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After 30 years of addiction, my life fell apart.
THAT'S WHERE CHRIST MET ME.
Hi, I’m Brian Shillingburg.
For most of my life, I lived in a cycle I couldn’t break.
From a young age, I learned to cope with pain through secrecy. I used food, pornography, and eventually alcohol to escape what I didn’t know how to face.
I believed in God. I wanted to change.
But underneath the surface, I was stuck.
Over time, what started small didn’t stay small. The patterns grew. The stakes got higher. What I thought I could manage became something I couldn’t control.
Eventually, it caught up with me.
At the time, I was a high school principal, speaking in front of thousands.
Twenty minutes later, I was being arrested for soliciting a prostitute.
My mugshot and story were broadcast on the evening news across Houston, shared online, and known throughout my community.
In a matter of moments, everything I’d built, my reputation, my career, my identity, was exposed.
There was nowhere left to run.
That was the moment everything changed. Not because I had a plan, but because I finally stopped trying to fix it on my own.
That’s where Christ met me.
Not when I had it together.
Not when I had answers.
But at the lowest point of my life, when everything had been stripped away.
That was the breaking point.
It was also the beginning.
THE TURNING POINT
For years, I had tried to manage my behavior. What I needed was a complete transformation.
Recovery began when I got honest, with myself, with others, and before God. Through counseling, recovery groups, and real accountability, I started doing the deeper work I had avoided for decades.
I began to understand my story, recognize my patterns, and build a life rooted in truth instead of secrecy.
God didn’t just pull me out of addiction.
He began restoring my life, my marriage, and my identity. In that process, something unexpected began to take shape: a calling.
WHAT I DO NOW
Today, I walk with men who are living the same cycle I lived in for 30 years.
Men who are tired of hiding.
Men who are tired of trying to manage it on their own.
Men who are ready for something different, but don’t know where to start.
You don’t have to lose everything for things to change.
There’s a better way to live, and there’s a way to begin before everything falls apart.
Through 1:1 coaching, recovery groups, and church support, I help men take honest next steps toward freedom, accountability, restoration, and lasting change.
Experience and Training
I’m a certified Sexual Addiction Recovery Coach, PSAP, and Inner Child Model Clinician trained in Dr. Eddie Capparucci’s Inner Child Model. I also hold a master’s degree in education and have more than 25 years of experience developing leaders, building teams, and mentoring men, including serving as a high school principal.
My approach is shaped by both professional training and lived experience. I’ve walked through addiction, public exposure, and recovery myself. I understand the patterns, the resistance, the shame, and what it takes to build lasting change.
Today, I work with men one-on-one and in small groups, and I partner with churches and leaders to create practical pathways toward healing, restoration, and freedom.
FEATURED IN
OUR MISSION
9th Inning Project exists to help men step into the light, confront destructive patterns honestly, and rebuild their lives with clarity, accountability, and faith.
This work is about more than stopping a behavior.
It’s about becoming honest.
Becoming whole.
Becoming the kind of man God created you to be.
MORE ON ME & MY FAMILY
First and foremost, I’m a husband and a dad. Today, the first fruits of my life go to my family.
For too long, I lived divided. I gave too much of myself to addiction, ambition, and work, and I missed the bigger picture of what it meant to be fully present, emotionally healthy, and faithful at home. My wife and family stood by me through the hardest season of my life, and I don’t take that lightly. Recovery has taught me that integrity is revealed in the kind of husband, father, and man I become in the lives of those closest to me.
That is also one of the deepest satisfactions I find in working with men. I want to see men find freedom from addiction because that freedom should bear fruit — marriages restored, families strengthened, and fathers becoming emotionally stable, present, trustworthy men of integrity.
That is the kind of recovery I believe in — not simply behavior change, but a life reordered around truth, faith, family, responsibility, and love.
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