Breaking the Chains of Addiction | with Timothy Reigle

Michael: Timothy Reigle, welcome to the podcast, brother. How are you today?

Timothy: I'm doing great, man. Thanks for having me.

Michael: Yeah, I'm very excited to have you. We're talking about an interesting subject matter and a time and place in which the world in a lot of ways celebrates it and on the world, a lot of way destroys and has a conversation around it's danger and that is pornography. And so for those of you listening, probably not a super kid friendly episode. We're about to have nor really any of the episodes for that matter. But Timothy, why don't we first, before we take that deep dive and talk about what we see happening for men, for people, for relationships, for families, tell us a little bit about your background and what's brought you to this place today.

Timothy: It certainly wasn't something that I set out to do as a career goal or anything like that. It came out of natural circumstances and the path that my life brought me on. So a lot of my issues started as a teenager, as they often do with young men. And I got addicted to porn as a young teenager, 13, 14 years old. I grew up in a good home, but it was a home that I never really learned much about sex other than don't do it. Growing up in a Christian home, the big three were don't drink, don't smoke, don't have sex. When you're a hormonal, curious, teenage boy, what do you think the three things you want to do most are? And I discovered porn and was instantly hooked because I was told this was this horrible, sinful thing. And I Discovered it and I was like, this is awesome. And I was just hooked from there. As I got older throughout the rest of my teenage years, it continued and grew and escalated. I played in a lot of rock and roll bands and things for a while and lived out that sex, drugs and rock and roll lifestyle and never really thinking anything was wrong, but very active sexuality and, as things happen as you're a teenager, I used porn more and more in hindsight. Now I realized I was using it to cope with those things and deal with, a lot of emotional things, but at the time I just thought I was a normal kid. And it continued and got worse and got escalated into other things, darker and more kinkier and more hardcore porn, and then eventually into webcams and things like that. And of course I was living the, like I said, the sex, drugs, and rock and roll lifestyle where you just that, that kind of goes with the territory. Although I eventually got out of that and got married and thought. Hey, this won't be an issue anymore, but in fact, it got worse from that point on and continued to escalate to the point, even after I was married, it jumped from just online stuff and porn and chat rooms and webcams and things like that to hookups and affairs and even into some dark things like different, like sex clubs and swinger things and stuff like that, that I was doing all on the side. And being unfaithful to my wife and that continued on and off for the first 10 years of our marriage. And as time went on, I got caught. I did all the things you're supposed to do, got a little bit better, but eventually went back to it. And throughout all that time, I knew it was wrong. There was never a time where I really tried to, especially after I was married, that I really tried to justify it. I knew it was wrong. I knew I was harming myself and my wife and my family and all those things. But I couldn't stop. And I did all the things you're supposed to do. I went to counseling, I talked to a pastor, I read all the books, I did everything you're supposed to do. None of it worked. And again, that continued on and off for years. At one point, my wife and I separated for almost a year. Eventually got back together. Things were fine, but eventually I went back to it, came to a changing moment was 2018. And in that year was the last time I got caught and I got caught by two of my best friends at the time. And they had been aware of what I was struggling with and had been accountability guys for me and helpful. And those two friends basically disowned me the last time. They're like, we're done with you. We you're beyond help. You're done. And pretty much just told me, I haven't talked to him since. And for some reason, I don't know why, but for some reason, God used that as my wake up call. And that was the. Spark that got me to change why that was it and not all the damage I'd caused my marriage and my family and everything, I don't know. I wish I did, but in hindsight, I'm glad it happened because it got me to change. And so the difference was this time versus all the other times that I started working with a friend of mine. It was a pastor friend of mine was a close mentor and he wasn't just the type of pastor who just, tried to pray it away, right? He actually helped me realize what was going on. And it was that I wasn't just this horny, pervert, horrible person. It's that I was using porn and sex to escape, to deal with life, to deal with the stresses of life. And I've been doing that since I was a teenager. And he helped me figure out where that came from and what it was that I was running away from. What was it that I was trying to use porn to escape from? Or what was I maybe trying to find in porn that I couldn't, wasn't getting elsewhere in my life? And Help me realize that it was emotional issue, not a sexual issue. It really didn't have anything to do with sex. It had to do with how I dealt with life.

Michael: Yeah, which is such a, as you're saying this and what I hear in this conversation, it's I could take a word like porn and change it out for cocaine, for gambling, for driving fast, for drinking, for drugs. For reality TV for taco bell for gummy bear. What it really comes down to timothy and I really want to hone in on this because this is a really strong conversation is this is about addiction and I interviewed Dr. Gabor amate on the show. Probably two years ago. Almost. He wrote an amazing thing. Book called in the realm of hungry ghosts, which is really about addiction. I interviewed Dr. Anna Lemke, who wrote a book called dopamine nation, which is about addiction. I interviewed Brandon Novak, who, the guy formerly on jackass who lost millions of dollars due to heroin and now runs rehab clinics. And that was about addiction and what it all ties down to at such a young age. It's a coping mechanism and we don't understand. And it's crazy because it's like it serves you, it keeps you safe, it keeps you protected, and then it unravels your life. I want to go back because I want to connect more dots and I think it's really important that we don't overlook some of this conversation. And I wrote a note here and I wrote. Timothy avoiding at 13 years old? What is he running from? What is he hiding? What is he keeping himself safe from? Because like you, I discovered it very young and it definitely fucked my life up and it was a coping mechanism. So I'm wondering like, what was childhood? What was, what were those experiences for you? Cause I know there's other men and women listening to the show right now who are like, I get this. I might be in this place. Timothy's in right now and I'm trying to find the core.

