The gym'll fix it (From Stroud News and Journal)

The gym'll fix it

OBSESSION is a curious affliction.

It creeps up on you out of nowhere, takes hold of you in its vice-like grip and refuses to let go.

That is how it has become for me and the gym.

This time a year ago I was a 20-a-day smoker, bottle-of-wine-a-day drinker, perilously-little-exercise-a-day doer.

In fact, if I walked the dog once in a while, or played a blue moon round of golf I felt like I had had my exercise quota.

Yes, it was a sorry state of affairs and after a while I realised this for myself.

So I stopped smoking and joined the gym. Since then I have become rather obsessed with it.

Now, let us be clear about the gym.

For most of us it has little to do with enjoyment, after all there's a reason it's called a work out.

The thing is, once you start getting in to shape a curious paranoia settles upon you rendering you fearful of ever stopping.

Perhaps it is a Sisyphus complex.

The thought of going back to the bottom of that hill and having to climb it all again is simply too much to contemplate so you just keep on pushing that boulder.

And in this case it is not the sadistic gods who have condemned you to this tragic treadmill but your masochistic self.

Absurd? Oh, yes but also perversely satisfying.

As the sweat on your forehead dries and your muscles - the new ones you have found - give up screaming for dull murmurs of muted anguish, the feel good endorphin pay off washes into your brain.

Exercise at the end of the day is just a drug.

So that explains the obsession, which is after all just another word for addiction.