I will be speaking at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio on March 4th for the Presidential Lecture Series.
You can learn more at the Presidential Lecture Series Website.

For ten solid years, from 1982-1992, I orchestrated my life to fit my long term addiction to drugs and alcohol. That is not to say that I spent every minute DOING drugs, but I did spend every conscious and unconscious moment plotting and planning my next binge. I tried to overachieve in my business and personal life so that I could justify my bad behavior. And this worked for many years. Of course I was miserable and unhappy but I managed to maintain a fairly productive life. At least that is how it appeared to others. For me, I knew I needed to make a change or I would die.

So with the birth of my first son Brett in 1992, I finally got serious about changing my life. I went to an AA or NA meeting every single day for the first year and slowly but surely my life began to get better. At the same time, I started to really get serious about my running. I began to realize that running was a great metaphor for life. Goal setting, training and preparation, suffering, success and failure, growth. Then off to a new goal.

Slowly but surely, I became addicted to running. But this addiction was different from my drug addiction. Sort of different. Switching addictions is not as simple as it sounds. Some people switch from pot to booze or from meth to crack. Others have moved from food to sex or from gambling to porn. I have learned that I am capable of being addicted to almost anything. The only requirement is that the activity is all encompassing for me. Years ago, that meant doing drugs and alcohol. Today it means running and adventure.

So did I really switch from one addiction to another? In my opinion, the answer is “no”. When I was addicted to drugs, I wanted to escape the reality of my regular life. But with running, I am pushing myself to enhance the reality that I live today. If you had known me 20 years ago, you probably would have liked me just fine. And it would have been unlikely that you would have seen me as someone with an addiction problem. And the same can be said of my running today. From the outside, my running probably seems obsessive but if you knew me, you would see that I use running as my vehicle to experience the world. Running makes me feel connected to people and to places.

Years ago, one of my first sponsors in AA said to me, “We spend our lives comparing our insides to other people’s outsides. We compare how we feel to how other people look.”

It was like he punched me in the face. How had I not seen this before? I had spent 29 years in the certainty that everyone else was happy and well adjusted and that I was alone in my insecurity. But now I understood that I was not so different. Most people struggle with confidence and with uncertainty. I drank and did drugs to help me feel more at ease and it was doing exactly the opposite. But running changed everything. Running shines a bright spotlight on both the good things and the challenges in my life. There is no escape, only acknowledgement. I wouldn’t have it any other way.