Timothy: It's really different for every person and the men I work with now. You, I see all kinds of things. I work with men who have major red flag trauma, sexual abuse, physical abuse, death, divorce, things like that. For me, I didn't have any of that. I grew up in a very happy, healthy, loving Christian home. I wouldn't change anything about my childhood, at all. My parents are, I have a wonderful relationship with my parents. The problem was that I almost had too good of parents and where I struggled in my unique situation was growing up in a pastor's family and a church family. And when I say I almost had too good of parents, what I mean by that is I grew up with my parents in a very public position, especially my dad, who was well respected in the community, respected in the church, small town, Midwest, small town. Everybody knows everybody. And I grew up in that shadow, understanding and thinking to myself, I'm never, ever going to live up to the reputation of my last name. And that's really what I struggled with as a teenager, especially growing up in, in a evangelical Christian church that I did and being, all eyes are on me. You're the pastor's kid. You can't screw up because if you screw up and do something stupid, it reflects poorly on your dad's ministry. And so that was some of the wounds and some of the emotional damage that I had to escape from. And I had this dual kind of thing where at one point I was trying to honor my family and honor my dad and my last name and live up to that, while at the same time trying to run as far away from that as I possibly could. I was the one that went out and started playing and punk rock metal bands. I got covered in tattoos, I had long hair and doing all that type of thing. So it was this weird dichotomy where I was trying to embody that at one side and at the other side, run away from it. And so those were the things that I was dealing with. Then as I get older, I dealt with some rejection issues with some girls in my teenage years. And you think, you get dumped by a girl in high school. Who gives a shit who, who hasn't, right. It's something, a lot of people go through, but right. But those types of things, which are sometimes these more subtle events can have lasting emotional damage. Yeah. They aren't their major red flag things like the young guy who was abused. But they can still have lasting emotional damage because what that put in me was this fear of rejection. And I'm constantly trying to avoid any situations. Where I could possibly face that rejection. So I'm not taking any risks. I'm only doing things that are safe. I'm only putting up, I'm putting up walls to protect myself, with porn and sex, like you mentioned, there's safety there, there's a comfort there, there's no risk of rejection there or getting told I'm not good enough. Either being told by a girl, I'm not good enough or being said, Hey, you'll never be your dad. You're not a chip off the old block. You're look at you. You're this, punk rock kid screw that screws up. So that fear of rejection stays with you. Fast forward 10, 15, 20 years after that. That emotional wound stays there. Now the rejection changes. Now, instead of some girl dumping me at 16, it's, I get my ass chewed out by my boss at work. Completely different situation, but that part of me on the emotional level still acts out of that fear. And reacts on that and still needs to find a coping mechanism to feel safe and to feel secure and to feel comforted and to try to get away from that fear and get away from that emotional pain. And I still ran to porn and sex, just like I did when I was a teenager, but the situation has changed.

Michael: Yeah. And that's what it is too. And that's what most people don't understand. It is simply a coping mechanism and addiction is this thing that until you, you like really sit in the, the harvest of your seeds, for lack of a better way to phrase it, it's one of those things where you're like, wait a second, hold on. I am, I'm reaping what I've sown here. And for a long time, because it's so avoidant, it becomes this rinse and repeat pattern where you're like, I screwed up. I go to the addiction, I made a mistake, I go to the addiction, I hurt someone's feelings, I go to the addiction, I didn't show up for myself. I go to the addiction. And then next thing your life's in complete turmoil. And I try to tell people all the time, like when I ended up at 25 years old, 350 pounds smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep, cheating on my girlfriend. I can promise you that those were all coping mechanisms. Nothing about my life. And obviously, people of the show know my story, my background, being homeless as a kid, a drug addict at 12. Like nothing about my life had set me up for anything but that kind of life, and it really becomes this question of nature versus nurture, and there are people will, who will hear this and they'll go Timothy's life really wasn't that bad. How did he become an addict? And it's Addiction doesn't care if your father was a preacher or a drug dealer, addiction doesn't care if you're white or black or what side of town you grew up on addiction as a biochemical response to stressor. Addiction is this thing that we seek because the dopamine hit is so good. This is why you hear people who've done heroin, they will say the first time I got high was the greatest day of my life, and I've been chasing that experience ever since. And no matter what, they never get there again. And so we're chasing, and chasing. And I think it'd be remiss of me not to really go into the question that I think is incredibly important. Human sexuality is a part of our experience. And I think to negate that is dismissive to what it means to be a human being. And so I'm curious, how do you Like, in that time, did you have any healthy sexual relationships with yourself, with others, or was it all strewn through the scope of addiction?

