I got into a horrific and near-fatal drunk driving accident a couple years ago. I fractured 5 vertebrae in my back among multiple other serious injuries. I couldn’t walk for awhile and eventually spent 9 months walking with a cane. I was 29 years old. My doctors told me I would never run or play sports again and I would live with chronic pain forever. This was a huge blow to my psychee as I had been an athlete my entire life.
I accepted this new fact of my life and grieved the loss of my identity as an athlete. (For those who have played competitive sports their whole lives, I’m sure you can imagine the existential crisis I was going through). I fell deeper and deeper into my addiction, eventually finding fentanyl to “help” with my physical and emotional pain. I was enslaved and did nothing to take care of my body.
By the time I was 31, the chronic pain became so unbearable I begged my then fiancee to give me a lethal overdose if my pain continued to get worse and nothing improved by the time I was 40. I had lost all hope. My body skeletal and atrophied.
But then I got sober and everything changed. Sobriety gave me the will to not only live, but to take CARE of myself. I knew that the chronic pain was one of my biggest triggers to relapse and that I had to do something about it. I started off with small workouts, mostly exercises to stabilize my back and build my core. The pain started to get a little better! Motivated by feeling better, I got stronger and stronger each day.
I know that I have to put my sobriety above all else and that if I don’t, I’m susceptible to losing everything that I have gained back in life. Rehabilitating my body is an integral aspect of my sobriety. So I worked out, even on the days I didn’t want to (in the same way I go to meetings when I don’t want to either). I always feel better after (both) – physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually.
I am now training to become a boxer and have a goal set to fight one professional match at our local fighting venue at a nearby casino, win or lose. I train daily and I feel GOOD. I went from hobbling on a cane from drunk driving, never to run or play a sport again, to training for my first prize-ring fight as a boxer.
My body is back. I am no longer skin and bones wishing to be put out of my misery. I am healthy and I am fit. Screw those doctors because they were wrong: I can run and so much more. I am an athlete again and I owe it all to sobriety.
