
According to old Greek legend, after a Greek army defeated a dangerous enemy sitting right outside their home city, the victorious generals sent a messenger home to spread the good news. The poor boy ran just about 26 miles non-stop, in the hot Greek summer, only to arrive at home, declare victory, and then collapse and die from sheer exhaustion.
Luckily for the boy, the storyâs probably a myth. But youâll recognize names in the legend. The Greeks won at a battlefield called Marathon, and we still run 26.2 miles to commemorate it.
The boyâs final words? âNikĂŠ,â Greek for âvictory.â Itâs not hard to see why a shoe company later took the name for itself.
Running is as old as civilization itself, and easily more beloved today than several thousand years ago. Today, though, weâre not reviewing Nike, but Brooks, a sporting goods company that has taken the same 1,000-year-old problems of foot pain, tissue damage, and simple exhaustion, and engineered their best solutions into a shoe.
The Brooks Addiction series is expertly engineered, comfortable, and corrective. It looks quite boring, to be frank. It feels great, and only occasionally breaks down. We highly recommend it.
Donât take our word for it, though â take everyone elseâs.
Why Should I Trust a Faceless Online Review?
Fair point â anyone can write and publish something online without personal experience. And while weâve had experience with several types of running shoes, including Brooks, we havenât comprehensively tried them all.
Even if we had, however, it wouldnât matter. Recommending something isnât just a matter of trying it out, but of hearing out all others who have tried it out themselves. Personal experience is good, but itâs still a step behind listening to others who have tried something, and have something to say about it.
To that end, weâve done a lot of listening. Runners are active online, and are very frank in their discussions of shoe preferences. Weâve read nearly every review, every complaint, and every praise available about the Brooks Addiction series. Anything we say is something thatâs been said before multiple times, on multiple sites and platforms, and in multiple reviews. If we state a problem, or praise a feature, itâs been verified by multiple others.
Naturally, you shouldnât just take our word for it â but if you like what you hear, you should try it for yourself. Wearing a pair of shoes, and only that, is going to tell you if that pair is a good fit. In the end, nothing else will do.
That brings us back to our summation: expertly engineered, comfortable, corrective, looks boring, feels great, and only occasionally breaks down.
Itâs best, of course, if we expand that review just a bit. Letâs start with the positives.
Everything Great About Brooks Addiction
We probably should have said âeverything great about Brooks Addiction and Brooks, the company.â There are many great reasons to buy the Brooks Addiction, but also a few to buy from Brooks itself.
Weâll start, though, with the most important reasons to consider the Addiction â your feet hurt, and you desperately need relief.
1. Pain Relief, Post-Op, and Surgery Prevention
A common thread among several reviews of the Brooks Addiction was this â âmy orthopedic doctor recommended these shoes to me.â
This isnât an exaggeration. Multiple reviews describe choosing Brooks because a doctor told them to. The advice is sound. Brooks Addiction has a loyal following among people suffering from chronic foot pain, post-surgery pain, or nerve damage.
Weâll address the reasons why the Brooks Addiction series is such a great cure shortly â for now, suffice it to say that shoe engineering has come a long way since the Greeks and Marathon.
At present, just consider what kind of pain you have, and how the Brooks Addiction might help.
Plantar Fasciitis
Neuropathy
Knee Pain, Post-Op, and Pronation
2. Science and Sole DNA
The simplest way to put this? The Brooks Addiction series sole gives bounce to your feet as you run, and cushion to your feet as you walk.
These features usually donât go together. Brooks, however, has designed a liquid that does both.
The science involved is complex, but a simple explanation is a comparison with water. Jumping off a diving board into a pool wonât hurt you, but falling off a tall bridge into a river certainly will. The slower you enter a body of water, the smoother your entry. The faster you fall into it, the harder the initial impact â in fact, if youâre high enough, the impact will be just like falling onto concrete.
Brooks DNA works just like this, but on a slower scale. The harder the impact on the sole, the more the sole bounces back. The softer the impact, the more it absorbs.
Honestly, youâre better off just watching the video. Enjoy the moment where a runner literally runs across a pool of Brooks DNA liquid without sinking.
Pain relief and science, however, arenât the only reasons we love this company, and why we think you should buy.
3. Ethics
If you have to buy something, itâs much more gratifying making that buy from a company with ethics.
Brooks did something wonderful ten years ago, making a biodegradable midsole to replace the old foam version found in nearly every running shoe on the planet. The old version is made from something called ethylene-vinyl acetate, and EVA foam takes around 1,000 years to completely break down. Consider how many pairs of shoes are tossed each year, and youâve got yourself a minor ecological disaster.
Brooksâ BioMoGo is found in nearly all pairs of Brooks shoes, and matches the traditional EVA foam in all performance aspects. The second-best part? It only takes 20 years to biodegrade.
The first best part? Youâll notice we didnât say âBrooksâ patented BioMoGo.â A patent, even though it would make Brooks a lot of money, would prevent other companies from using the formula, and add up to a lot more trash.
Brooks just gave the formula away, to anyone who wanted to use it. Any company willing to do that deserves your support.
There you have it â great for pain and injury, great for running, and great for the planet.
Nothing is perfect, however, and Brooks Addiction users still have complaints â which brings us to the cons list.
Everything Not So Great About Brooks Addiction
The first is a fairly common problem for running shoes.
1. Weak Mesh
A number of reviews were upset that the mesh atop the front of the shoe, the area covering your toes, started developing holes and tears within a few weeks. It wasnât a common problem, but it appeared enough times and across enough separate states for us to include it.
Brooks Addiction isnât the only line of running shoes that has gathered complaints like this. Inferior mesh, or inferior stitching, is an easy corner to cut if you need to cut costs.
Our advice? Wear the shoes out early. If they develop tears, youâll have a better chance of returning them within the allowable time.
2. Price
Thereâs really no getting around this one â Brooks Addictions are expensive. Most pairs are well over $100.
The price reflects the engineering involved (certainly not the color, which weâll get to shortly), so this is not the shoe for you if youâre just looking for style. Addictions are meant for serious runners and serious injuries. If youâre healthy, donât like running, and just need something to cover your feet, go simpler, and save your money.
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3. Color, or Lack Thereof
If you want bold designs and dazzling colors, you are clean out of luck. Brooks Addiction comes in three colors â black, white, and brown suede. The company is far more fond of functionality than it is of fashion.
4. Size: Too Tight, Too Often
Brooks Addiction has one other problem common to many running shoe brands â the sizes run small.
Again, this was a consistent complaint across multiple states. Even those who were praising the shoe mentioned it, and recommended that users order a ½ size larger for themselves. Both newcomers to Brooks and longtime Brooks users found that their normal shoe size was too small on the Brooks Addiction.
Our advice? If you can, buy the Addictions from a physical store, and try them on yourself first. If youâre ordering online, order a ½ size larger than your normal shoe size, and try them on immediately when they arrive.
Our Advice, in One Final Word
While overall, we loved the Brooks Addiction line, we loved it because of what it can do for people who need help, and people who want to run better and healthier. That doesnât mean the shoes are for everyone.
Remember, at the end of the day, your opinion is the only one that will matter, as youâre the one who will have to wear these shoes hundreds of separate times.
Always try them first, always make sure youâre comfortable, and always make sure you have a return policy if you need it. Happy trails.
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Last update on 2021-02-28 at 00:21 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API