Timothy: Once I got older and got married, I did have a, all throughout this time, I had a healthy sex life with my wife, I was in long term relations before that, but especially after I got married in the first 10 years of our marriage. We had a happy, healthy, positive sex life, right? Obviously there was some hurt there when she found out about some of the things happening. But it wasn't like I wasn't getting what I needed on the surface level, on the sexual level from her. It wasn't like I was going to porn and going to other girls because they would do something or providing something that my wife wouldn't or my wife wasn't willing to do to be open to me sexually because, and I was able to do that because my issue had nothing to do with sex was just the outlet, like you say, it could have been any of these number of other things, drugs, alcohol, food, gambling, whatever mine was porn and sex, but what's so dangerous about porn and sex versus some of those other things is that it always has to be new. You're always like you say, with heroin, you're chasing that first high. It's the same thing with this, you're constantly trying to up it, constantly trying to find the next new thing. The next new thing, the next new thing. Whereas like with an alcoholic, you just drink more, right? You just drink more, you build up a tolerance, but you just drink more. With porn, you don't just watch the same porn video over and over again. You got to find something new and what might start off very vanilla, and you find guys getting into really dark. Kind of stuff they're almost disgusted by just because they constantly need to be upping that dopamine dose in their brain. And that's the biological side of it too. And why it, it has the same somewhat effects on the brain. The medical studies have shown this as drug abuse does there's all these kinds of different things that, that go into that, but at the core of it, The cause of it is an emotional issue, not a sexual issue. And so the trying to deal with it on a sexual level Oh, we'll just have sex with your wife. I did. And that doesn't work because my problem wasn't sexual. My problem was emotional.

Michael: And often, you find that problem, and you mention this, has nothing to do with your partner. Has nothing to do with the people in your life, and those people, because I've been down this path personally, is you look at this in all sorts of addiction. There's almost nothing I haven't been addicted to. And I sit here, I look at my life today and I go, Okay. What it used to be. And I say this now in jest and I get to laugh at it, but I used to just always be like, I'm all in, or I'm all out, which does apply to a lot of my life. And I'm very happy, I'm all out on most things these days. But back then I'd be like, this is just how I am take it or leave it. And in that, what you come to realize is it's not even. This is the darkness of it, right? Of whatever the addiction is. It's not even the pain that you're causing yourself that's so devastatingly bad. It's like looking in the eyes of the person across from you and having to tell the truth. And that's where people get trapped in this conversation. And that's why there's no taboo subject on this show. And that's something I've held very close to the heart. Because we all have struggles. We all have this thing that we have to work through. I remember constantly especially in my late teens and early twenties, cause I had an amazing girlfriend who was supportive. I was making good money. I had an awesome place that I lived in that was like this constant self sabotage that was happening. Now, I didn't have the words then. My words then is like, why am I fucking up all the time? And so I'm wondering like Where did the cognizance of the issue really start to come to place? Like, when did it really start to make sense to you? We're like, wait a second, something's not right here.

Timothy: I think there was two situations there. The first was a conviction that it was wrong just from the get go, and some of maybe that is my Christian beliefs that I believe it's wrong from that level. The unfortunate part is a lot of that came with a lot of shame. So I wasn't, I was taught that. Porn was bad that premarital sex was bad all these things, but that was it just it's wrong. Don't do It's a rule I wasn't taught why that's a rule or why you know that sex is actually a happy healthy thing that God wants us to have We just need to learn to Use it in a healthy way in the way that he designed it for so there was a lot of shame that came from that and then I Like you said earlier, you do something bad. You feel bad for doing something bad. You need to escape that feeling bad. So you do something bad again.

Michael: And that spiral ouroboros, right?

Timothy: Just continues. I think the second part was realizing how much, like you said, how much damage I was doing to not only myself and my happiness, my mental health, my emotional health, but by damage to my family. I saw the hurt on my wife's face, this last time I had to my young, my oldest daughter at the time was old enough to understand what was happening. They were little when a lot of this stuff started. So the last time I got caught and them understanding what happened and what I had done and how to hurt that caused my wife, I had to sit there with an 11 year old daughter and tell her that I had was addicted to this, that I had done these things and been unfaithful to her mother. And that was the hardest conversation I've ever had in my life. And in some ways, even those, I've had those eye opening things before. It's you're going to lose your family. You're going to lose your, my wife and I separated for a year, it's she's gone. Your life's over or your marriage is over. That didn't stop me, it wasn't until. I understood that it was this coping mechanism and this pain and this addiction because I told myself and I'd been told by others, by counselors, by pastors, by all these other things that I was just weak or that I wasn't trying hard enough or praying hard enough. If I really wanted to stop doing this behavior, if I really loved my wife, if I really love my family, if I really wanted to do the right thing that God says, I would just do it. And it was a willpower thing and it wasn't a willpower thing. There's certainly aspects of this that are willpower related, right? But I'm not trying to diminish my responsibility for the actions I took at the same time, if it was about just trying harder, I could have quit anytime, but it wasn't. It's because those emotions and the damage there and what I was using to cope with, that is stronger than any willpower. So all those times when I would have a little bit of success for a couple of weeks or a couple of months or whatever, that would work, and it works. I see this happen with a lot of guys now, until those emotions are too strong for that willpower and discipline to overcome. And that's when you see relapses. And that's what happened to me. Time and time again until I was able to recognize what was going on and heal it from the inside out.

