Feature Issue on Addiction and IDD

I discovered running long before I discovered I was autistic. I fell in love with the feeling of freedom, of momentary flight, and of being fully in my body. Wearing my hat, sunglasses, and headphones regardless of the time of day or weather, I engrossed myself in the repetitive strike of my foot against the pavement, my rhythmic breathing, and the pulsing of the music. Repetitive and consistent—an autistic’s dream come true. I turned to running to help me self-regulate. On several occasions, I avoided a meltdown by running as hard as I could for as long as I could. Looking back, it makes a lot of sense. After all, it’s not that different from eloping; I had the same need to run when I became overwhelmed as other autistic kids did. I just had enough wherewithal to put shoes on and not get hit by traffic. But by my junior year of high school, my relationship with running had changed. I got injured, but kept running anyway. It wasn’t until the pain in my shin became intense and continuous—even at rest—that I took a little time off. I never saw a doctor for my injury or had it imaged, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it had been a stress fracture. My senior year, I woke up at 5 a.m. every day to run before school. I very rarely looked forward to it. It had become something I had to do more than something I wanted to do. I got injured again, and again I stubbornly ran through the pain until I couldn’t. All of these are symptoms of exercise addiction, although I didn’t know it at the time.

Isabelle Morris celebrates after finishing a race.

I mostly didn’t run during college. Due to other medical conditions, my doctors put me on exercise restriction for a year. After such a long time off, trying to go back to running was miserable. For the first time in my life, I understood why people say they hate running. I assumed that the joy I’d felt while running was gone for good. Two years ago, I started grad school. I also started running again. I made a concerted effort not to run every day in the beginning, in order to also build in strength work and lower-impact cardio. With several years of growing my self-knowledge and how to manage my connective tissue disorder, I consciously made decisions to work with my body. If I had it my way, I’d run every day, but I know I will break my body if I do so.

For the first few months, the plan was working. However, by the end of my first semester, running was becoming a black hole. I was once again obsessed with running longer and faster every single run (yes, I know that’s a terrible training strategy). When I was anxious, the first thing I’d think about was going for a run. If I missed a workout, I felt like crawling out of my skin. The traditional approach to treating addiction is to interrupt the behavior, or at least limit it. My therapist and dietitian recommended I should be in and out of the gym in less than 60 minutes. I was 100% uninterested in that goal, so I didn’t try all that hard to reach it. For me, the best runs are my 8–10 milers. That’s when everything feels right in the universe. Why would I want to run if I had to miss all the fun bits? No thanks.

Then I started training for a half marathon. I know increasing the focus on running seems like a counterproductive approach to managing exercise addiction, but this is where understanding my autistic brain gave us a workable path forward. Training for a specific race meant I could tap into the special interest part of my brain for more than just the run itself. I spent time planning out my weekly workouts, how I was going to fuel my long runs, and how to effectively recover from the hard efforts. It was easier for me to stick to a 4-mile easy run when I was supposed to because I knew I had a 10-mile run coming up on Sunday. I could let my easy runs be easy because I knew I had two speed sessions per week. There were even days each week when I didn’t run at all. These were honestly the hardest days of the whole training plan, but I could allow my body time to recover because I wanted, above anything else, to go fast for the race. If I overtrained and got injured, I’d be slower—if I was able to start the race at all. I put in as much energy into fueling my runs, proper warm-ups and cooldowns, drills, prehab, and general recovery as I did the workouts. I let myself read all about periodization training, running form and drills, and the physiology of adaptation. Spending this much time thinking about running probably doesn’t fit most people’s definition of successfully managing or reducing an addiction. Admittedly, it still sounds pretty obsessive.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t break my body. I ran my first half marathon that May and finished in less than two hours, about seven minutes faster than I dared hope for. I was in the moment and in my body every second of that race. I thought about how good I felt, how much fun I was having, and how I wanted to hold onto this feeling forever. I didn’t spend the race thinking about when I could be done or if it was over yet. I stuck to my meticulously planned fuel and hydration schedule; I knew at which mile I would take an energy gel and at which aid station I would get a water vs. a Gatorade. I let my body dictate the pace: I felt good, so I just went for it. I ran free and filled with joy. This is what it’s like when I, as an autistic person, am fully engaged in my special interest. As long as I am looking forward to running, enjoying myself, and being responsive to my body and injuries that pop up, I consider recovery to be going well. Running is back to being a special interest rather than a compulsion. Recovery is a process, and there’s a fine line between special interest and addiction. Some days, I miss the mark. But I know one thing for sure: I would never have been nearly as successful in recovering from an exercise addiction if I didn’t work with my autistic brain and use my special interest to my advantage.