I’ve been reading a book that describes the impact of exercise on the mind.
It’s written by an MD (psychiatry), who has used exercise as a treatment for a wide array of clients’s mental health symptoms.
What’s interesting is he is willing to consider exercise as an addiction, even quoting ultrarunner Dean Karnazes:
He has two children, ages eleven and nine, whom he tucks in most every night and drives to and from school every day. He typically wakes up at around three a.m., after four or five hours of sleep, to get in his training before the kids need to go to school. “I have built my lifestyle around running, so I can support this level of activity,” Karnazes says. “Perhaps it’s an addiction—I don’t know; I’ve never been through psychoanalysis. I’m just listening to my hardwiring. Luckily, I’m not shooting something in my veins or hopping down to the bar every night after work. Exercise is the ultimate drug, right? What drug always works and doesn’t have any unhealthy side effects?”
Spark, John Ratey, p 186
So. At some level, no matter what, we will all be addicted. To something.
It might be over eating.
It might be to nicotine.
It might be to caffeine.
It might be to being sedentary.
It might be to exercise.
What’s good is I have the ability to choose. I can choose to be addicted to the thing with the best side effects.
FWIW, exercise can help break other addictions, and even if you end up addicted to exercise, the outcomes are likely to lead you to a longer, healthier, stronger life. And it calms or eliminates most mental health symptoms.
So I choose to be addicted to exercise.