My Real Rock Bottom—Years After I Got Sober | And How Obsession with Perfection Nearly Ruined My Recovery

Have you been told that you need to reach rock bottom before you can get sober? Are you waiting for that day to finally quit porn?

You may ask yourself, “How much pain am I going to need to face before I change this?”

A lot of people talk about this magic “rock bottom.” But what if I told you that it won’t come?

What if I told you that it’s not a moment that happens to you—but a moment you choose?

As I say this, I realize the cliche, and that a simple choice to get sober does not yield results. It’s more complicated than this, but my hope is that my story will give you a path forward. 

I hit many rock bottoms. And it wasn’t until I decided the last one was enough. 

When that day came, I had a choice. I could blame the world, blame God, blame my wife, blame my circumstances—in other words, do what I had done my entire life.

I had dug myself into a hole so deep that I hit solid bedrock and I could go no further. I reached a foundational low, where my illusions of control and denial broke.

Up to that point, I’d lived by a lot of filters and delusions—ones that I’d allowed to continue despite every sign that I was headed in the wrong direction.

But even with as much pain as I was in, I still had a choice. I’d hit bedrock, sure, but was that going to stop me from pulling out a hammer and chisel and continuing to cut away at that rock? Or even pull out a jackhammer? After all, I had a lifetime of habits backing me up, and plenty of excuses. 

I could continue trying to control and deny my way through life. I could keep blaming and refusing to look at myself. I could keep using the same solutions that had not yielded the fruit I’d expected. I could keep hiding my fears, my shame, and my grief from myself.

Or… I could decide I was done digging.

I could admit that I did not have the answers. I could open my eyes to see how I’d lived my life up to that point, and to recognize that it had not worked. I could accept that my very best efforts had landed me in a black pit, on a cold rock, all by myself.

And then, I could stop digging.

And once I decided to stop digging, the only remaining direction was up.

The Story I’ve Never Shared Before

Welcome to Episode 100 of the No More Desire Podcast, my friend. I’m going to share a story with you that I’ve never shared on this podcast before: My Real Rock Bottom.

It’s not your traditional rock bottom story. But it’s one that I have great hope you will relate to, and that it will give you insights into your own psyche and life to help and inspire you on your journey to freedom from porn.

Not Your Traditional Rock Bottom Story

Most rock bottom stories you hear involve someone binging on porn, having a traumatic experience, cheating on their wife, getting caught.

I could share experiences with you of getting caught watching porn, nights of misery after porn relapses, feeling the death of my confidence around women because I was so hooked, sleeping with girls who weren’t good for me, dashed opportunities because of my addictions.

I could tell you about regrets—things that I’ve had to accept are a part of my past and there’s no going back. People I hurt that I can’t take the pain of. Or people I was never there for, because I chose pleasure instead.

These things are what they are. I’ve come to accept them. And God’s grace has helped me do that. 

But my true rock bottom happened unexpectedly years later. 

The Unexpected Rock Bottom

When I hit this rock bottom, I was years into marriage. I also had several years of being clean of porn under my belt already.

I still struggled with masturbation, and it was something I had essentially come to accept I would always struggle with. I had moved on from my worries about it and just said it was normal.

At this time in my life, I was very grateful that I had been sober from porn for so many years. Much had improved for me and I was lucky to be one of the few who’d actually managed to get sober before I got married. I know now how unusual that is.

Because I had had years of success getting sober from porn, I had started helping others too. I built my first business—Become a Good Man— an online course business to help people overcome pornography addiction.

This business was my first, and it didn’t go quite like I’d planned. Selling online courses was a lot harder than I anticipated (duh), and many naive dreams I’d had that I could become an overnight success were dashed when I launched my first online Masterclass.

The Pain of Failure

I had spent a fair amount of money on advertising, and hundreds of hours on course material and content marketing. When my first Masterclass launched, 14 out of the 730 people who signed up actually attended. I was crestfallen.

Come to find out later, this rate is actually pretty normal for a first attempt. I just didn’t know any better, and because I dealt with a lot of self-doubt and fears at that time, I allowed the experience to overwhelm me with shame and decided I was an absolute failure. I then proceeded to wallow in that shame for a few months.

This wallowing was terrifying and frustrating for my wife, who’d done her best to support me up to that point—even though I was so new and immature when it came to running a business, and even she, having never run a business, could clearly see that.

Now, years later, I can honestly say that the poor turnout of my first business is the best thing that ever happened to me. It humbled me and led to massive personal growth and eventual success in my future business: No More Desire.

The Foundation I Was Living On

The failure of my first business was part of the circumstances surrounding my “Real Rock Bottom”. To understand what led to this rock bottom, you have to first understand my mental state at that time.