Michael: Yeah. And willpower just won't get it done. There's a conversation to be had about willpower. Certainly, there's a conversation to be had about discipline. It's funny, man, because I quit smoking 3,000 times. You know what I mean? I quit smoking 3,000. I quit going to fast food every day for years. I quit all of these things, so many, and it was like, man, if I can just get through today, if I can get through today, and it would just be like okay here's what we're gonna do. Just don't drive that way, oh guess what? There's eight more on the way home, and it's we go, we seek, we find it. And it's and the conversation about weakness, I think is nonsense. When I hear men say that when I hear anyone say that it pisses me off. And the reason why it was because we're not weak, we're unhealed and there's a very big difference in that. And one of the things that I think, and I know we're going to ruffle, I will ruffle some feathers here. You often hear from churches or religion. People go, Oh yeah. Thoughts and prayers, fucking thoughts and prayers does not solve this problem because I can assure you if it did every homeless addict on the street who shoot up heroin right now, who's prayed to God that I hope it's the last time would not be homeless and shooting up heroin on the street and what it really comes down to. Is two, I think two things, one, finding the right support and two, the willingness in your weakest moment to raise your hand and be like, I need help right now. And there's a lot of the journey that unfortunately is like. Opening a door, walking in and be like, this is the wrong room. That's the wrong therapist. That's the wrong coach. That's the wrong mentor. And then maybe it's sheer luck, maybe it's God, maybe it's the universe, maybe it's that rock bottom. Finally, just was enough for you to snap out of it. And then that other person sits across from you and goes, let me show you what you're missing. And so I'm curious when you have these conversations, I want to go a little bit deeper into this. Because I think that there are so many people struggling with this right now, and they're struggling with addiction. They're struggling with hurt, they're struggling with loss, they're in relationships, they're in partnerships, they're running business, they're dads, whatever moms, whatever the thing may be when you were in the day to day of this. Can you paint us a picture of what that was like? Cause I want people to be very clear and understanding, like it's going to be different for everyone. But I think if you can lay out a little bit of like the impact it was truly having and what it was that the addiction was, I think could be very helpful. Cause I don't think we talk about it enough.

Timothy: Sure. Yeah. On a day to day basis at its worst, I would be looking at porn multiple times a day, there were times I went to the bathroom at work and, looked at porn and jerked off, right? There were times I come home and I, escaped at a bathroom just to do that or the most often was later at night.

My wife and kids would be in bed and I'd be downstairs and I'd be scrolling through my phone and one thing leads to another, and then I'd spend an hour on that, doing that. Also, when it escalated into not just porn but hookups and things like that. So I was spending all day on my phone, scrolling, swiping, texting, all these types of things. And after having got caught a couple of times, then I got better at. Not getting caught a few times, right? And so I got really good at hiding it. And I would escape to, I'd leave work early and go meet up with someone or go do something instead of coming right home. I would, wait till everybody's asleep in the middle of the night and sneak out, go hook up with somebody and come back. All different situations like that. It took up hours and hours of my day at times. And it would vary, there would be, let's say there was a week that was just awful. And then I'd be like, I stopped doing this and I, I'd quit for. A few weeks at a time, whatever, but then I'd eventually go back to it. Like I said, as soon as the emotions overcame the willpower, I'd go right back to it and it was just that cycle on and off for 10, 15 years. And, and it would get worse, whereas when I was in my late teens, early twenties, it was just a porn and then it was the porn and texting people. And then I finally met up with someone and then cross that bridge and it all right I'm already doing this. I might as well keep doing this, I've already crossed that threshold, and it keep kept escalating, it took up a lot of time and attention and then it took me away. Physically from my family, both when I was home and when I was out doing things and also took me away emotionally to I wasn't there and wasn't the father and wasn't the husband. I should have been either because I was either out doing this or I was distracted or even if I'm hell sitting at the dining room table having dinner with my wife and kids and I'm on my phone, but they don't know what I'm looking at. God knows what on my phone. Or texting somebody or swiping or whatever, and, those are the type of things that, that, that happen and it's shameful to admit. I hate to admit it now. It breaks my heart that I was doing those things, but that's the truth. And that's how bad it got. It's not, it's the problem is that a lot of times it's not just, a guy's home alone. He's bored and he has to go to work. Goes to the porn hub and rubs one out, which I don't think is right, people think that's just what it is. No, it becomes all consuming. I work with guys who it's, five, six times a day where they're spending hours and hours a day, where they're, at the risk of losing their job because they're doing it at work or they got caught at work or, they're, it becomes like any other addiction, like you were talking about you can't run from it, you can't hide from it. It becomes all consuming. The only thing is that this is a little bit easier to hide, then a severe. Drug addiction or alcohol addiction, at some point, you can't hide that physically. There's going to be signs, right? But this you hear about these guys that have been doing all this stuff for years. And nobody knew because it is easy, especially now when everybody, has access to it right here, everywhere they go, it's not like the old days where you had to. First of all, even do it at a desktop computer, but then even farther back, go into that, behind the creepy curtain at the VHS rental store, right? We're old enough to remember that and it's just so easy and so accessible. You can have it anytime, anywhere. It takes over you anytime, anywhere.

