Today is 4/20 day, a day when people celebrate the day by getting smoking special herbs for some reason. I'm not going into my feeling about this because I don't want to debate the issue.
What I am going to talk about is my history with vices. I don't know if this is hard to believe, but I have never smoked a cigarette. I have never done an illicit drug. I don't even like taking medicine when my doctor tells me to. My history with alcohol is actually very limited-maybe a beer or two a year-and I can count the times I was actually drunk (my Navy days) on one hand and have fingers left over.
I don't hold anything against people who use alcohol or smoke cigarettes. It's just not something I have chosen to do in my life.
But that doesn't mean I didn't have my own personal vice. For years I exercised daily. I delt with sore muscles and exhaustion. I spent money on gym memberships and running shoes. I researched places to run and read books on human physiology. I even got my degree in kinesiology so I could understand the best way to exercise.
Why did I do all of this? There is a feeling, when you workout really hard, sometimes past your limits, and the adrenaline, endorphins and dopamine reach that perfect level of equilibrium. You feel the so called runner's high. It didn't happen every time. In fact, that feeling was quite rare. But the quest for it kept me going out day after day working hard to feel that high.
Since I got sick a year ago I haven't really been able to exercise. And to be honest for quite some time before that I wasn't able to work out to the level I was used to. I though I was just getting old, but now I know it was the sickness growing inside of me that was limiting my strength and endurance.
It has been a long time since I ended a workout with that special chemical combination and felt that runner's high. I will probably never feel it again. And I miss it.
.jfif)
.jfif)
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