🏃‍♀️I Ran 100 Miles Sober. Here’s What AA Never Told Me About My Body.

Amber Graziano crossing the finish line of the Rio Del Lago 100 Miler, November 2, 2025

Most recovery programs will tell you to rest. To be gentle with yourself. To take it slow.

And I get it. That advice comes from a real place.

But here's what they're not saying out loud:

They are treating your body like the problem.

Like it's fragile. Like it betrayed you. Like it needs to be managed and monitored and kept very, very quiet.

And if you've been through any kind of formal recovery — 30-day programs, outpatient, AA, the clinical conveyor belt — you've felt this. The body is almost an afterthought. A symptom-holder. Something to detox and then basically ignore.

Here's what I believe instead.

Your body is not the liability.

Your body is the most powerful recovery tool you have — and almost nobody is talking about it.

The same nervous system that learned to reach for something to numb the discomfort?

It can be retrained.

Not through willpower. Not through white-knuckling it in a folding chair.

Through use. Through movement. Through teaching it — repeatedly, physically, in real time — that it can tolerate hard things without chemical help.

That's not a metaphor. That's neuroscience.

What standard recovery gets wrong--

Traditional programs are built around subtraction.

Remove the substance. Remove the triggers. Remove the situations where you might slip.

The logic is: if we take away enough, you'll be safe.

But subtraction doesn't build anything.

You can remove alcohol from your life and still have a nervous system that doesn't know how to self-regulate. Still have a brain that spikes cortisol at 9pm and has no idea what to do with it. Still have a body that is waiting — coiled and ready — for something to take the edge off.

That's not recovery. That's just a very controlled kind of suffering.

What we do differently here at Sober Endurance HQ--

We add.

We give that intensity somewhere to go.

A long run at 6am. A training plan with a race on the calendar. A body that is used — hard — and learns through that use that it is capable, that discomfort ends, that you can push past the moment that used to send you reaching.

Here's what that actually does inside you:

➡️It resets your dopamine baseline. Alcohol tanks your natural dopamine production. Endurance training rebuilds it — real hits, earned hits, from real effort.

➡️It metabolizes cortisol. The stress hormone that drives cravings doesn't disappear when you get sober. It needs somewhere to go. Movement is the most effective cortisol dump that exists.

➡️It gives you somatic proof. Your body now has evidence — physical, felt evidence — that it survived something hard without a substance. Every finish line does this. Every long run does this. Every workout where you wanted to stop and didn't does this.

➡️It builds identity before willpower runs out. "I am a runner" is a more durable identity anchor than "I am someone who doesn't drink." One is built on what you do. The other is built on what you resist.

Why nobody talks about this--

✖️Because it doesn't fit neatly into a 12-step model.

✖️Because it requires you to do something physical, which means it can't be sold in a workbook.

✖️Because it looks like fitness on the outside — and fitness culture has done a spectacular job of making recovery people feel like outsiders.

✖️And honestly? Because it's harder to teach than "just don't drink."

Building a body-forward recovery means you have to:

• Learn to train without punishing yourself

• Understand how endurance and nervous system regulation connect

• Find community that gets both sides — the sober side and the athlete side (hint: Sober Endurance!)

That's not simple. But it's what actually works.

This is why the Sober Endurance Skool community exists.

Not to be another recovery space that quietly treats your body like a liability you have to manage.

Not to be a fitness space that pretends addiction is just a lack of discipline.

To be the place where both things are true at once:

You are in recovery. And you are an athlete.

Your sobriety is your superpower. And your training is your proof.

The body that once drove you toward destruction is the same body that will carry you across a finish line.

Same intensity. Different target.

📢Here's what I want you to do right now.

1️⃣Drop one word in the comments that describes how your body felt when you were drinking.

2️⃣Then drop one word that describes how it feels now — even if "now" is only Day 3 and that word is raw or uncertain or shaky.

We're mapping the distance between those two words.

That distance is your story. And it matters.

🏃‍♀️Sober since May 26, 2020. 100-mile finisher. Still in it, right alongside you.

💖Amber "Sobriety Is My Superpower" Graziano

Stop surviving. Start training.

💫💫Join our Free Community today! Your tribe is waiting for you.

www.skool.com/sober-endurance-1111

P.S. If this hit something — share it. Invite them into this community. Someone in your life is still in the first version of this story and doesn't know this method exists.