Michael: it's like waking up and then right next to your bed as a crack pipe every single day and it's in your pocket and it's in your car and it's at the workplace and it's just take your hit. And what's so crazy about this? And I wrote something just now. Thinking about like my journey and I remember one time in the beginning of the healing stages. So I'm probably like, I don't know, 29, I'm getting ready to leave Indianapolis, head out to Oregon. I'm working with one of the best trauma therapists in the entire world. Like they literally saved my life, there's no question. I was dead within a couple of years at the pace I was going. And I remember I was like driving across the country. I was in a rental car because my car had got repoed because of all of the different things I was spending money on and I'm staying at like a fucking red roof in somewhere in Salt Lake City and it's disgusting and I'm freezing and I have no money and I'm like taking literally the biggest risk of my entire life. I'm terrified. And one night as I'm like laying in this bed in this hotel in Salt Lake of all places. I was like, Oh my God, I'm addicted to the chaos, it transformed from being addicted to whether it was the drugs or the money or the cars or the clothes or the food or the cigarettes or the alcohol or whatever. It was like, I'm addicted to my life being a fucking disaster. That was such a crazy, coming to Jesus realization moment for me, because up until that point I had just felt like, Oh, this is always just happening to me. This is just my luck. Of course. How could it not be? My mom cut my finger off when I'm four years old. My stepdad was abusive, I was homeless when I was eight. Of course my yeah, whatever. And then I realized now I didn't have these words then. So let's fast forward almost a decade. What I know now is like that chaos, that's your emotional home, that is the place where you feel most at peace, even though you're like, fuck, this is insane, I can't believe I just did that. Dude, you don't even have to tell me and I already know you said, I can't believe I just did that thousands of times in your life, right? Because I know what it is. I know, looks like, and you look at that emotional home and you go, wait a second. When am I going to move out?

And I'm just wondering, you have this conversation about, your best friends coming and be like, bro, we're out. But it wasn't the pain to your wife or even the kids. It was like, eventually enough dominoes fall where there's no dominoes left. People think, and I want to go into this rock bottom moment a little bit deeper because I, people perceive this idea, notion of rock bottom being like, I got caught. I'm like, that's still probably not enough. I got kicked out of my house. Still probably not enough, I lost everything and I'm homeless still probably not enough. It's like sometimes that rock bottom is there's nothing, all left. And so I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about what that moment was like for you of really hitting that rock bottom and then what it was like for you transitioning into the phase of actually I need to go back to finding help.

Timothy: Yeah, and I don't know if I would personally call it a rock bottom moment. It was the moment that got me to change.

Michael: Okay.

Timothy: But things could have gotten a lot worse for me, I never did. My wife never left me. We're still married, my, I never lost custody of my kids. I never lost my job, I never got arrested, I never did any of those things, but I think it was the wake up call and I believe it was the one consequence that for some reason spoke to me on the emotional level because and maybe it's because my wife didn't leave me that didn't speak to me. Maybe if my wife had left me a few years before I would have woken up then, but this was one of the, okay. Very tangible consequences of everything that I had done, when my wife and I, she'd find out I'd get caught, she'd find out, we'd argue it would be, but nothing, we were committed to trying to make this work and I thank God every day that, that she had the heart to forgive me and the determination to save our marriage, she always believed in me, but, maybe because of that. There weren't those hard consequences. So it was finally losing my two best friends, the guys who were my, the buddies that I hung out with all the time. And, I was, uncle Timmy to their kids and, we, the guys I'd go out for a beer with and we'd hang out and we'd, hell, we took vacations together as families, and that was the one. Dire consequence that I had, it was the one thing that was real that came away, not just it's hard to measure emotional pain, obviously, as we're talking through this, it's hard to measure the damage I caused to my wife. It's hard to measure the damage I did to myself, but when there's people who mean the world to you and are very involved and very active in your life, then all of a sudden they're gone. That's something that speaks to you, that gets through the bullshit to speak to you at the heart. And it was forced me to go face to face with what a lot of my real cause was, emotional cause was that fear of that rejection, and the thing that I was using to escape the rejection caused one of the worst rejections in my life. And I think that was the thing that I could, I call it my wake up call because that's what it did, it woke me up.

