Rise As Lions: The Suicide Attempt That Became Rob Decker’s Turning PointRise As Lions: The Suicide Attempt That Became Rob Decker’s Turning Point
The Addiction Podcast - Point of No Return
Rob Decker recounts how childhood trauma, addiction and a near-fatal suicide attempt led eventually to sobriety, forgiveness and a faith-driven life of service. His story highlights the long, painful work behind recovery and how community and sport now help him support others facing similar struggles.
29:26•29 Oct 2026
From Broken Bones to New Beginnings: Rob Decker on Addiction, Faith and Forgiveness
Episode Overview
- Childhood rejection, abuse and instability can be key roots of later addiction.
- Surviving a suicide attempt did not instantly end substance use; deeper emotional work was still needed.
- A defining sobriety moment came when Rob realised, under a porch after a crash, that he had been given time and progress he was throwing away.
- Forgiving parents and seeing them as human beings with their own traumas played a central part in Rob’s healing.
- Rise As Lions and Recovery Rebels softball show how team sport and community can support people in recovery and veterans living with PTSD.
“You want to heal, forgive. Forgiveness is huge.”
How do people find strength in their journey to sobriety? This conversation with Rob Decker gives a raw, detailed look at how someone moves from childhood trauma and addiction to long-term recovery and service to others. Rob talks openly about growing up in a home full of violence, neglect and drug use, and how early abuse and secrecy around sex led him into pornography and, later, alcohol and drugs.
By his teens, he was in juvenile hall, begging people to shoot him, and his twenties were lost in a blur of harder substances and chaotic relationships. The turning point many might expect isn’t actually where his sobriety starts. At 29, after a toxic relationship and false accusations, Rob attempted suicide by jumping headfirst from a third-storey window.
He survived with a severed spine, broken arms and a collapsed lung, and recalls lying in hospital hearing, "the charges will be dropped, the bills will be paid, and you will walk again." Years later, that’s exactly what happened. Even after that, Rob kept drinking and using for five more years, until a drink-driving crash and a moment hiding under a stranger’s porch led him to a different kind of surrender.
He describes feeling addiction leave him like a heavy spirit and marks 8 January 2013 as the day he stopped drinking and using for good. Rob spends time on the hard emotional work that followed: forgiving his mum, his dad, his biological father, and recognising their own histories of pain. "You want to heal, forgive. Forgiveness is huge," he says, sharing how seeing his parents as human beings changed everything.
Today, his Rise As Lions non-profit and Recovery Rebels softball team give people in recovery and veterans with PTSD a place to belong, play and connect. You’ll hear how team sport, honest conversation and faith all mesh into his way of helping others. If you’re wondering whether change is possible after years of chaos, Rob’s story might be the nudge you need to keep going.
Do you want to link to this podcast?
Get the buttons here!
More From This Show
The latest episodes from the same podcast.