The Secret Addiction of High Performers

The Secret Addiction of High Performers

A confession from a writer-athlete about losing control and how to reclaim it.

“Be alert and of sober mind, for your enemy, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” — 1 Peter 5:8

I binge eat.

Not terribly often, but often enough to make me feel terrible when I do. And here’s the rub: I only binge eat when I feel terrible.

The writers and athletes, i.e. Artistic Warriors who are reading this I’m sure can relate. There’s nothing that makes an Artistic Warrior feel more terrible than when he doesn’t have the one thing he craves more than anything: control.

Control of his craft.

Control of his schedule.

Control of his output.

During a hard workout or writing session, he musters the strength to persevere, disciplining himself with words such as:

“Finish!”

“One more!”

“If you do it then it’s done!”

For the Artistic Warrior, those words work for him when he has total control… but those same words can and do become weapons against him when he loses control.

Which begs the question: what causes someone so disciplined to lose control?

The one area he can’t control: his job.

His job isn’t like the blank page or the track; it doesn’t cater to his craving, if you will.

He can't outwrite or outrun his way out of an employee no-call/no-showing, being micromanaged, or dealing with tone deafness from corporate.

Starve an Artistic Warrior of control long enough and he’ll do anything to reclaim it; even if that means binge eating himself into oblivion.

That isn’t control. That’s self-sabotage.

I know, because I’ve done it enough times to take the time to write about it.

Here’s how it goes:

Most days I’m up at five. I write, workout—the two areas in which I control the craft, schedule, and output—then head to work at half past nine. If the week has been long and the progress has been small, I’m already anxious the minute I step onto the floor. It doesn’t help that I work in fast-food, where the metrics, (speed of service, labor, and food costs) matter more than most think.

A ten hour shift to cap off a fifty hour week with not much to show for leaves me hungry and pissed off, i.e. hangry, when I get into my car at eight that night.

“Have the weed ready.” Is typically the text I send my wife.

And she does, along with dinner when I get home.

I take a rip on the weed pen big enough to send me to Jupiter, then after having dinner, I keep eating.

And eating.

And eating.

Why? Well, there’s nothing more elusive than an obvious fact. And the fact of the matter is: binge-eating is how I reclaim control.

Not only that, but bingeing also provides the same chemical responses in my brain that I get from—you guessed it—writing and working out.

Having a peanut butter sandwich gives me a serotonergic response of feeling good, no different than being in flow whilst writing or sprinting at top-speed. Finishing the entire jar of peanut butter—“Finish!”—provides a dopaminergic response that feels the same as, well, finishing a hard workout or writing 2,000 words in a single sitting.

From a chemically-induced emotional standpoint, in a self-sabotaging attempt to reclaim control, I’m having my cake and eating it, too.

If you suffer from bingeing of any kind, that anecdote should liberate you in knowing it’s not that you can’t control yourself, you just don’t know how to reclaim it in a healthier way. And if you’re still reading, I’d like to think I’ve earned your trust in providing you the way to reclaim control without sabotaging yourself.

The prescription is simple: when you feel like you’ve lost control, (perhaps from a bad day or week at work like me) do what you know you can have complete control of.

Pro-tip: it wouldn’t hurt to cut out the weed, either, at least when you’re feeling terrible.

“Be alert and of sober mind, for your enemy, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” — 1 Peter 5:8

For me, and if you’re an Artistic Warrior as well, it’s writing.

Think about it, why else would this article exist if I wasn’t trying to reclaim control without sabotaging myself?

Why not work out? You might be wondering, and it’s a fair question. The reason why is because, though I can control the output, working out after being on my feet fifty-hours is beginning to flirt with self-sabotage. I’m very strategic and calculated, i.e. in control, when it comes to when and how much I train, given my workload. More is not better, especially for a sprinter like myself. Trust me, I’ve injured myself enough times to know that, so I’d take that lesson without the scar if I were you.

So, writing it is. And any writer knows, when you’re in front of a blank page you’re in total control.

Control of your craft, your schedule, and your output.

With that in mind, next time you’re craving control, starve yourself of self-sabotage and write your way through whatever you’re working out.

It works for me, and this newsletter is proof that I’ve reclaimed control; the one thing every writer and athlete wants.