Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Hey, I liked your story

Although up until now I write this blog anonymously, and since about 5 people read it anyway, it seems like a good idea to share my story on my blog.

The local paper wrote one of those success stories about how I got into fitness and it changed my life. For the past two days people have been coming up to me telling me "Hey, was that you in the paper? I liked your story."

It is very humbling and strange at the same time. As I have mentioned before I was addicted to heroin for several years. Right now I have been totally winning (not in the Charlie Sheen way) for  approximately 6 years, 5 months and 28 days. Not that I'm counting. I just did the math right now in my head.

I'm not a big 12-step person. Meetings tend to make me feel negative about myself and get me in the frame of mind that I have some sort of disease. I do not believe addiction is and actual disease. I think it is a symptom of something else that is wrong in your life, the same way overeating is.
Sure the brain gets hooked on the release of serotonin and different chemical things that go on when you binge eat or get high.
The thing that I found most helpful was figuring out why I needed that feeling so bad in the first place. What was I trying to fix?
That is figured out now (for the most part) and I try to confront those issues every day so I won't end up in the same place. That's how I did it. With counseling and positive people around me.

I didn't realize that real people contact you after you put something like this out there. It is really cool and very new to me. People are e-mailing me and approaching me at work telling me their stories and wanting to be listened to. I was not prepared for this, and it makes me a little nervous, but I'm going to do my best to rise to the situation.

I totally used a bunch of Oprah language and I apologize for that. I saw an episode of Oprah where they had this junkie family in Ohio and they were trying to get them to get clean and it was so depressing to see. My wife was the one watching it (I was just there because I don't watch lady shows) and she was crying. I was in rehab at the time on methadone (which saved my life).

So maybe Ellen will run a less depressing episode about addicts. I would watch that lady TV show.

Here's a link to my article:

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2012/mar/05/success-story-gary-berglund/

If you need to share your story with someone, you can send it to me.

gberglund@lifetimefitness.com