Exercise, addiction, and exercise addiction

Become obsessed with your training

People who are into intense physical activity like running, weightlifting, and cycling may have their friends or family worried about them. I’ve been told many times that I might be obsessed with training to an unhealthy level and that maybe it would be a good idea for me to take some time off. (I think that’s what they are saying anyway. I wasn’t really paying attention).

There has been an image circulating on Twitter (X) which shows the results of a survey of Japanese women who were asked, “If you were going to date a guy which hobby would you least like him to have?”

The answers were as follows:

1. Following idol groups (39.3%)

2. Triathlon (37.7%)

3. Marathon (26.2%)

4. Anime (23.3%)

5. Golf (20.4%)

All five of these hobbies are time consuming and a level of obsession is required to engage with them. (This apparently makes people difficult to date).

Let’s focus just on the hard physical activities here and discuss how people might end up getting obsessed with or addicted to these activities.

Disclaimer: I’m going to discuss some relatively complex subjects using analogies and language that is easy to understand. The scientists in my audience may not agree with my analogies. Please take to Twitter (X) or the comment section if you think I’m wrong.

Runners high

Many people who run report what is generally called a “runners high.” A runners high is a pleasant feeling you get either during the activity or after the activity where you don’t feel the pain of the exercise and enjoy the experience. Without going into too much detail on the mechanisms of a runners high, it is generally agreed upon that the feeling is caused by endorphins released during exercise, which have a painkilling effect and generally make you feel good. (In the picture below I’m just about to cross the finish line of a 63 km ultramarathon. If the runners high wasn’t real I wouldn’t be smiling after almost 7 hours of running).

The word ‘endorphin’ is derived from the words endogenous (originating from an organism) and morphine (a well known and very strong painkiller).

Morphine belongs to a class of drugs called opiates (derived from opium). A few other well known opiates are heroin and fentanyl (both of which have reputations as harmful, addictive drugs).

In order to understand how people can get ‘addicted’ to running it is useful to know how people get addicted to similar substances. (Knowing what happens when things go wrong is useful).

The mechanism of physical addiction

When your body is functioning normally a mechanism called homeostasis does it’s best to bring everything back down to a baseline level. If you spike your heart rate by running, it doesn’t stay spiked forever. Once at rest it quickly drops back down to your resting (or baseline) heart rate thanks to your body’s homeostatic mechanisms.

At any given time you have a baseline amount of endorphins moving around your system. When you need more endorphins (after doing some intense activity) your body will release more of them (making you feel good and killing any pain you might have), but when they no longer need to be elevated the the level will go back to baseline (just like when your heart rate goes back down after exercise).

If you suddenly introduce an opiate into your system (through drug use) you will get an instant rush (all the painkilling/euphoric effects you get from natural endorphins…but on a larger scale depending on the dose). Opiates (both endorphins and drugs like heroin/morphine) are detected by opioid receptors. Opioid receptors have a tendency to “upregulate” when they are exposed to a large larger amount of opiates. To explain upregulation in simplistically, if you have a person who likes pizza (and won’t get tired of pizza) and give them a pass to an all you can eat pizza buffet, they will go to the buffet and eat until they are full. This might be 10 slices. The next time they go back they might be able to manage 11. Then 12. And so on and so on until 10 slices doesn’t satisfy them anymore.

When your receptors are upregulated like this the baseline amount of endorphins is not enough. If your body is giving you 10 units of endorphins but your receptors tell you you need 11, this will lead you to be 10% down on the endorphins you need to function properly. If you top up your endorphins by adding more artificially that’s like going back to the pizza buffet. You’ll feel good once they are topped up but when it wears off you might need 12 units to get back to baseline (meaning you lack 20% of the endorphins you need when you are back at baseline). When the baseline level of endorphins in your body are not enough to satisfy your receptor’s needs this can lead to withdrawal symptoms such as nausea or pain. This is pretty much how physical addiction/dependency works. It’s not pretty.

Now that we know how physical addiction works lets talk about a slightly different form of addiction that is probably more applicable to exercise.

Psychological addiction

Whenever someone says that they won’t get addicted to something because they don’t have an ‘addictive personality’ they are talking about psychological addiction. Nicotine is addictive. But some people are able to smoke the occasional cigar without getting physically addicted/dependent on the nicotine. If the occasional cigar turned into a few too many cigars the person who claims to not have an addictive personality may still find themselves feeling like garbage unless they have had a smoke.

A psychological addiction is when we recognize a behavior as having been pleasurable in the past and wanting to experience the same thing again. People who have been skydiving once are probably likely to go skydiving again. You might say that repeat skydivers have a psychological addiction to skydivng. Some other forms of psychological addiction come in the form of binge watching TV shows on Netflix or gambling.

If you are psychologically addicted to something you aren’t going to have withdrawal symptoms if it is taken away from you. People who go skydiving don’t start to experience nausea or pain if they don’t get their jumping out of an airplane fix. They aren’t physically dependent, they just want to do it again. (Note that it’s not unusual to see psychological addictions can propping up physical addictions. People get physically addicted to things and also want to do the thing they are physically addicted to).

The harm of many psychological addictions depend on how you look at them. Being addicted to video games isn’t harmful in itself, but I’d say wasting your life by doing nothing but playing video games is harmful. (Moderation is key). There is however one form of psychological addiction that I think is quite beneficial.

Addiction to exercise

When you exercise you give yourself a spike of endorphins, which provides a feeling of wellbeing before going back to baseline. People who exercise a lot have a tendency to feel a bit down if they haven’t exercised for a while. This is not a sign of being physically addicted to exercise. It’s an indication that you may be developing (or have developed) some level of psychological addiction to the activity. It feels good to train hard and get an endorphin release. Not exercising but fondly remembering the feeling you experienced while exercising implies (to me) a positive psychological addiction.

Developing a positive psychological addiction

It’s very difficult to make yourself do something if you hate it. There are certain people out there with unbreakable iron wills that will get things done no matter how much they don’t want to do something. But for people who don’t operate like this, my advice would be to encourage the obsession along by doing something you enjoy.

I am fond of all the physical activities I do. If I didn’t enjoy them I’d stop doing them and find something else I enjoy. Enjoying activities that are good for you keep you going back for more.

If your only form of exercise is to do something you hate you aren’t going to have a good relationship with it. If you hate jogging but ‘have to jog’ to make sure you get enough exercise to stay healthy then maybe jogging isn’t for you. You need to find an alternative activity that is good for you that you also enjoy. You only become obsessed/psychologically addicted to things that you actively enjoy. You can call that a life hack or a brain hack if you like but to me it’s just common sense. Fun stuff is fun and I like having fun.

Final thoughts

If you are going to do something that’s bad for you make sure you aren’t doing it to the point where you become physically addicted/dependent on it. I don’t drink or smoke but I don’t want to tell people they can’t enjoy the occasional drink or occasional cigar. I would advise however that everyone stays as far away from ‘recreational’ opiates as possible.

Psychological addictions can be bad. You are never going to get anything done if you are addicted to watching Netflix or playing video games and don’t do anything else. Moderation is key. But psychological addictions can be leveraged if you find a physical activity that is good for you and you can get obsessed with.

Be warned however, that if you get obsessed with marathons or triathlons there’s a 26.2% to 37.7% chance you won’t be able to find a girlfriend in Japan.

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