119. The Beauty in the Broken

There’s a saying I’ve heard countless times in recovery: “Rock bottom will teach you things that mountain tops never will.”  I used to hate that line.  I hated it because it sounded too poetic for something so painful. There was nothing beautiful about the way I fell.  There was nothing graceful about the way addiction stripped my life bare—piece by piece, promise by promise, until I didn’t even recognize the man staring back at me in the mirror.  But today, after everything I’ve lived through, I can finally understand what that saying truly means.  It turns out that rock bottom wasn’t the end for me.  It was the beginning.

When I think back to my lowest point, I remember the silence first.  Not the peaceful kind of silence—the kind that comes when everything around you has stopped moving. No laughter.  No voices.  No hope. Just the sound of my own breath and the crushing weight of knowing I’d let everyone down—my family, my friends, the people who believed in me, and even myself.  Addiction has a way of convincing you that you’re beyond repair, that you’ve gone too far, that you’re unworthy of love or forgiveness.  I believed that lie for years.

Here’s the strange thing about hitting bottom: it forces you to stop running.  For the first time in years, I had to sit with the truth.  I wasn’t just hurting myself—I was hurting everyone who ever cared about me.  I had become someone I swore I’d never be, and yet, as broken as I was, there was still a flicker of something inside me that refused to die.  Call it hope.  Call it faith. Call it desperation.  Whatever it was, it whispered that maybe—just maybe—I could still turn things around.  So, I did what terrified me most.  I asked for help.

Walking into treatment that first time, I felt like a failure.  I didn’t know who I was without the substances that had become my crutch, my comfort, my cage.  But in that treatment center—surrounded by others who were fighting their own demons—I found something I hadn’t felt in years: understanding.  Nobody judged me for my past.  Nobody looked away when I shared my pain. Instead, they nodded.  They got it. They truly understood me, and that connection—that shared sense of brokenness—was the first thread that started to stitch me back together.

Recovery didn’t happen overnight.  It still doesn’t.  Some days, it’s easy to be grateful. Other days, it’s a battle just to stay grounded. The longer I stay sober, the more I realize that recovery isn’t about perfection—it’s about progress.  It’s about showing up, even when your mind tells you it’s pointless. It’s about choosing honesty over comfort, humility over pride, and connection over isolation.  In the rooms of recovery, I learned to speak words I’d never said out loud before.  “I’m sorry.”  “I was wrong.” “I need help.”  Simple words, but for someone like me, they were mountains to climb.  Addiction thrives in secrecy and shame. Recovery grows in truth.  Every time I opened up—whether in a group session, to a sponsor, or to someone I’d hurt—I took back a piece of the power my disease had stolen from me.

I also learned that recovery isn’t just about staying sober—it’s about rebuilding a life worth staying sober for.  That means finding purpose again.  For me, that purpose has taken many forms. Coaching youth soccer.  Writing this weekly column.  Helping others who are still lost in the dark. These things remind me that I’m more than my mistakes. They give me a reason to keep going, even on the hard days.

There’s a moment I’ll never forget—standing on a soccer field shortly after completing treatment, watching my players laughing and running under the afternoon sun.  For a second, I just stood there and let it hit me: I was alive. Present.  Sober.  I wasn’t thinking about the next fix, the next excuse, or the next lie.  I was simply there.  Completely present, and for the first time in a long time, that was enough.

Recovery isn’t always sunshine and gratitude. There are days when the old voices creep in, whispering that I’m still not good enough, that I’ve messed up too many times.  On those days, I go back to what I learned in rehab and in the recovery rooms: rewind the tape.  I play the story all the way through in my head—the chaos, the regret, the faces of the people I love. I remember the hospital bed, the sleepless nights, the hollow ache that nothing could fill. Then I remember where I am now. How far I’ve come.  How much I’ve fought to be here.  The truth is, recovery isn’t something I do once—it’s something I choose every single day.  It’s in the way I show up for my job, for my players, for the people who trust me again.  It’s in the way I stay honest when life gets hard, instead of numbing the pain.  It’s in the way I forgive myself for the man I used to be.

Maybe that’s what the “gift” of rock bottom really is—it strips away everything false.  It leaves you with nothing but truth.  The truth that you can’t do it alone.  The truth that you’re not hopeless.  The truth that redemption is possible, even for someone who once thought he didn’t deserve it.  These days, I’ve learned to see my recovery not as a punishment, but as a privilege.  Not everyone gets the chance to come back from the edge.  I did.  I was gifted another shot at life, and I don’t take that lightly. There’s still work to do—there always will be—but every day I wake up sober, I know I’ve already won the hardest battle.

If there’s one message I could leave for anyone reading this who’s still struggling, it’s this: you are not beyond saving.  No matter how far you’ve fallen, there’s a way back.  It starts with honesty, it grows through courage, and it becomes something beautiful when you finally start believing that you’re worthy of recovery.  Rock bottom may have broken me, but it also rebuilt me.  It taught me humility, gratitude, and grace.  It showed me that even in the deepest darkness, there’s still light waiting to be found. Today, I get to live in that light—one day, one step, one honest breath at a time.  In the end, recovery isn’t about erasing the past.  It’s about rewriting the story, and mine, finally, has hope on every page.

And remember, if you’re struggling or know someone who is struggling, please don’t lose hope.  If that had happened to me, I wouldn’t be able to help spread awareness today.