Hacking the Runner’s High: Harvard Proves What I’ve Been Doing All Along

Hacking the Runner’s High

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For most of my adult life, I’ve been experimenting on myself. Call it biohacking, call it stubborn curiosity, call it refusing to let someone else define what “optimal” should feel like. Whatever the label, I’ve treated my body and brain like a lab—testing supplements, nootropics, cannabinoids, routines, and rhythms until I landed on something that consistently lets me hit what I call Mission Mode.

Mission Mode is that state where distractions vanish, the project consumes me, and I ride the rail for twelve, fourteen, sometimes eighteen hours without looking up. It’s not “grinding.” It’s alignment. And for years, I’ve known exactly how to get there—even if the science lagged behind.

Here’s my recipe: I start the morning with a tall glass of water dosed with my supplement cocktail—selenium, magnesium, iodine, zinc, the usual heavy hitters—plus a squeeze of lemon and sometimes honey to make it drinkable. That’s followed by coffee fortified with Lion’s Mane, and a few drops of methylene blue to keep the mitochondria humming. About an hour in, I take a THC gummy. Within thirty to sixty minutes, the switch flips: the noise falls away, the rail locks in, and I’m gone. Lo-fi beats in the background, no calls, no interruptions—just pure execution.

Now, a lot of people hear “gummy” and immediately write the whole thing off. Lazy. Pothead. Whatever label makes them feel better. Meanwhile, the gym crowd has always been quick to lecture me: “You just need to exercise more. That’s the real solution.” And look—I’m not anti-exercise. But the idea that running a few miles was the only legitimate path to focus never sat right with me.

Turns out I was onto something.

In 2023, Harvard researchers published a study that flipped four decades of exercise science on its head. For years, the story went like this: when you work out, your brain releases endorphins, those feel-good chemicals that create the famous “runner’s high.” The problem? Endorphins are too large to cross the blood–brain barrier. They can’t possibly be the source of that euphoric clarity people describe after a hard run.

The real player is anandamide—your body’s own cannabinoid. In other words, your brain’s THC. Harvard measured it directly: after about thirty minutes of moderate cardio, circulating anandamide levels spike dramatically. Unlike endorphins, anandamide crosses into the brain with ease, binding to the same receptors THC does. Which means that runner’s high? It’s not an opioid effect at all. It’s your internal cannabis system flipping the switch.

Here’s a good primer if you want the science straight from the source: Harvard Health: The endocannabinoid system—essential and mysterious.

That’s why this hit me like a confirmation stamp. My THC protocol wasn’t about getting high—it was about hacking into the very system Harvard just validated. While the rest of the world called people like me “stoners,” I was beta-testing a pathway that biology itself had built in. And now, the data says I wasn’t imagining it.

So yes, the gym crowd was half-right. Exercise works. But not for the reasons they thought. It’s not magic discipline, or endorphins, or grit. It’s chemistry. The same chemistry I’ve been leveraging with precision for years. And if the goal is focus, clarity, and performance, why wouldn’t you use the tools that work?

That’s what Mission Mode is. Not a motivational poster, not a productivity hack, but a biochemical switch you can flip if you know where to push. For me, it’s supplements, coffee, methylene blue, and a gummy. For someone else, maybe it’s a 22-minute cardio session at 70% max heart rate. Different paths, same circuit.

The point is: it’s real. It’s measurable. And it’s time we stopped pretending it isn’t.

So next time someone tells me to “just go exercise,” I’ll smile and say, “Sure—at the right intensity, for the right duration, to spike your endocannabinoids.” Because now I’ve got Harvard on my side.

And Mission Mode? Turns out it was science all along.

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