Michael: Yeah. The very thing you were avoiding. It's funny you said that cause my first thought was like, Oh yeah, he finally got rejected. Now he's paying attention and I know we have to ask this question obviously because I know people are going to be like, you have to ask this question, and out of my own curiosity, it's like, why in the fuck did your wife stay with you?

Timothy: It's a number of things, I think. I praise the Lord every day she did. A couple of things that stick out to me, probably first, I think is our faith. We both, even through this time, we both consider ourselves Believers and certainly are now. And when we stood at that altar before God and everybody and pledged to each other for life, we meant it. I think she had a heart that allowed her to see through the bullshit, to see through the walls that I had put up. I think that she could see through, even through all the pain that I caused her, she could see through that, and see through my walls, and I think deep down, she could see that what these things happening weren't the true me. That deep down inside, I still loved her, and she still loved me. That's another part of it too. She loved me. Love me for all my good things I do and the bad things I do, but I think that she could see through all that and realize that, Hey this something deeper here. There, there's an emotional damage here. And that's why he's doing this. Not because he doesn't love me or he doesn't think I'm attractive. She's maybe thinking that and certainly feeling that pain. And people told her we've had, she went to counselors. She told her you need to leave him. Her friends told her, you need to leave him. And she didn't, and I think part of that is, like I said, that she could see through it and could see that I just needed the right tools and the right people to help me in the right situations to help me get through it. The other part of it, and again, from my faith perspective, is I think we went through all this, I think I went through all this, I think she went through all this. And the reason we stayed together, because I believe it has become my purpose now to help others through the thing that we got through and to show others that it's possible. So call it, karma, call it, the world coming together, call it fate, call it God's plan for my life, which is what I call it is that he allowed us to go through this heartbreak and this hardship and go to the edge of losing everything. So that one day, when he helped me come through it, that I would have this story, that I would have this testimony, and I'd be sitting here talking to you, telling you that I went through all this shit that I just listed off, and I made it through. Personally, we made it through in our marriage, and we're thriving, and now I'm helping others to do the same thing.

Michael: Yeah, it's interesting because I think about this all the time. It's how do you turn your pain into triumph? How do you turn the worst things you've ever been through into service? And for me, I never sit here on this side of the microphone and say anything other than the truth. And it's I've been down the darkest paths that a person can go. And I've done things like, to be honest with you, Timothy, there, there are things, bro. I don't even know if I can say publicly, cause I'm terrified. I'll get arrested, like I'm terrified. I'll go to prison like still. And this was shit I did when I was a teenager. And I look at this life that I lead now helping thousands of people, millions of people downloading this episode and, or the show over the course of a year. And it's just man, if you told me on the front side that I'd be able to take that suffering and do something good with it, I'd be like, you're out of your fucking mind. And now that I'm in it and I look at it, you know what word comes to mind for me is gratitude. And I'm grateful for all of the hardships, all the pain, all the suffering, all the hurt, all the loss, every single mistake. Cause now I get to also help people and you've done something really beautiful with what you do and you help men heal from this, which I think is such an interesting topic of conversation where you talked about rejection and we live in a time where men are getting rejected more with more frequency than ever in history between the dating apps to just online to being out in the world, not having community masculinity is under fire. I dare you to go fucking shoot a gun or drive a big car or eat chicken wings, like you're going to get canceled. And it's like, how in the world do we create a container to help men when one, they're emotionally fucking shut down to the point you almost can't get in anyway. And then two, for most of them, they don't think that they can be help. How do you help these guys?

Timothy: I think that just what I said, that I came through this, and I'm living proof that it can be done, is what speaks through to these guys. It's not that I have any letters behind my last name, because I don't, right? I'm not a doctor, I'm not a pastor, I'm not a counselor, a therapist, a social worker. I'm not putting any sort of scientific, psychological babble bullshit on there. I'm like, listen brother, I've been where you are. I know it seems hopeless, but there is hope, and you can get through it. How do I know you went through it? Because I got through it and I think that's what speaks to people is that genuine genuineness, I dunno if that's a word or not, but that them being able to see someone else and know that they're not alone, they're not being told by some shrink that they have a disease, they're not being, told by, some pastor, that they're just a filthy sinner, they're, not being told by their friends or family or peers or whatever, that they're just a fuck up. There's Hey man, you're a person. You made some mistakes, you made some dumb ass decisions. But there's a way out and you can find healing, you can find hope and you can keep pressing on. And I think being able to sit here myself and do that to these guys, they can see that. I think they can see that, that I'm genuine in what I do. And I think that makes all the difference. Like I said, I don't have, I'm not a, I'm a coach, but I'm not, you know what I do by day? I'm a funeral director, I buried dead bodies for a living, and I've been doing that for over 20 years, and I'm just a guy who's been through this. There's nothing special about me, there was no miracle that happened in my life. There was no, there's no, grand knowledge that was opened up to me to do this. I just praise the Lord had the people in my life who loved me enough to help me through it. And that's what I'm offering to these guys when nobody else cares and everybody else thinks you're a fuck up when everybody else. Has turned on you when you're, maybe even your wife has left you and everybody else has turned their backs on you. I'm a guy that's saying Hey man, I love you. And we're going to get through this together.

