When you are looking for help for your drug addiction, it’s important to pursue your recovery with everything you’ve got. This means getting the treatment that will be a good for you and result in a good outcome, and it means leaving no stone unturned in your journey towards sobriety.

There are many different techniques, procedures, methods, and programs out there, and the most successful approaches usually implement a combination of more than one strategy. These strategies frequently center around the mental, emotional, and behavioral aspects of your addiction, and one of the things that often gets overlooked is your physical fitness. However, we don’t think that your physical fitness should be a second priority in your drug or alcohol addiction recovery.

Here at Eternal Awakenings, we’ve found that physical fitness is helpful for almost everyone, and there are tremendous analogies between building your physical fitness and building your internal strength for resisting your addiction. Here are some of the reasons why our drug addiction recovery program recommends exercise as part of your rehabilitation.

1. Physical Fitness Helps You Feel Better.

The fact that you feel better when you exercise has to do with endorphins and other chemical messengers that tell your brain that you’re happy. Your body releases these chemicals when you do feel-good activities, like eating or having sex, but they also get released when you exercise.

Interestingly, many of these chemical messengers are either identical or very similar to the ones that caused your drug of choice to be so addicting, and they bind to the same receptors in your brain, creating a sense of pleasure, relaxation, and happiness, and reducing anxiety and depression.

The difference is, there is no chemical dependence associated with these chemical messengers that your body produces. Their effect is much milder than the effect of drugs, but it is the level and intensity of effect that your body and brain were designed to handle, rather than being something that usurps control and results in destructive outcomes.

2. Physical Fitness Is Part Of Normal Human Life.

Part of your rehabilitation process is establishing patterns and routines that belong to a normal, healthy lifestyle. The habits that you build during your addiction rehab program can be things that stay with you for the rest of your life. While most rehab programs will focus on teaching good work habits and a healthy work-life balance, not all of them are quite as intentional about building your exercise habits. Here at Eternal Awakenings, we don’t want to leave that to chance.

If you think about it, physical fitness is one of the things that has been an intrinsic part of human life for the entirety of human existence. In former centuries (and even in modern times in less-affluent cultures), people had to be fit in order to survive. Everyone in the community had to pitch in at chores like hauling water and firewood, plowing and planting fields, and hunting game. Being in shape was more or less automatic, because everyone spent so much time outdoors, doing a variety of physical activities all day long.

Our American culture is one of the only ones in history where you have to be purposeful and determined to get the exercise that you body needs. However, your body still needs that exercise, even if our busy lifestyle tends to try to crowd it out. Building a consistent workout schedule into your daily life is part of establishing the healthy habits that you need to support you in kicking that addiction permanently.

3. Physical Fitness Builds Your Stamina And Endurance.

Almost everyone needs more stamina and endurance, but when you are battling addiction, you need it even more than normal. People who have never walked in your shoes simply can’t appreciate the amount of sheer grit that it takes for you to keep putting one foot in front of the other as you walk away from your addiction. But you know. It’s no picnic, and sometimes you might wonder if you have enough lasting power to keep going.

Building your physical fitness can be a great way to give yourself a deeper reservoir of endurance to tap into for any area of your life. When you’re working towards a new personal best or a bigger fitness goal, you have to achieve that in the exact same way that you have to achieve your escape from addiction. In both cases, you cultivate the following qualities:

• You don’t accept excuses.
• You never, never quit.
• You are consistent.
• You are willing to make changes, even when you don’t want to.
• You are patient, knowing that the results take time to achieve.
• No one is forcing you to be there: you do it of your own free will.

Get Physically Fit And Conquer Your Addiction At Eternal Awakenings

Our Christian drug rehab program comes with full access to the Revival Fitness gym for all of our guests. We encourage and promote you to have more than just spiritual or emotional health. We also want to boost your physical health, strength, and fitness while you’re here, and set you on the right track for consistent health moving forward. At Revival Fitness, you’ll not only have free access to exercise equipment, you can also get additional services such as massage, tanning, physical training, and daily Cross-Fit classes.