What Are You Going to Do With All That Time?

The first question sobriety asked me

I’ve never felt so uncomfortable.

When you see a newborn deer or horse trying to take its first steps, there’s a moment when the animal looks completely bewildered. Its legs don’t quite work yet. It’s shaky, uncertain, and almost surprised to be standing at all.

That’s exactly how I felt walking out of a bar in Phoenix on August 26, 2007.

The sun in Phoenix is brutal in August, and it was mid-afternoon. I had just taken what would become my last drink. I had two hours before I needed to get ready for work.

And the first thought that crossed my mind wasn’t about withdrawals, cravings, or whether I would succeed. It was much simpler.

What the hell am I going to do with my time?

That question sounds crazy now, but it was the first real challenge sobriety brought. Even with a job, family, and responsibilities, there are always empty hours scattered throughout the day. Drinking had quietly taken over those hours in my life.

Happy hour. Late nights. Weekends.

Random Tuesday afternoons when nothing else seemed pressing. When you remove alcohol, those hours don’t magically disappear. They just sit there. Waiting. This was the first real lesson I learned about sobriety.

You can’t get sober by subtraction alone.

Removing alcohol leaves a void, and if you don’t fill it with something else, that empty space will start whispering to you. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop. Whoever first said that understood addiction very well.

Standing in that Phoenix parking lot, I realized I needed something to occupy the space alcohol had been living in. For reasons I still don’t fully understand, the idea that popped into my head was running a marathon. Which was completely absurd.

I could barely jog across the street.

I had run a 5K a couple of years earlier because a girl I had a crush on asked me to. That was the full extent of my running career. Yet there I was, in the middle of a hot parking lot, seriously considering a marathon. I actually laughed out loud. Was I a masochist? Were these the kinds of ridiculous thoughts sobriety was going to produce?

But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

Training for a marathon would fill the void.

It would give me structure. It would give me something to think about besides drinking. It would occupy the hours that alcohol used to consume. So I did something slightly insane. I found a marathon outside Salt Lake City the following April, booked a plane ticket, and committed to running it. Not because I wanted to become a runner.

Because I needed to survive.

Running Wasn't the Point

People sometimes assume that running a marathon must be a great personal achievement. In reality, it was more like a lifeline. It gave me something to hold onto while my life was recalibrating around sobriety. The training runs took place in the grid-like suburbs outside Phoenix, where every street seems to stretch endlessly in straight lines under the desert sun.

The challenge of running and pushing a little harder each day was the elixir I needed. These stretches of time on the Phoenix streets, with sunburnt shoulders, were vital in my search for a new life.

Filling the Space

Quitting drinking wasn’t the real fight. The real fight was figuring out what to do with everything it left behind.

If all you do is remove the habit, you’re left staring at a lot of empty space.
So I had to choose what went there.

For me, it was a marathon.

Not because I loved running. I didn’t.

But I needed something hard. Something structured. Something that demanded my time and attention in a way alcohol used to.

I signed up before I felt ready. Paid for it so I couldn’t back out. Committed before logic had a chance to talk me out of it.

Because if you don’t fill the space on purpose, something else will do it for you.

I crossed the finish line of the Salt Lake City Marathon.

But in a lot of ways, that was just the beginning.

E Olson