For a 21-year-old, living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, sounds like a dream. White sand beaches, piña coladas, deep-sea fishing every day, and parties every night.
Luis Vela was offered that dream in January 2007.
Growing up near the Mexico border in McAllen, Texas, Vela knew the language and culture and had a passion for fishing, so he was offered a job at his friend’s sport fishing company.
He found solace in the silence of drifting out to sea with no cell service. He felt pure joy looking at the smile on his guest’s face as they fought to reel in a fish. It was as if he was on vacation every day.
But the line between work and social life began to blur.
“It was a non-stop party,” Vela said. “As a 21, 22-year-old, I got away with it for a while, and then it catches up. That lifestyle can catch up to you.”
While he was focused on making the lives of others as fun as possible, he was losing himself. Soon, Vela became addicted to alcohol and drove himself into isolation. Sometimes, he would go missing for days without communication with friends, family, or even his boss.
This lasted for over a decade.
Finding CrossFit
One day in 2015, Vela had just finished grocery shopping at a Walmart when he spotted a large building with a sign that said “NCFIT.” Parked out front was a massive lifted blue jeep, the same car his friend Sunny drove. Out of curiosity, he popped his head into the doors to say hello.
He wasn’t familiar with CrossFit, so to his surprise, he watched as a group of 10 athletes huddled around a coach holding a PVC pipe. They were demonstrating how to do an overhead squat.
Vela was previously a P.E. teacher in Texas, so that caught his eye. He made eye contact with Sunny, waved to her, and watched the class for several minutes before heading on his way.
Within an hour, he received a text from Sunny that told him to come try it. The next day, Vela was taking his first intro to CrossFit class.
For the next few years, Vela would come to NC CrossFit Cabo sporadically. On the days he made it into the gym, his body felt better and his mind cleared. It got him out of isolation and away from the bottle. But after a few days, the bad habits would resurface.
CrossFit became the tool Vela needed to overcome his alcohol addiction, but it was only when he embraced support from his community and put in the work that he began to experience the life-changing transformation he so desperately needed.
The Intervention
The severity of Vela’s addiction reached his family when he visited for Christmas in 2018. They knew they needed to do something, but after Vela boarded his plane back to Cabo, he broke contact with them again.
“(In February 2019) God intervened, and I tore my ACL. That required me to come home,” Vela said. “It was really the only way that train was going to stop. My legs had to be taken out from underneath me physically.”
One month later, Vela’s boss loaded him on a plane home and said, “Don’t come back until you are better.” But, he wasn’t just talking about his knee.
As soon as Vela landed in McAllen, his mom picked him up from the airport and drove him to what he thought was going to be a doctor’s appointment for his ACL. Instead, they pulled up to a counselor’s office.
It was an intervention.
“I felt lied to, I felt manipulated, I felt a lot of different emotions,” Vela said.
In the room stood his older brother Tommy, his two sisters, Nina and Sophia, and his mother. Each one of them had a chance to talk to him. His brother expressed he didn’t want him around his kids if he didn’t change. His sisters said they didn’t see a light in his eyes anymore, and that they missed the Luis they once knew.
His mom stayed quiet.
“I’ll never forget her look,” he said.
That day, Vela made a promise to each one of his family members that he would stop drinking alcohol and if he relapsed, he would walk himself into rehab. But he chose to deal with the side effects of his recovery without help, “white knuckling” his sobriety.
Throughout his recovery, Vela continued attending CrossFit classes and he found helping others brought back a sense of purpose into his life. In 2019, he got his Level 1 certificate, and in 2021, he became a member of CrossFit Groundbreakers and started coaching part-time.
Although he kept his promise of sobriety to his family, he was just as unhappy and uncomfortable. He still felt lost and isolated, even though CrossFit was providing him with all the right opportunities.
In July of 2023, Vela attended a family reunion that left him with an overwhelming feeling of love. But the following morning, he was at rock bottom, and thoughts of self-harm surfaced.
“At that point, I was willing to do anything to not feel that way,” Vela said.
He immediately called the counselor who helped with his intervention and agreed to start the 12-step program, which required him to attend 90 Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in 90 days.
“I call it hugging the cactus. I had to become patient, I had to become open, I had to become vulnerable,” Vela said.
Throughout the 12-step program, three valuable lessons stuck with him on his road to recovery: have the self-awareness to ask for help, put in the work, and help others.
Those three lessons shed a new light on the meaning of CrossFit.
Step 1: Ask For Help
“If you walk into a CrossFit gym, there is a reason why,” Vela said. “You don’t walk into CrossFit feeling 100%. Everyone needs a change or some sort of support or they’re looking for something they may not even know they’re looking for. That’s Step 1. They’ve already done that self-reflecting.”
Vela spent years surrounded by CrossFit communities, yet he always felt isolated. When he gained the self-awareness to ask for help and embrace the support, he found the true meaning of community. CrossFit Groundbreakers soon became his safe space.
“(CrossFit) Groundbreakers to me has served as a massive support system,” he said. “In 12-step programs, you have sponsors, and I think in CrossFit, every member of the gym is my sponsor.”
Step 2: Put in the Work
You can’t get a bar muscle-up without first training pull-ups. You can’t heal an addiction without taking the steps to work on yourself.
Just like healing from substance abuse, Vela learned CrossFit only works if you put in the work yourself. He would need to come consistently and put in max effort.
Only then was Vela able to start moving the needle from sick to well.
“I’m not a quick-fix guy. If I was a quick-fix guy, I would have been fixed when I was 21 years old and realized I had a problem with alcohol,” Vela said. “It took a few bumps in the road and the journey hasn’t been easy.”
Step 3: Help Others
CrossFit has been in Vela’s life throughout his journey. It has helped him at his worst and his best. So, Vela put everything he learned throughout his recovery into coaching CrossFit, giving back to the sport that saved his life.
“To be able to give that back for me is the purpose. At the end of the day, if I could help somebody out, whether it’s correcting them on a snatch or whether it’s talking to them after class about what’s going on at home, I think they are equally as important when you’re working in the CrossFit world,” he said.
For Vela, coaching is much more than introducing the workout on the whiteboard. It isn’t about how heavy his athletes can lift or how fast they can complete Fran. It’s about human connection and carrying them through progress, however that looks in their individual lives.
“The deeper you get to connect with someone, the more trust you can build,” he said.
Since starting his recovery, Vela has become a CrossFit Level 2 Trainer and is pursuing his CF-L3.
Returning to Cabo
A few times a year, when Vela returns to the white sand beaches of Cabo San Lucas, a new person is floating on a boat in the middle of the ocean, a fishing rod hanging off the side.
That life 21-year-old Vela dreamed of is still there, but the suffering in isolation is replaced with fulfillment and love.
“There is a lot of love surrounding me now,” he said, “and it wouldn’t be without CrossFit.”
Turning the Tide: How CrossFit Helped Luis Vela Overcome Addiction