Drug, nicotine, and alcohol use among exercisers: Does substance addiction co-occur with exercise addiction?

Background: Scholastic works suggest that those at risk for exercise addiction are also often addicted to illicit drugs, nicotine, and/or alcohol, but empirical evidence is lacking.

Aims: The aim of the present work was to examine the co-occurrence of illicit drug, nicotine, and alcohol use frequency (prevalence of users) and severity (level of problem in users) among exercisers classified at three levels of risk for exercise addiction: (i) asymptomatic, (ii) symptomatic, and (iii) at-risk.

Methods: A sample of 538 regular exercisers were surveyed via the Qualtrics research platform. They completed the (i) Drug Use Disorder Identification Test, (ii) Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence, (iii) Alcohol Use Disorder Identification Test, and (iv) Exercise Addition Inventory.

Results: A large proportion (n = 59; 10.97%) of the sample was found to be at risk for exercise addiction. The proportion of drug and alcohol users among these participants did not differ from the rest of the sample. However, the incidence of nicotine consumption was lowest among them. The severity of problematic substance use did not differ across the groups.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that substance addiction and the risk for exercise addiction are unrelated. In fact, those at risk for exercise addiction exhibited the healthiest profile related to the prevalence of smoking.