Michael: It's powerful. It's powerful and it's necessary. And I wish that I would have had a guy like you or a guy like me when I was in this journey, because I think, and I say this publicly all the time, one of the things I would do if I could go back in time as I would have gotten a coach before I got a therapist. Because I think really more so than anything, I needed shifts in behavioral changes. I needed a little bit of motivation. I needed a good foot up my ass too, let's call it what it is. But more so than anything, I needed somebody who had been there before. And one of the hard parts that I found, and I'm not disparaging therapy, obviously. Please take your ass, go to therapy, get your shit together. But what I am saying is you look at life and it's really, the thing that you needed at the beginning was a behavioral shift, accountability and support, being able to look at this and go, actually, the thing in front of me is recognizing that we're suffering in this way that is at our own hands. And that's the crazy part is that these guys, these women, anytime we're addicted to anything, anytime there's stuff being taken from our lives, is that here's my definition of addiction. It's when the thing that you are doing is consuming your life to the point that the people around you suffer and or yourself, right?

I think that's a very fair way to describe it. And you see this, you said this word hope, which I think is beautiful and so incredibly important because, someone dying in the desert only has one wish and it's hope. And if they have that man, it'll get you to take that next step. What would you say? To not only just the men, but to anyone listening right now, and they have a guy in their life or they are that guy and they're suffering, it's destroying their family, their health, their career, their money, they're putting themselves in these precarious situations are sitting down. They're having the conversation with their 11 year old daughter. Where do they start, man?

Timothy: First thing is get help. And because this is not something that you can do alone. It's something I tried to do alone for 10, 15 years. And it got me nowhere. I was hoping that I could just in a perfect world, I could have overcome all this, walked away from it. Nobody ever knew isn't the case. We cannot fight this battle alone. And so having someone who can help you, who can love you, who can teach you, who can encourage you, who can, yeah, I can give you that kick in the ass when you need it. And that's something that I can do as a coach that some counselors and therapists can't, right? There's things I can say to these people that you can't, if you're a, licensed professional, for lack of a better term, these guys can. They're 11 o'clock at night and they're struggling, they got my cell phone number and they can call me. And be like, Hey, man, I'm struggling and I can help them through it. Try doing that with your therapist next time. Call them at midnight and see if they're willing to help you, right? And not charge you out your ass for it. So I think help is the first thing, and it's cliché, and the 12 step thing is cliche in some ways. But knowing that you're powerless and you need help, that's the first step. The first step isn't, putting all these blockers on your phone and doing all this and doing all that and doing all those things. The first step is like, Hey, I need help. I can't do this on my own. And that admission gives you the freedom then to get the help and to move forward with the rest of the progress and the rest of the steps to event and to move forward with the rest of the pre recovery.

Michael: My are listening and they're like, I get that, I see that. I believe that possibly I have enough hope that I could make that happen in my life. Yeah. I want you to paint a picture of your life today, right? Obviously you've done this deep work. You've done this healing. You've had and gone through decades of suffering to get to the root. ‘Cause I think once, I believe this to be super true. If you get to the root cause, the speed in which you heal is Unstop. It's unbelievable. It's lightning speed, and because we're humans and we are all analytical at the end of the day. And it's once you do that, now you implement the steps, you get the support, you have the accountability, so on and so forth. What is life like for you today? What is life like with your friends, your children, and probably most importantly, your wife? And then yourself, paint a picture of what life is for Timothy today.

