sunday as well. The night before I had to stay sober so I could actually run the trail. I do believe it was the first Saturday I had been sober in many, many years.
That was the beginning of my second life as a runner, I suppose. (I had run cross country in junior high and high school.) I loved being out in the forests running trails. I had enough sense to know that I couldn't go on abusing alcohol and run also. I had to make a choice: continue drinking myself silly, making myself miserable and risk losing my wife, or stop drinking and start running. I quickly replaced one addiction with another. Running miles replaced drinking alcohol. Instead of seeing how many India pale ales and vodka shots I could do in a night, I tried to see how many miles I could run in a row during the day. At night I was too tired to want to drink any alcohol.
I started to run more and more. It was the only way to keep from drinking at first. Then my runs kept getting longer and longer. I started to enjoy pushing my physical limits. Just as I had tested myself to see how much I could drink in a night, I began to see how many miles I could run in a day.
My life is much better now that I have rediscovered running. I have been contemplating my new life as a runner on my weekly long runs. The last several runs I thought about the parallels heavily drinking and lots of running have. Of course, one activity is senseless and destructive while the other is productive and senseless. Moderation is the key to both, but here I am training for my first ultra marathon. Even though I haven't even run an official marathon yet.
The long runs have also become somewhat meditative and therapeutic for me. The exhaustion,isolation, and peacefulness of the local trails enable me to deal with emotions and past events that I was trying to avoid and bury with my drinking. Family deaths, people I have hurt with my addictions, depression, and the realization that my addiction days are hopefully behind me. I finally have a natural happiness knowing that I have become a healthier person mentally as well as physically in the last year and a half.
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