Motion is the Kryptonite of Addiction

How a physical practice can help you get and stay sober

When it comes to sobriety, getting started can be the hardest part. The heavy lifting is front-loaded on this journey, and change is trickiest in the beginning. Makes sense: change is movement away from what’s familiar and comfortable.

Comfort and lack of movement were a significant part of my toxic relationship with alcohol. Booze helped me stay comfortable and postponed the inevitable if temporary discomfort of movement and growth.

Back when I was drinking, choosing what felt “comfortable” meant choosing stagnation over movement. My life was missing physical movement, yes, but also movement in mental growth, social intelligence, curiosity, and learning new skills.

I didn’t move away from excuses. I didn’t move away from repetitive and destructive cycles that had become the norm. I didn’t move towards the sense of peace that comes from living in a reality that is healthy and honest.

Changing our relationship with alcohol can seem like a monumental task, and sobriety once seemed impossible not only to me but to everyone who knew me. Alcohol had been a significant part of my story.

The first step is movement.

If you’re there too, where do we start? What’s our first step?

The answer might surprise you in its simplicity, but the first step in changing your relationship with alcohol is movement. Motion is the kryptonite of addiction. Lack of movement—and lack of direction—is where addiction and chaos thrive.

While movement can apply to body and mind, physical exercise and the commitment to staying active were key to my personal journey of healing. Literal, physical movement was essential for changing my multi-generational, debilitating alliance with alcohol.

That’s it. Overindulgence was a symptom of a larger, more global problem. Since I embodied that problem, moving my body was the best place to start the work required to heal.

Why’d this work? Well, the fastest way to change is to move in the direction that correlates with that change. I found that setting challenging physical goals for myself to accomplish by the 90-day anniversary of not drinking did the trick. It was one of the single most powerful commitments I made in the early days of sobriety.

This sort of physical goal sets parameters and gives you a narrative with direction—something tangible to guide you through the hard, perilous parts of discomfort and change.

Linking goals brings bonus benefits. 

Linking sobriety goals to physical goals not only holds potential for supporting the body and mind. It also facilitates other aspects of this journey.

One of the biggest hurdles in early sobriety involves our social network and the way “our people” might contest and challenge our choices and how we’ve changed. Most of the time, when I hear apprehensions around changing and getting sober, it revolves around perceived or feared social tensions.

“What will my friends and family think?”

“I’m afraid that I’ll be boring without booze.”

“I’m afraid of being lonely.”

“I’ll be the outcast.”

Drinkers usually hang around other drinkers, so you’ll likely need to confront this social aspect eventually. It’s hard to hide sobriety around past drinking buddies.

But guess what: This is one of the sneaky benefits of a 90-day physical challenge. It gives you an “excuse” for not drinking in social settings. You can’t drink because you’re training to do “X.”

It gives you a purpose and a cause, providing a path towards a healthier outcome. It changes the conversation. It’s something meaningful to silence the critics and naysayers. It gives you something to rely on when times are tough and your sobriety goals are in danger because of peer pressure.

Setting a 90-day goal and accomplishing that goal was the single most important technique I relied on in my early journey of changing my relationship with alcohol. I was 50 pounds overweight and needed to step up my physical fitness anyway, so it made sense on so many levels. If doctors could prescribe one magic pill for all physical ailments and mental health, that magic pill for me would exercise. From a biological standpoint, we are built to move and to interact with our environments. Stagnation provides the nutrition for addiction to thrive.

My personal 90-day goal was a kayaking expedition with some good friends in a foreign country. There were multiple layers of accountability built into this goal, and involving other people raised the stakes for following through. Failure would have been shared, making that outcome less desirable. Creating accountability around the goal significantly increased my chance of success.

The “goal” in the beginning was the excuse that I needed to win. I used it countless times to help find my sober voice: “Sorry, I can’t drink tonight, I’m training for an expedition.” It changed the momentum of the conversation. I wasn’t quitting drinking because of a negative outcome (although that was true too); I was quitting to achieve something positive.

In addition to easing social tensions and offering direction to your journey, having a physical goal also creates purpose. To me at least, that purpose felt infinitely more interesting and less personal than talking about why I was changing my relationship with alcohol.

It was an easier way to manage conversations around sobriety. It gave me space to decide when to dive in and out of that talk. It also allowed me some cover to divulge my sobriety journey as I saw fit. In the beginning, the probing questions can be exhausting—people want the juicy gossip as to why you are trying to get sober or change for the better. Instead of a tragic story, you can give them the positive goal to feed their curiosity surrounding your newfound trajectory.

There is a dangerous virus spreading through our culture. This virus has the ability to mutate into different forms, but the basic essence of this affliction is a lack of purpose. “What am I doing and why?”

Think about it: What is your purpose? My friends who struggle with addiction the most are the ones that have the hardest time defining their purpose.

There is some purpose built into our culture. Raising kids, having a career, and supporting friends and family are all traditional forms of purpose. The problem with “traditional” is that it can feel boring in a world of Instagram and adventurous selfies.

The “goal” helps fill that “purpose hole” on many levels. It gives us something to shoot for and focus on. It becomes our purpose and comes with a workload. That’s the secret really: creating purpose and then moving in that direction physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Get moving. Don’t overthink it.

It can be easy to overthink creating purpose, which leads to paralysis. It can also be easy to overthink or procrastinate around choosing your physical goal.

This goal does not need to be climbing Mount Everest. It needs to be challenging but also realistic. It should be something that you need 90 days or so to prepare for (not a goal you could achieve today).

That work is your map to get you through the early days of sobriety. It will also provide structure and fill some of the time you’ll gain by not drinking. Time becomes much more abundant in sobriety; a goal and activity give it direction and keep it from being overwhelming. The more creative you can be with your 90-day goal, the more you can immerse yourself in it. You’ll find yourself naturally moving away from less healthy activities that led you to this point of change in the first place.

By orienting 90 days of your life around exercise and preparing yourself for something physically and mentally challenging, you will thrust yourself into new and different conversations with new and exciting people. Doors will open and new relationships will emerge. It’s the positive feedback loop that so many are missing.

These goals can be fun to accomplish, of course. But the secret sauce is the daily work and discipline required to achieve the goal. That work and discipline will not only help you stay sober. It will lead to soul-filling adventures and create the scaffolding and foundation for a rewarding, purposeful lifestyle.

Good luck. Get moving. Stay moving.

Your turn!

We’d love for you to share in the comments:

• What’s your relationship with physical movement?
• Do you have a physical movement practice?
• Does it support your sobriety?

And if you found this article helpful, please tap the little heart. It lets others know there’s something useful here and will help us grow this community.

Peter Stromberg (aka, Dented) writes The Dented Wagon, a weekly newsletter featuring stories and tools to support changing your relationship with alcohol and being a better human. More than five years sober, Peter offers a seasoned perspective on sobriety and describes his writing as coming from scars rather than cuts.