To stop porn addiction, I had essentially made myself very busy. I filled every minute that I had. My routines were my god. I had daily prayer and scripture study, weightlifting, I scheduled time to see family and friends, I was very strict about my work schedule.

Anything that would throw off these routines would upset me and felt very overwhelming. And while I couldn’t see it at the time, I did all this to keep up with the perfectionistic expectations that I had.

I was a workhorse, and my extreme ability to perfect my behavior, as well as hold a death grip on my thoughts—always staying positive, replacing cravings, getting rid of every negative thought I had—enabled me to stay sober for years.

Scrupulosity and Spiritual Delusion

I had this dogged determination to never allow fear, shame, or sadness in. I thought that whatever emotion I gave my attention to would reverberate through my life; that “negative” emotions would lead to negative outcomes. I was very superstitious about ensuring my thoughts were continuously positive.

This attitude sustained me for a while, but it eventually drained me out. I was angry underneath the surface pretty much all the time and I didn’t know why. 

I also had this belief that I could access any answer I needed through God’s Spirit. I believed that whatever I should do would be revealed to me, and I could simply glide through life while God made me aware of each action I should take to be successful. 

I unconsciously used this as an excuse not to study things out or use my own intelligence to dream, plan, and be deliberate in my pursuits. I gave up portions of my agency in favor of letting “God” own my agency instead. 

I also experienced mild versions of what I now understand to be delusions of reference and control. I believed that small and insignificant occurrences had deep spiritual significance, that they were signs to me of decisions I should make or what was going to happen in the future. I also believed that the Spirit of God could work through me and speak through me. This caused me to be certain that things I wrote or said were divinely inspired. This kept me from being logical or thinking critically, seeking outside wisdom, or accepting criticism or feedback from others. 

These beliefs are actually very common in varying degrees in Christian faith and religion. I just didn’t understand how dangerous they were and how deep I really was. I couldn’t see it. 

I thought that God was telling me how to eat, how to exercise, what to say in conversations, what decisions to make throughout the day, how to complete projects the best way, and how to be successful in my business—down to the finest detail. 

All the while I carried deep feelings of fear, shame, and insecurity. These delusions of reference and control were my mind’s way of coping, by seeking certainty, security, and the assurance that small things that happened in my life carried more meaning than they did, so I could feel better about myself. 

This left little room for the necessity of my own process of discovery, learning, growth, failure, and progress to become the man I wanted to be. It inhibited my ability to tolerate and regulate painful emotion, something life inevitably includes and which carries great lessons when I’m willing to be truly present with it. 

I traded this very clear reality—that life is what I make it, that it requires struggle and pain for progress, and that it is filled with uncertainty—for a perspective that made me feel more comfortable. One that had little risk, with a God who coddled rather than refined. 

I prayed all day every day for God to tell me what to do (“Should I do this?” “Should I do that?”). This constant pressure to do everything perfectly—believing I had to do it just the way God wanted—was suffocating for me. I couldn’t breathe, and the whole time I called it faith. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had a death grip on life, with this constant belief that everything was meant to be—and if I didn’t do it just right, then I would miss my shot and not meet my destiny.

I thought faith was leading my life, when in reality, fear had me by the jugular all of the time, threatening to end me if I didn’t do everything just right every moment.

And, for those who don’t know, this is an obsessive-compulsive disorder called scrupulosity, which my wife tried to tell me I had, but I was so lost in it that I could not see reality. This was very painful for her to be a part of, feeling powerless to stop it. 

It was a miserably small and restrictive way to live. I could never accomplish anything I dreamt of, as this way of thinking allowed for very little risk. And it also allowed for no ability to be present with my painful emotions. This meant I couldn’t grow much and couldn’t connect deeply. 

I was obsessed with staying “in tune” with God all of the time, so that He could give me all the answers, rather than simply aiming to live a good life and serve other people and pray that God would assist me in these aims.

I was not an agent in my story. Instead, I was a slave to “God”—but in reality, to my own delusion and rules I’d placed on myself unconsciously.

Eventually, IFS and Parts Work gave me a profound understanding of the psychological dynamics of these struggles, but I would not learn about it until years later. 

The Trap of Spiritualizing Fear

At the same time, I had these unconscious beliefs that I could never be successful in the ways that I wanted to be. I didn’t believe in myself or my abilities. I believed that God would tell me what to do, and if I didn’t “feel right” about something, then it must not be meant for me.

The trouble with that is that every single thing that is most worth doing is extremely uncomfortable at first, and initial feelings of fear, shame, or anger are terrible indicators for what to do or not to do. 

The things that are most worth pursuing are often those that we feel the most resistant towards—and I was totally unwilling to face my feelings of fear and insecurity long enough to get the truth from under the surface and figure out what I was made of. Instead, I thought that uncomfortable feelings meant God was telling me that something “wasn’t meant for me”, and when I felt positive about something I thought it was spiritual inspiration and a green light.