Timothy: life now is, first of all, living true to myself. I'm not living a lie anymore. I don't have to have my phone face down at the dinner table because I'm scared of who, what text might show up on my screen, I'm not living a lie. I'm living true to myself. I'm living with honesty. I'm living with integrity. I'm living out the values that I say I believe in. I'm not just saying I believe these things. I'm living them and doing them. My marriage is Healthier, happier and stronger than it ever was before, the greatest moments of my life is after I got through this, my wife and I renewed our wedding vows on our 10th wedding anniversary. So we went from being separated for a year and I actually filed divorce at one time. I didn't go through with it, but I actually filed the paperwork. And to a few years later, I'm sober and we're renewing our wedding vows and starting fresh. Now we're communicating because I learned to deal with those emotional issues and not run away with them. I can actually connect with her better on an emotional level and an intimate level, because I'm not using this thing to deal with my emotions and cope with my fears and my anxieties. I'm dealing with those in a healthy way. So that makes me more able to connect with her because I'm not wasting all this time doing this crap, I'm a better father. I'm here for my kids, and honestly there's damage with my kids. There's issues I have with my kids now that I know are a result of all this stuff that happened years ago. They're teenagers now, but I can see things. I'm like, yeah, that's probably here because I wasn't there for them when they needed it, when they were five, six years old. And, but now I'm doing the best I can to heal those relationships and be the type of dad. I should have been then. And there's times I get stuck in that. And I have that regret and I want to kick my own ass and tear myself down and live in that, like you, you fucked up and you're damaging, but I can't do that. I have to be like, you know what? That's not who I am anymore, I'm past that. And I'm here and I'm active now. For myself, I'm happier, I'm healthier, I'm better physical shape, I'm in better emotional shape, obviously, because again, I'm dealing with these things. I'm not just ignoring them and distracting myself from I'm not dealing with depression and anxiety as strong as I was, there's still things that come up. Like anybody, I still struggle with emotional issues, but I deal with them now. And I battle against them instead of running away from them. It's not that doesn't make everything, I'm not trying to paint this, like my life is like just this perfect life now, but when those things happen, I can deal with them now instead of running away from them. And this is actually something I have. I'm glad you asked this question about what's my life like now, because on the first call that I have with all my clients, I have them do a similar. I said, paint me a word picture in five years. If you're stuck in the same place you are right now. If you're still watching porn, if you're still cheating on your wife, if you're still addicted, what's your life like in five years? Are you even still married? Do you have custody? Where's your career at? Where's your mental health at? Where are your finances at? I've had guys tell me I wouldn't be here in five years because I'd kill myself by then if I was still struggling with this. But then I tell them, all right let's flip that script. What's your life like in five years when you're no longer addicted to porn and sex? What are you capable of accomplishing without these chains holding you back? What's your marriage like? What's your emotional health like? What do you like as a father? What's your spiritual life like? I said, and they paint that for me and they're like, Oh man, that'd be great. And I was like, yeah, that's the fucking goal, man. The goal isn't to quit porn. Those things are the goal. The goal is to be able to do the things that porn keeps you from doing quitting porn is something to be proud of. I'm damn proud of what I overcame, but in reality, I just stopped doing something I never should have done in the first place. The goal in the ultimate victory is being able to achieve the things I did. Healing my marriage, becoming the father I can be, becoming the man of God that I can be, and being a leader in my community and with my peers, and being the type of man of integrity and man of honor that I wanted to be and should be, that's the victory. And for these guys, that's the goal. The goal isn't just to quit. Quitting allows us to achieve those goals.

Michael: The think the quitting is the by product like I really do. Like the more work even I do in my own life. And I think about this like on a daily basis, like boys run and men fight. And when you are hurt, lost a little boy or a little girl, and you have not done that inner child work, which I talk about on this show all the time, I even wrote a book called the eight steps to healing your inner child. If you are not doing that inner work, you are that hurt, lost little child, still running around the world, making hurt, lost little child mistakes, your life is going to suck. And I tell people when they come into my programs immediately, you're not a child anymore. And you must be willing to face that head on because that's where the healing is and it's horrifyingly painful. And that's just the nature of it, I wish it wasn't. I wish I could sit across from people and be like, Oh yeah, this thing that you're doing or the reason why your life sucks is just such a simple fix. I'm like, let's go to third grade so we can solve this problem. And that's just the truth of what it becomes. Before I ask you my last question and I thank you for this truly vulnerable and powerful conversation. Where can everyone find you and learn more about what you do, Timothy?

Timothy: Best place to find me is probably on social media like anybody else. Mostly on, on Twitter, X, and Instagram. Just at my name, at Timothy Reigle. My website is timothyreigle.com. And you can find more information there about what I do, about my coaching, and the services I provide, and then the book that I wrote over my shoulder here, Living Porn Free, 10 Steps to Recovery, Redemption, and Renewal, you can find that on Amazon.

Michael: Amazing guys, and go to think unbroken podcast. com search Timothy's names to find these links and more. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Timothy: To me, to be unbroken. Is to have broken free from the things that hold you back. It doesn't mean that there aren't scars there. It doesn't mean that you weren't broken. It doesn't mean that you're whole again, but it means that those things that broke you are no longer holding you back. So all these things that I talked about, all the terrible things I did, all the damage I did to my family, all those things, those made me broken. And I was broken, but I've broken free from those things. And they no longer hold me back from becoming the man I'm capable of being.

Michael: Brilliantly said. Thank you so much for being here. My friend, unbroken nation. Thank you all for listening. Please remember when you share this, you're helping others transform, triumph. Tragedy, Ruth, do this again. you for being here and unbroken nation. Thank you for listening. And please remember when you share this episode, you're helping others transform triumph. Holy shit. That's twice today. All right here we go. One more time. Take three. I'm I'll just do an easy one. Thank you so much for being here. And Unbroken Nation, thank you so much for listening. Please remember to like subscribe, comment, share, and tell a friend. And remember that when you do, you're helping others transform tragedy to triumph, breakdowns to breakthroughs, and to become the hero.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends, Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.