E17 / Addiction and Obsession with Charlie Engle

Today, I'm speaking with Charlie Engle. Charlie is an ultra-endurance athlete, author of an outstanding memoir called Running Man, the subject of a documentary film called Running The Sahara, and the founder of the 5.8 Dead Sea to Everest project, in which he will travel under his own power from the lowest to the highest points on all seven continents. Charlie is also one of the most accomplished ultramarathon runners in the world, having placed in hundreds of races in dozens of countries around the globe.

His motivation to run and tackle extreme adventures stems from his battle with addiction to drugs and alcohol. Charlie has been in recovery since July 23, 1992, and he credits a large part of his recovery to the purposeful devotion and emotional release he experiences while running.

Charlie and I met through my friend Todd Eichler, who I met through my friend and previous guest Adam Gayner, who I met through EVRYMAN, one of the leading organizations for men's work and men's groups. If you’re a man and you’re not yet familiar with the world of mens work, and you’d like more community, connection and emotional depth in your life, I highly recommend finding a men's group to participate in.

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As you listen, you might scan the questions at the bottom of the show notes, or just consider this one: what is your own relationship with addiction and addictive patterns? Even if you’ve never been addicted to anything at all—although that’s doubtful—what do you know, or think you know, about the mechanisms of addiction? Most of what I thought I knew for most of my live was wrong, and it’s been highly informative, useful, and interesting to get more familiar with what addiction really is, and how it affects just