Transformation: Rock bottom isn't your ending- it's your foundation for reinvention

Generally speaking, real change doesn’t happen when life is comfortable. Growth rarely shows up when things are going well. In the world of addiction and recovery, change almost always comes after a collapse—after the point where denial finally stops working. We call it “rock bottom,” and while the phrase is overused, the experience is very real.

I don’t see rock bottom as failure. I see it as a sacred pause—the space between destruction and redemption. It’s the moment when pretending ends, the truth is admitted, and something inside you finally says, enough. Humility shows up, but so does a strange, quiet confidence. For the first time, you’re actually ready to change.

My rock bottom didn’t happen in a treatment center or during a heartfelt intervention. It happened in solitary confinement.

I entered prison the same way I had lived most of my adult life—desperate to put something into my body to feel okay. For nearly 20 years, substances ran my decisions, my behavior, and my identity. Prison didn’t stop that at first. I ran around looking for drugs inside—yes, there were drugs in prison—and I continued the same patterns that landed me there in the first place.

That behavior earned me a trip to solitary confinement. And that’s where I finally hit bottom.

When you first arrive in solitary, you have nothing. No belongings. No distractions. I was given a pillow, sheets, and a blanket, and I was locked in a small cell for 23 hours a day. A few days later, I received my radio—a small Sony radio that quite literally saved my sanity. I still have it today. That radio carried me through three years of prison.

But eventually, the noise stops working. And then you’re left with yourself.

Sitting alone in a cell is a terrifying experience for most addicts and alcoholics. We spend our lives running—from feelings, from responsibility, from truth. In that cell, I couldn’t run. I was forced to sit with my thoughts. I replayed my life on a loop. I thought about every situation that brought me there. I thought about everyone who had wronged me. My mind was full of resentment and rage. I was angry at everyone for everything.

In my mind, none of it was my fault. I was the victim. I was doing life on hard mode. I was serving a three-year prison sentence with another twenty years hanging over my head after release. I wasn’t just in prison—I was in prison inside prison. And somehow, my ego still told me it wasn't my fault.

Then one night, around 2 a.m., listening to that radio in the dark, something hit me like a lightning bolt.

I caused every single problem in my life for the last fifteen-plus years.

Every bad decision. Every consequence. Every loss. Every broken relationship. Every arrest. Every missed opportunity. It was all me.

For the first time, the fog lifted. The lie I had been living in vanished. I could finally see clearly. I alone was responsible for where my life was—and that meant I alone was responsible for where it could go next.

That night, I decided to stand up and change.

From that moment forward, everything shifted. I still had nearly two years left on my sentence, and I decided to use that time as a training ground. I became relentless. I committed to working out six days a week. I joined every program I could get into. I devoted myself to prayer, faith, and spiritual growth, spending hours in the prison chapel.

I lifted weights. I ran track. I wrote letters. I journaled obsessively. I planned my re-entry. I volunteered. I became a peer mentor in a drug program. I spoke to kids in the visiting room through a program called Project Youth.

Day by day, I became the polar opposite of the man I used to be.

The fat, drug-addicted, self-destructive, weak-minded, selfish version of myself was gone.

So how did I actually do it?

First, I stopped blaming everyone else. I dropped the excuses. I accepted full responsibility. Then I replaced artificial “feel-good” chemicals with earned ones. Exercise became my medicine. Hard workouts rewired my brain in ways drugs never could. Running and lifting released endorphins and dopamine—the same chemicals I used to chase through substances—but this time, they were earned.

Over time, consistent physical discipline began resetting my brain’s reward system. For people in recovery, this is powerful. Addiction trains the brain to chase dopamine shortcuts. Discipline retrains it to find reward in effort.

Writing became another pillar. I wrote letters to family. I journaled my thoughts. I tracked workouts. I dumped resentments onto paper. I copied Bible passages—Proverbs was my go-to. Writing forced honesty. It created clarity.

And I chased positivity relentlessly.

Prison is a deeply negative environment. Inmates are negative. Correctional officers are often negative. Administration can sometimes make you feel like they're actively working against you. If you’re not intentional, that negativity will swallow you whole. I developed tunnel vision. I stuck to my routine. I focused on what I could control. I visualized the life I wanted on the other side of those walls.

Seven years after my release, I look back and realize something powerful: I’ve built everything I once visualized—and more.

Most people never get that kind of forced pause in life. A moment where you are stripped down and made to confront who you are and where you’re headed. For me, solitary confinement became the foundation that launched a completely different life.

That moment wasn’t my ending. It was the beginning.

Rock bottom wasn’t my downfall—it was the pain required for transformation. And it’s the same place where many of the strongest people begin again.

My prison radio

I typed this on a typewriter in the prison library. It was for the parole board and I wanted out so bad, I spent countless hours making sure my parole packet and my re-entry plan were perfect. I was granted parole on Sept 11, 2018.