I’ve been watching an unlikely source of inspiration lately.
Former boxing champion Adrian Broner recently began streaming a forty-five-day training camp leading up to an exhibition fight. Broner has never hidden his history with alcoholism. It’s been public, painful, and by his own admission one of the defining struggles of his life. Then something happened. He started training.
Within days, it felt as though the gym had occupied the same psychological space that alcohol once held. Four days into the stream, he wasn’t just transforming himself—he was inspiring thousands of strangers watching him rediscover what he was capable of. Watching it unfold made me realize that we may have been telling the wrong story about addiction.
To be clear, addiction is devastating. It destroys health, families, relationships, and sometimes lives. Recovery often requires treatment, community, accountability, and an extraordinary amount of courage. Nothing I’m about to say diminishes that reality. But I do think we’ve become so focused on the object of addiction that we’ve overlooked the machinery underneath it.
We tell people they have an addictive personality. I wonder how many lives would change if we instead said, “You have an extraordinary capacity for sustained commitment. Right now, it’s pointed toward something that is hurting you.”
Those aren’t merely different words. They’re different identities. One tells a person that their defining characteristic is their weakness. The other suggests their defining characteristic is their power—and that power needs education, structure, and direction. Identity matters because people tend to live toward the stories they’re given.
Psychologists have long recognized addiction transference. Someone quits drinking and suddenly becomes consumed by running. Another throws themselves into weightlifting. Someone else builds a business with the same relentless intensity they once devoted to substances. Others immerse themselves in religion, painting, woodworking, parenting, or a dozen other pursuits.
Traditionally, we tell this story as though the addiction simply changed costumes. Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes one unhealthy obsession simply replaces another. But I think there’s another way to understand what we’re witnessing. Perhaps what transferred wasn’t the addiction. Perhaps it was the engine.
Our culture has an oddly selective admiration for obsession. The entrepreneur working eighteen-hour days is celebrated as driven. The Olympic athlete training through injury is praised for discipline. The artist who disappears into a studio for months is admired for dedication. Yet when that same capacity becomes attached to alcohol or drugs, we often conclude that the person themselves is broken.
The outcomes are profoundly different, and those differences matter. I’m not suggesting that addiction is secretly a gift. I’m suggesting that the capacity beneath it might be.
Some people seem born with an unusual ability to commit themselves completely. They don’t know how to care halfway. They don’t dabble. They throw their entire being into whatever captures them. Without guidance, that capacity can become catastrophic. With purpose, support, and structure, it can become extraordinary.
The tragedy isn’t that these people possess too much fire. The tragedy is that no one handed them a map.
Years ago, one of the books that quietly changed my life was Diary of a Drug Fiend by Aleister Crowley. Whatever else one might think about Crowley—and there is certainly plenty to think—the novel introduced me to an idea that never left. The force itself wasn’t evil. It simply needed somewhere worthy to go.
Looking back through the lens of what I’ve come to call Forcing Theory, addiction resembles force trapped inside a closed system. Awareness circles the same object over and over, reinforcing itself until every thought, every decision, and every ounce of motivation begins orbiting a single point. Recovery isn’t necessarily about eliminating the force. It’s about breaking the orbit.
The same psychological energy that once revolved around a bottle might someday revolve around raising a child, creating art, mentoring others, building a business, or simply becoming the person you secretly hoped you could be. The force didn’t disappear. It found a better direction.
None of this should be mistaken for a replacement for treatment. Many people need therapy. Many need medication. Many need rehabilitation. Many need all three. Recovery deserves every effective tool we can offer. But hope is also a tool.
I can’t help wondering how many people have spent years believing the worst thing about themselves was their capacity for obsession. What if the obsession was never the gift? What if the gift was the capacity for extraordinary devotion? That’s a very different story to tell someone. It’s also a very different story to believe about yourself.
We spend much of our lives trying to extinguish the parts of ourselves that have caused suffering. Sometimes that’s necessary. But sometimes what appears to be the enemy is simply power without direction. Perhaps our task isn’t always to become less intense. Perhaps it’s to become more intentional.
The goal was never to extinguish the fire. The goal was always to teach it where to burn.