North Texans recovering from addiction are finding sobriety through sweat

NORTH TEXAS — North Texans recovering from addiction said they are getting help staying sober in an unexpected place.

The owner of a Plano fitness center said there's science linking sobriety and sweat and it's catching on with those in recovery.

The nightclub lighting, the pulsating music and social atmosphere all appeal to the life Tiffani Jones used to live.

"There's times where I want to go on a Friday night when I've had a tough week, where I want to go and have a glass of wine or two, or have a margarita at a restaurant, and I can't do that," said Jones. "But with this, I can kind of let myself loose and enjoy myself."

Jones is celebrating her ninth year of sobriety this week by doing something that, over the last few months, she credits with helping her stay that way.

"I feel like I've been on a good roll right now, and I don't want to stop," Jones said.

Inside Body Machine Fitness in Plano there are a growing number of members who are recovering from drug and alcohol abuse.

They even publicly promote their sobriety.

"I think it, for me, it's like I wasn't an alcoholic, I was a drug addict," said Carlos Rosales. "I know what certain triggers were triggers to that person to come back."

Rosales is among those in recovery who've found sobriety through sweat.

"It's like some people go to bars," Rosales said. "Okay, so my bar is the gym."

Jeremy Soder is a co-owner of Body Machine Fitness and first recognized the fix that comes from fitness while trying to help his brother with a heroin addiction.

"I started taking him to the gym daily," said Soder. "And over the course of probably like 30 days, it was the best I had seen him literally, I don't know, in a decade, the happiest, the most well-adjusted."

This workout is designed to boost chemicals in the brain that advocates say can help recovering addicts stay sober.

"Change your brainwave states and make it start releasing more dopamine, more endorphins," Soder said. "And essentially, we're going to energize the reward and pleasure circuits of the brain."

A study by the National Institutes of Health found that "Exercise can help restore dopamine levels to pre-abuse levels. Dopamine is a chemical that the brain produces to create feelings of happiness, and drug and alcohol abuse can disrupt the brain's balance of dopamine."

"It's like places like this have changed the way I think about life," said Rosales.