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In February 2024, CrossFit affiliate owners, coaches, and healthcare professionals came together for the CrossFit for Health Summit, presented by GORUCK. CrossFit thought leaders led panel discussions on fitness, performance, and the hard work of health, while renowned experts shared cutting-edge research on longevity, chronic disease, mental health, and community — and CrossFit’s powerful role in it all.
On May 24, 2018, Christopher Spallina woke up on the ground next to his car in Hazlet, New Jersey, surrounded by the police officers who’d resuscitated him. He’d survived a near-fatal overdose of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times more potent than heroin. Just 2 milligrams can kill a person.
Spallina had thought what he’d taken was heroin, and he could handle 15-20 bags (about 2 grams) a day of that. So he consumed two bags in his parked, but running, car.
When Spallina awoke, an officer pointed to some children playing basketball about 100 feet away.
“You see those kids over there?” the officer said. “You could have killed those kids, and you would have went back to prison for the rest of your life.”
Spallina, then 35, had already served more than six months behind bars for possession of narcotics with intent to distribute. Going back would be bad; killing someone would be unfathomable.
“I didn’t really care too much about my own well-being at the time,” Spallina said, “but I knew I didn’t want to hurt anybody else.”
There was no singular trauma or temptation that triggered Spallina’s addiction.
“It was the late ‘90s,” he said by way of explanation.
Prescription opioids were everywhere and easy to get. Spallina and his friends — teenagers — were just experimenting.
“If it’s something that the doctor can give you, it can’t be that bad,” he thought at the time.
By his early 20s, Spallina was physically dependent on opioids. He spent the next 15 years trying to get sober.
“I’ve been to treatment and detox nine times,” he said.
Occasionally, he managed to rack up short periods of sobriety.
“But … there was always something missing,” he said. “Feelings of guilt, shame, and embarrassment would come up, and I didn’t really know how to cope with them. And I would end up using just to not feel those emotions, and then just compound the problem over and over.”
After Spallina’s stint in prison in 2013 — during which he experienced six months of shock incarceration, described as a “quasimilitary program involving physical training, drill, manual labor, and strict discipline” — he managed a drug-free year.
“The physical fitness piece (of shock incarceration) really resonated with me,” Spallina said.
So he started CrossFit, staying “sober just by fitness.”
But then he got off parole. He ran 5K races and indulged in the free beer after. One thing led to another, which led to “full-blown addiction” once more.
And he stopped going to CrossFit.
“I was embarrassed,” he said. “I didn’t want to walk in, high, to my gym people that would hold me accountable.”
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