How Running Helps Transform Addiction Recovery: A Carnal Sociological Perspective
Can running help you recover from addiction? While it’s common to hear that exercise supports sobriety, few studies explore how recovery is actually lived through the body. In this blog post, we dive into a groundbreaking study that takes a carnal sociological approach—literally running alongside people in recovery—to uncover how movement, pain, pleasure, and place shape the healing process.
What Is Carnal Sociology?
Carnal sociology is an approach that centers the body as a way of knowing. It demands that researchers don’t just observe from the sidelines—they participate. In this case, that meant conducting running interviews with people recovering from addiction, capturing real-time sensations, emotions, and social shifts that occur as bodies move through space.
Key Finding: Recovery Is Lived Through the Body
The study, led by Stephanie Bogue Kerr and Nicolas Moreau, challenges mainstream models of addiction that frame recovery as either a moral failure or a brain disease. Instead, it adopts a relational perspective that views addiction as a response to social disconnection. Recovery, then, becomes a re-connection—with the body, with others, and with the world.
By focusing on the runner’s habitus—a concept borrowed from sociologist Pierre Bourdieu—the study traces how embodied routines like training runs, community runs, and races help reconfigure identity, stability, and hope.
5 Ways Running Reshapes the Recovery Journey
The authors use Wacquant’s “Six S’s” to structure their analysis—categories that highlight how habits, environments, emotions, and sensations work together to shape lived experience. Here’s how running helped transform recovery:
1. Suffering: Channeling Pain into Discipline
Participants described how addiction consumed them physically and emotionally. Hangovers, withdrawal, and anxiety gave way—slowly—to shin splints, sore muscles, and blisters. Running didn’t eliminate suffering; it reshaped it. The pain of the run became a symbol of resilience and structure. Over time, running replaced addiction as the organizing principle of their lives.
“You become more of one thing and less of the other,” one participant shared.
2. Sentience: Feeling Alive Again
Addiction dulls the senses. Running reawakened them. Participants spoke about feeling reconnected to nature, noticing birds, rivers, and the sound of their own breath. One called it the “universal heartbeat”—a reminder that life is happening all around you. For many, this sensory re-engagement was deeply spiritual and meditative.
“I just lit up. I was like, this feels amazing,” said one runner.
3. Skills: Building a Life Through Running
Running became a framework for acquiring life skills. Training plans taught goal setting, time management, and the importance of rest. Races became milestones that marked not just physical endurance, but emotional healing. Many participants used these skills to support others in recovery or pivot into careers in fitness or counseling.
“Running teaches you structure, but also acceptance,” explained one interviewee.
4. Situatedness: Reclaiming Place and Identity
Running routes weren’t just exercise paths—they were stages for personal transformation. Participants revisited neighborhoods they once associated with using drugs, reclaiming them through new rituals. One woman described her favorite trail as her “bar,” a place to open up emotionally just like others might over a drink. These physical spaces became embedded with new meaning and memories.
5. Symbolism: Races as Rituals of Renewal
Running was more than a habit; it was a powerful metaphor. Marathons symbolized the long, unpredictable path of recovery—full of highs, lows, and the need to keep moving. The finish line wasn’t just the end of a race—it was a visible, public moment of transformation. Crossing it meant reclaiming one’s place in society, no longer hidden by shame.
“My place in the world was just perfect,” one runner said, tearfully recalling a race’s end.
Why Running Works (But Not for Everyone)
The study found that running is most helpful for people who had prior positive experiences with physical activity, especially in childhood. This raises important equity concerns. Not everyone has access to sport growing up, especially those from marginalized communities. So while running can be a powerful recovery tool, it’s not a universal solution.
It’s also worth noting that exercise addiction is a real risk. Many participants raised the concern themselves. The key distinction was whether running added to their lives or began to consume it. For most, running remained a “safe space”—a way to stay grounded without replacing one addiction with another.
Implications for Recovery Programs
Here’s why this research matters for addiction treatment and recovery services:
Integrate the body: Traditional recovery often neglects the body. This study shows that movement-based practices like running can help reconfigure not just health, but identity and relationships.
Use relational interventions: Running in community offered participants emotional support, belonging, and accountability.
Acknowledge nonlinearity: Recovery isn’t a straight path. Like training, it includes setbacks, recalibrations, and learning how to cope with uncertainty.
Recovery isn’t just about quitting substances. It’s about learning how to live in a body again, how to navigate suffering, and how to find joy. Running provided that opportunity.
Final Thoughts: Running Toward Connection
“Running and Stumbling to Recovery” doesn’t romanticize recovery—it reveals its messiness, its pain, and its potential. The study invites us to rethink what healing looks like: not just through sobriety chips or therapy sessions, but through sweat, sore knees, and sunrises on a trail.
If you or someone you love is in recovery, maybe the next step isn’t just forward—it’s a stride, a jog, a run. And in that motion, a reconnection to self, others, and the world.
Read the full article here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.70052
keywords: addiction recovery, running and sobriety, exercise for addiction, embodied recovery, carnal sociology, substance use healing, running therapy, sobriety and fitness, mental health and movement, trauma and embodiment
