Smile, Or You're Doing It Wrong: Andy Glaze On Relentless Positivity, PTSD, & The Healing Power Of Movement
May 18, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readAndy Glaze’s path from crystal meth addiction and institutional trauma to long-distance running illustrates how movement can interrupt cycles of emotional avoidance. After early drug use that escalated rapidly from cigarettes at 13 to heavy methamphetamine by 16, Glaze was sent to a Utah wilderness program and later a therapeutic boarding school marked by confrontational group therapy and grooming by a teacher. These experiences left lasting effects, including difficulty processing loss and a pattern of high-functioning substance use that resumed after college. Exercise entered as a practical intervention when panic attacks and physical symptoms appeared in his mid-twenties; a friend’s suggestion led to gym sessions that first reduced anxiety, then became a daily structure.
Movement as nervous-system regulation
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:15) **Andy's Introduction & Core Themes** - Overview of his ultra-running life, smile persona, and the dual focus on recovery from trauma plus movement as emotional healing
- 2 (03:45) **Childhood & Family Upheaval** - Parents' divorce at age 10, lack of supervision, and entry into drug experimentation
- 3 (04:47) **Rapid Descent into Crystal Meth Addiction** - From cigarettes at 13 to full meth addiction by 16, including extreme access through local biker networks
- 4 (09:19) **Wilderness Program in Utah** - Forced endurance hiking as "scared straight" intervention and first exposure to voluntary suffering
- 5 (12:43) **John Dewey Academy Boarding School** - Therapeutic environment involving confrontational group therapy, shame, and conversion therapy elements
- 6 (19:41) **College Sobriety, Relapse & Corporate Life** - Staying clean through college then resuming high-functioning use afterward
- 7 (26:57) **Discovering Exercise as Medicine** - Friend's suggestion leads to gym, elliptical, and first adult runs via community college class
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Andy Glaze is a firefighter paramedic, ultrarunner, and the author of “Smile, or You're Doing It Wrong.”
This conversation explores the space between falling down and getting back up and how movement becomes a catalyst for emotional healing. We discuss Andy's descent into addiction, the inflection point that rerouted his life, the limits of running as a coping mechanism, the algorithm of transformation, and more.
Andy doesn't hold back about how he got here.
I'm a fan. Enjoy this one!
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