You’re addicted to CrossFit...

It should look like this. Wreckage. Destruction. Annihilation. After “Power Cindy” you should look like somebody just pistol-whipped you or shoved a needle in your vein.

You should be wrecked.

And if you’re not? Then your pacing was off, your intensity level was too low, your plan was too measured.

CrossFit, done right, is like taking drugs. Your brain gets scrambled and your hands shake, but you feel flippin’ FANTASTIC. Yet your health improves and you look better. The fact that it costs less than drugs and you get to keep all your teeth is just a bonus. But don’t try to fool yourself. You’re an addict. A CrossFit addict. Maybe you don’t have track marks on your arms, but look at your hands. Touch your traps. Check out the marks on your shins, or your collarbone. The signs are there, aren’t they?

You’re addicted to CrossFit but you don’t have to cruise bad neighborhoods for your fix and the cops aren’t going to bust you. In fact, the cops are working out next to you and they’re addicts too. Both of you will go home and find yourself thinking about your next hit — reading CrossFit Journal articles, haunting the blog, watching videos again and again, hitting Facebook for some CrossFit talk, jonesing for your next hit.

And the next day, when you get to the box and you’re lacing up your sneakers and the warm-up is about to start, you’ll feel that pit in your stomach and you’ll be scared and you’ll think, “Holy crap, why do I do this? It’s going to hurt.” You’ll almost want to run away, back to your couch, back to the food and television oblivion that used to dull your pain of living, back before you had your first CrossFit hit.

But then you remember the high you’re going to feel at the end. And you swallow hard and walk onto the floor.

The coach yells “3 . . . 2 . . . 1. Go!” The needle slips in. It pinches a bit . . . but then . . . ahhhh . . .

(Words by Lisbeth Darsh/CrossFit Watertown.)