This was an extremely dangerous place to stand in, as initial emotions and thoughts are misleading or unrealistic more often than they are accurate. Only by taking time to be present with them, and digging underneath them to the root can you find truth. That truth often looks very different from what the original thoughts and emotions indicate. 

Where religion unfortunately failed to teach me this, psychology succeeded. I don’t see this as a failing of religion, but a deep flaw in the way I interpreted and applied religious principles. 

I needed to take time to go inward and get real about my emotions, and until I did that, I would spend my life both running and living small. 

A Delusional Decision

Now, let’s return to my rock bottom moment that happened during the dissolution of my first business. 

I felt that God was telling me to quit my corporate job and build my first company, Become A Good Man.

I had been praying for months to quit my job, ultimately because I didn’t like it, and so I used the excuse of divine revelation to escape that discomfort. I didn’t know this at the time, of course, because I didn’t take the time to be present with my fears and feelings of inadequacy. 

To whatever degree God was actually involved, I don’t know. But I believe this move was driven by my own wishful thinking, and I was using God as an excuse to offload my accountability.

After I quit my job, I spent the next four or five months in tiny nuances and details of the business. I did some things right, but I had no strategy—because I had this belief that since I was trying to serve people and working for a good cause, God would bless me with success. I believed it didn’t matter what my strategy was. He would ensure that it would work out for me.

I was dead wrong. And these beliefs blew up in my face.

Laying in the Darkness

I distinctly remember the moment where I was in the hospital. My wife was lying asleep 24 hours or so after giving birth to our first son. 

I was exhausted. I was miserable. I had a dark cloud that followed me everywhere I went, and I had developed this massive sense of self-doubt. Or, I should say, the self-doubt had always been there—it had just finally revealed itself, because I’d been brought low enough to get level with it.

The business I’d dreamed of for my entire life hadn’t panned out. I had quit the good job I had months earlier and drained through most of our savings, spending money unnecessarily on all sorts of fancy software and services that had yielded nothing for me because I didn’t know how to use them. I now had a new child to take care of and no plan. 

I had been working 10–14 hours a day, six days a week. I had neglected my wife and our relationship in favor of this boyhood dream. I had become obsessive and hyper-focused, and now I was sitting in the ashes of a business that I never had any business pursuing. 

And it was in that moment that I realized: I was still an addict.

Addicted to Control

Nothing had changed.

I may have been sober from porn for years, but I was still addicted.

I was a workaholic. I was addicted to this dream of building a business, and I had sacrificed the financial and emotional security of my family to pursue it. 

I had all sorts of justifications and cultural messages of “follow your dreams” to back me up, but those were sounding pretty hollow just about now. It wasn’t until later that I learned a business’s primary purpose was to support my family, not the other way around.   

I was also addicted to nutrition and exercise. I was obsessed with eating perfectly—only the most organic, clean foods. I was eating 12 servings of vegetables a day. My standards were impossibly high, and they caused great strain on my wife who was trying to keep up with my demands. 

I also realized I was addicted to the manifesting meditations I was doing for 30+ minutes a day. I had abandoned traditional prayer in favor of something more unique, so I could feel special about myself. I wasn’t pouring out my heart to God—but instead hiding behind fancy techniques.

Lastly, I was addicted to offloading my accountability and agency to “God.” I blamed Him for what happened in my life and believed that when hard things happened, it was just God’s will. I was addicted to avoiding my hard emotions and finding the easy way out. 

When My Plan Didn’t Work

I thought God would give me all the answers I needed, so I didn’t need to plan or go through the learning necessary to get good at things. I thought He could just spiritually gift it to me.

This kept me feeling safe and secure, so I didn’t need to face my feelings of fear or inadequacy. But it also led to a failed business, and a failing relationship. 

I was isolating myself constantly. I wasn’t being real with the people around me. I was all screwed up inside and pretending to have it all together—even to myself. I had fooled myself into thinking I had all the answers.

But all of that fell apart when my plan didn’t work.

The business I’d dreamt up didn’t work.

This thing I called “the Spirit” telling me how to do everything—down to the last sentence on a blog article, or believing that saying something just right on a podcast episode would take me “viral”—it hadn’t worked.

The Turning Point

For a couple of months, I had thought, “God, why did you abandon me? Why did this not work out the way it was ‘supposed to’?”

I felt like God didn’t love me. Like He didn’t care. I thought maybe my faith was wrong. Maybe my religion was wrong. Maybe all of this was a hoax.

But it began to dawn on me... Perhaps it wasn’t the religion or the faith itself. Perhaps it was me.

