Swimming deserves a quiet place

Leave your weight at the gate.

Can I offer some unsolicited, unqualified and probably annoying advice to recovering addicts looking to rebuild broke-down bodies?

There’s a great future for you at your local gym.

Yeah, yeah. I know… every recovering addict is already there. In fact, you can always tell how far along someone is in their recovery by how jacked they are. You should see some of the beasts who show up at meetings with millions of gym hours under their bulging belts. Addicts are like an accordion in that sense. The first sign that they’re taking recovery seriously is their weight. And when they start to shed it, you can be assured they’ve returned to the pipe.

For me, it’s Exercise Day 273. I shudder when I think about the things I used to do to this body. But then again, I still shudder when I take it to the gym.

Still, it’s no wonder former addicts are drawn to it. Who can resist the prospect of rebuilding a body and restoring long-lost vitality? It’s also one of the first safe spaces we find in recovery. There are no triggers whatsoever. Try smoking crack on a treadmill and you'll learn just how thin the line is between cardio… and cardiac.

There’s another underrated charm to gym life. As addicts, we became long-accustomed to immediate gratification. In the past, there wasn’t an uncomfortable moment that a stiff blast of crack cocaine couldn’t obliterate. Problem solved.

But gym life teaches us the value of deferred rewards. That’s how we started out in life. We put up with our parents because we knew we’d be free someday. We suffered through school because we knew it would pay off later. One day, that patience with the present and faith in the future just evaporated. Suddenly, rewards had to be instant and on-demand.

The recovering addict needs to ease up on those over-milked dopamine glands, and return the brain to a more natural pace of reward seeking.

There's no instant payoff at the gym. It’s a slow, sculpting progression occasionally highlighted by flexing muscles and admiring yourself in the mirror. You may occasionally make kissing sounds.

Just don’t let anyone tell you that lifting weights is immediately gratifying. Have you listened to all the moaning and groaning at the gym? You’d think you were in a torture chamber. With bodies stretched out on one medieval rack or another, no one is enjoying themself. Except for the resident dumbell-smashing simian. But he’s a psycho.

Honestly, though, I can’t fully endorse a weight-lifting regimen. It’s too complicated. You’re always fussing over the various exercises. Is it leg day? Chest day? And heaven forbid you focus too much on one area. Then you become a shambling heap of misplaced priorities — massive chest, hunched, underdeveloped back, toothpick legs.

These days, I find my zen in the swimming pool.

(White male crack smoker privilege alert! Not everyone has access to a pool.)

There’s no need to balance which muscles you work out. Water takes a comprehensive approach to sculpting the body. The pool is also the great equalizer. There you’ll find young folks, old folks, small folks and even synchronized swimmers.

I trust the water to shape my body, much the way stones are shaped by cascading waves on the shore. They eventually become smooth, clean and new.

Specifically, I'm into the breaststroke. There's minimal froth and bubbles. It's perfectly peaceful. Easypeasy. The backstroke is okay too. And if there's someone else in the pool, I might invite them to an underwater tea party — saving me from pouring cups only for myself. It’s lonely at the bottom.

But absolutely no front crawl — or any of that competitive malarky — lest some passerby jump in the pool thinking I need to be saved. You see, I'm not a classically trained swimmer. My form is a little... drowningesque. But that's the beauty of the pool. Everything is freestyle.

(I should note, however, that I'm currently training for a major synchronized swimming tournament next year. I'll let you know how it goes.)

Anyway, doesn't that sound better than the Catherine wheels and death-march treadmills at the gym?

The body naturally seeks water's womb-like embrace. And the mind? Well, I used to count laps: 14… 15… 16…

But numbers are a terrible waste of headspace. They're placeholders for thoughts. It was such a relief to quit counting laps and free up my mind for proper ideas. About life. About recovery. And about the future.

Oh, and obviously about how cool it is to just float. Weightless. Kind of like how I’m starting to feel on this journey of recovery. Unburdened. Chlorinated, but clean.