Adventure helps with addiction recovery because extreme physical challenge forces you fully into the present, and presence is the one place the craving cannot follow. When you are making a real decision with real stakes, there is no room left for the story your brain tells about the past or the future. That enforced focus is not an escape. Used daily, it becomes practice at staying present, which is exactly the skill addiction erodes.
This is the mechanism behind the Battling Monsters movement, operated by Just Care More, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. It is not a clinical treatment and it is not medical advice. It is a way of using hard physical effort as a daily tool.
Why Does Physical Challenge Change Anything?
Addiction thrives on autopilot. It lives in the gap between a feeling and a reaction, in the moments you are not fully awake to what you are doing. A demanding physical challenge closes that gap. It demands your whole attention, right now, or it hurts. There is no autopilot at the top of a climb or in cold water you were not ready for.
Do that on purpose, again and again, and you are training the muscle that addiction weakens: the ability to be here, to feel something hard without immediately reaching for the thing that numbs it. You are not fixing your brain in one session. You are giving it a repeatable rep.
Is This the Same as Adventure Therapy?
No. Adventure therapy is a clinical model run by licensed professionals inside a treatment framework. Battling Monsters is not that. It is not therapy, it does not diagnose or treat, and it is not delivered by clinicians. It is a daily practice anyone can start on their own, built from lived experience rather than a treatment manual.
That distinction matters. Clinical programs have their place, and if one is working for you, keep going. Battling Monsters is the part that keeps running on the ordinary days in between, when no professional is in the room and it is just you and the choice to show up.
Where Did This Come From?
Jamie Leibert spent his twenties deep in meth addiction. He served four years in federal prison, including six months in solitary confinement, and about thirteen years total in the system, from group homes onward. He got out. He rebuilt. And the thing that consistently reset his brain in a way talking had not was movement, the harder the better.
As Captain Manicorn he went on to travel and fly wingsuits across more than 80 countries. Not as a stunt and not as escapism. As the daily tool that kept him present. Battling Monsters is what he built from that understanding so other people could use it without needing a plane or a mountain.
"The most dangerous thing I could find was the only thing that made me fully show up. So I stopped running from that and started using it."
Do You Have to Do Extreme Sports?
No. You do not need to BASE jump to use this. The point is not danger for its own sake. The point is finding your version of the thing that pulls you completely into the present and refuses to let you drift. For some people that is running or lifting. For others it is surfing, cold-water swimming, jiu-jitsu, or a climb.
The activity is interchangeable. The commitment is not: do something genuinely hard, do it today, do it again tomorrow. You can see how this gets taught through activity in programs like Camp Care More, and you can read more of Jamie's story on the about page.
How Can I Get Help?
Start with the free daily framework at Battling Monsters, or email hello@justcaremore.org if you want to reach a person. If you are in crisis, this is not a substitute for emergency help. In the United States you can call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, any time, free.