Perhaps this thing that I had thought was the Spirit dictating all of my decisions wasn’t the Spirit at all. Perhaps it was in my own head.

This left me confused and angry for a while. I didn’t know what my relationship to God was anymore. I had thought of God as a crystal ball that could give me anything I wanted. And He hadn’t delivered.

So maybe it was time to abandon that relationship—in favor of a better one.

Starting Over

So, I abandoned my business. I shut everything down. I got rid of all of my fancy software. I went back to corporate work in marketing.

I thought, If this business has caused me and my family so much pain—if it tore me away from my wife, if it fed into these delusions I had—how could it possibly be good?

So I was determined to destroy it so it couldn’t do any more harm.

But the one thing I kept… was my podcast.

For whatever reason, I felt a very distinct warning not to get rid of it. So I didn’t. I kept it up on the side here and there while I worked in the corporate space. 

Slowly Rebuilding

I realized that the way I had done things had not worked. So, I gave up my fancy meditation techniques in favor of heartfelt prayer.

I dove with more sincerity into my faith.

I started attending 12-step group so I could get support. I began going to therapy and couples therapy. I started asking people for help.

Steps 4, 5, 8, and 9 of the 12-step program transformed my life, because for the first time ever I got totally and completely honest with myself about all of my pain, flaws, mistakes, fears, and feelings of inadequacy. I admitted the mistakes I’d made and how I’d hurt people, regardless of the circumstances. I stopped blaming others and started looking at myself without filters. I had done these steps in the past, but this time was different. I took it very seriously and dove deep.

Facing the Truth About Myself

I realized many things, but one of them was this: I had spent my whole life with the assumption that I was both a kind person and a smart person. These were unconscious beliefs that I took for granted.

As I developed an inventory of my life and made amends with others, I came to realize that there were so many times I had not been kind nor smart. I had been selfish and foolish.

Now, that might sound terribly negative. But, for me, it wasn’t.

It was a time of self-reflection and awareness. I became aware that I had acted out of accordance with my values. And now that I knew that, I could change.

A New Way to Heal

Because I realized I had been wrong on a fundamental level—and all of my best efforts had failed—I became open to help.

As I did, I learned about IFS and Parts Work. This approach gave me a completely new way of seeing my mind.

It gave me tools to deeply understand the spiritual delusions and compulsions I had dealt with for many years, and it helped me see the shields I had hid behind since I was a small child. 

I realized it was not “the Spirit” that had been talking to me, but a perfectionistic part of my mind that was constantly trying to lead the show in an effort to keep me safe and perfect.

I was able to build a healthier relationship with this part of me—seeing its behaviors for what they were, and learning to lead it rather than be controlled by it.

A New Relationship with God

I developed a new relationship with God—one that gave me agency and autonomy, and helped me rely on God from a place of love, respect, and ownership over my life, rather than obsession, compulsion, and blaming Him for my outcomes.

Because I was able to take a step back from all of my beliefs, I saw that my strategy for my first business was a bad one. 

It wasn’t just that I had bad luck. I had actually sabotaged myself into failure. I had not taken expert advice, been willing to ask for help, nor been willing to follow best practices. I had decided that my way was better. 

This time around, I followed best practices and humbled myself enough to seek out advice instead of “doing it God’s way” (which was really just the way my own perfectionism, personal comfort, and limiting beliefs dictated).

My business grew and became successful because I took ownership over the failures of my first business, learned from them, and followed what others had done to be successful—while keeping my authenticity.

Redemption and Ongoing Growth

My relationship with my wife began to heal because I took ownership over my actions and my divine role as a husband and father. I also began putting my family first, placing the business in its proper place as a means of supporting them, rather than as an end in itself. 

Getting these priorities straight motivated me to take the business seriously, as I had people counting on me. It was important I approach it in a smart, strategic way for them. Previously, I’d done things the way I wanted for my own enjoyment.

That failed. 

I began to build a better relationship with myself using practices from IFS, and that internal relationship began to reflect externally in my relationships with family members.

I continue to learn and grow every day and I aim to stay open.

I am discovering new pain and challenges daily—and realizing that’s all a part of life.

I am learning to face these pains head-on so I can grow from them, rather than trying to run from them.

There are things I thought would never change for me—like my inability to sit still, how I felt sensitive all the time, my 24/7 cravings for masturbation, or the level of anger I dealt with. These have changed and are continuing to change, one layer at a time.

All of this started because I chose to stop digging and start climbing. And I believe that anyone can make this switch at any time. I pray the same miracles for you.

God bless and much love, my friend.

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Full Transcription of Podcast Episode 100: My Real Rock Bottom—Years After I Got Sober | And How Obsession with Perfection Nearly Ruined My Recovery