Being addicted to sport is possible. Often, addictions are associated with substances harmful to health such as tobacco, alcohol or drugs. And yet, it is possible to become addicted to healthy practices, such as sports with bigorexia. But concretely, how does this manifest itself? guest in Well done for youthe psychiatrist Jean-Victor Blanc addresses this subject, sometimes unknown to the general public, by responding to the testimony of a listener, herself a sports addict.
The weakened body and social circle
“The switch is when a behavior will take up too much space and there will always be this loss of control vis-à-vis the behavior”, explains the specialist. Bigorexia, this need to regularly practice a sporting activity, is a situation that Servane Heudiard knows well. This listener, passionate about sport, quickly fell into addiction and wanted to share her experience on Europe 1. “We do a little bit at first because we like it, then a little bit more , really like a drug, until you realize that you need it every day. Once you do it daily, you have to increase the dose”, indicates the sportswoman at the microphone of Julia Vignali and Melanie Gomez.
But this excessive practice was not without consequences for his body. “I had three serious accidents. I had a broken pelvis, a double broken elbow and a broken leg,” explains this cyclist and rower. If this addiction has a strong impact on his body, it also deteriorates his social relations. In his book Sport, my prison without bars…, Servane Heudiard explains that she escaped from her sister’s wedding to go rowing. This addiction has therefore degraded his social circle. “Let’s say that social life comes down to the sports circle. I have many friends, but they are all cyclists or rowers”, laments the listener.
But why such intensity? “It’s exactly like in anorexia. Except that the ideal is not going to be ‘I want to be as thin as possible’, but rather ‘as muscular as possible’. However, the more the person is muscular, the more he will Perceiving yourself as ‘non-muscular’. This is where it becomes very complicated. The person will put their health at risk and take hormones to achieve a muscular stature which is in fact impossible”, warns Jean-Victor Blanc after the testimony of Servane Heudiard.
“Find the right limit”
To understand the intensity of her sporting practice, Servane Heudiard details her training. If she limits herself to two hours of rowing on weekends, she admits to having “climbed to six hours of sport every day, 365 out of 365”. “I’m freelancing, working at home, it allows me to adjust my schedules. Instead of spending two hours on public transport, I spend two hours on my bike,” explains the sportswoman.
Faced with her addiction and the dangers it represents for her body, Servane Heudiard wishes to alert sports practitioners to the risks involved. “You have to find the right limit. Sport is really good for your health, but you must not tip over. We are in a dangerous ambivalence. Sport has a very good image. When we see someone doing sport, we always going to congratulate him. We’re never going to tell him that it’s not good,” she warns.
A fact confirmed by Jean-Victor Blanc. “The entourage can finally reinforce the behavior at a given moment by not necessarily seeing that it can represent a risk. We know that, in general, sports or bodybuilding addicts will take longer to consult,” says the psychiatrist. The entourage can therefore ultimately feed a malaise and addiction.