My Last Relapse

Raised in a traditional Sri Lankan household, Tania’s education and achievement were everything. Originally on track for a career in medicine, Tania studied microbiology and completed hospital internships in Houston. But mentors encouraged her to explore sales and marketing, recognizing her strong people skills. Choosing to pivot away from medicine caused major conflict at home, and her family withdrew their support, forcing her to become fully independent and build her career from the ground up

Apurva L. Vanguri-Weeks was the first American-born child in her family — raised by South Indian immigrant parents who didn't let her wear jeans, didn't let her date, and didn't let her cut her hair until senior year of high school. She was supposed to be a doctor. While at William & Mary on scholarship, she started drinking. The night she got drunk for real at a frat party, she came to with a 45-year-old recently-paroled man following her toward her dorm. Her RA got her to the hospital. Shortly

Edwin Henderson is 45, an Army veteran with one Iraq deployment, and a former Harris County deputy who watched his law-enforcement career end on the ground outside a Houston club. He now works in business development at West Oaks Hospital's Patriot Support Program for veterans and runs Chefs in the City as an executive chef on the side. He grew up the latchkey son of a single mother in north Houston, helping look after an older brother who was born blind while his mom worked hourly jobs and play

Kimberley Brooke is 19 years clean from methamphetamine and has spent the last twelve of those years sitting across from people on the worst day of their lives. She got there the long way. Raised in Amarillo by parents she calls “hippies practicing free love,” Kimberley was molested by an uncle starting at age five and grew up inside what she calls "the land of the great pretenders" — picket fence, two dogs, upper-middle-class home, none of it close to the truth. By middle school she had decided

When Judge Juli Mathew took the bench at Fort Bend County Court at Law No. 3 in 2018, she made history twice over — first Indian American woman elected to a bench in the United States, and first Asian American judge in one of the most diverse counties in Texas. Three years later she built something that didn't exist in the state yet: a juvenile court designed around mental health. Born in Kerala, India and raised in Philadelphia after her family immigrated when she was ten, Mathew attended Penn

Frank Parisi flatlined during heart surgery on May 8, 2023. He came back. Twenty-six days later he received the transplant that gave him a second chance — a heart from a nineteen-year-old donor. He'd grown up in Little Italy, the son of a father tied to organized crime, and spent a decade hooked on opiates before getting sober in 2011. By 2023 he was thirteen years clean, in the gym every day, and doing national marketing for a treatment company. Four doctors missed what was killing him before s

Lori Bell was conceived when her father got drunk at a traveling circus, wrestled an anteater, got fired, and was dropped off in the next city — Kansas City, where he wandered into the unemployment office where her mother worked. Her dad was a third-generation Italian Vietnam veteran with PTSD and an eighth-grade education, and her mother was a Midwest farm girl with abandonment issues. Lori grew up in the chaos that followed — kicked-in walls, constant fighting, and a father who eventually disa

David’s trouble started when the DEA caught him with five kilos of cocaine at the age of 20. On probation, he moved to St. Louis with court approval, finished college in three years, and was released early from probation. He built a subprime real estate business, but crooked deals and market shifts caused it to collapse. Back in Houston, he returned to high-end real estate and relapsed into heavy drinking and cocaine use. When his father died in 2005, his decline accelerated. Over the next few y

Born in Kansas to Mexican parents, Omar was sent as a baby to live with his grandparents in Mexico. He returned to Kansas around age five where he learned English, was bullied and sexually abused, then drifted into gangs and substance use in his early teens. He became homeless but still finished high school, briefly attended college, and then dropped out as his addiction to pills, K2, cocaine, and eventually meth took over his life. This drug use strained and broke his relationship with his part

Taylor Cavanaugh grew up in San Diego with drugs and alcohol in the house from early on. His father had substance problems and financial instability, and Taylor was eventually kicked out of high school for dealing ecstasy and somas. At 18, after getting mixed up in a stolen property situation, he checked into what turned out to be a lockdown psych ward in El Cajon — sharing a floor with old women with dementia and a Marine detoxing off heroin. He moved to Boston, where arrests and DUIs kept stac