Rise Above with Kevin Lanning

Allison Doss grew up in a tiny, divided Louisiana town, in a home ruled by fear — and from a young age she learned she could survive anything and bend the world to her will. That drive took her everywhere it shouldn't: robbing the very bank she worked at as a teenager, running away to Washington D.C. at 17 with a single suitcase, and stepping onto a stage that began a stripping career that would last two decades. Along the way came ecstasy, cocaine, and finally crack — the drug that, in her words, shut everything off: the shame, the accountability, all of it. She lost her money, her homes, and most painfully, her children, before ending up homeless, sleeping in abandoned houses and her car.

It took years of relapses, treatment centers, and one final slip to bring her to the work that finally stuck. Today Allison is sober, has done the deep inner work of forgiving herself, sponsors other women, and has rebuilt real relationships with her sons — her youngest now lives with her by his own choice. Her story is a raw, unflinching look at how far addiction can take someone, and proof that it's never too far to come back.

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Ray Rapaglia had the life most people chase — a six-figure-a-month Wall Street career, a nightclub he owned with other brokers, celebrity parties, models, Ferraris. But none of it was ever enough. Over 34 years, his drinking and drug use progressed from beer and cocaine to a decade of smoking crack, and finally to a crushing OxyContin addiction that cost him everything: four marriages, his relationship with his father and kids, his money, and his will to live. By June 2010 he was homeless, eating out of garbage cans, and sleeping under a tree in a cemetery — convinced his life was over.

Then a stranger named Michael offered him a cup of coffee and treated him like a human being for the first time in years. That one act of kindness changed everything. Sixteen years sober, Ray now runs a recovery nonprofit, picks men up from jail in the middle of the night, cooks them Italian meals, and dedicates his life to paying forward the mercy that saved him. This is one of the most powerful comeback stories we've ever had on the show — proof that no matter how far down you've gone, it's never too late to start over.

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Polly Pierce spent nearly three decades lost in alcoholism — and from the outside, she kept up the appearance of a churchgoing mom who had it together. Underneath was a life unraveling: a toxic boyfriend who was a bookie, the afternoon she opened her door to a gun pointed at her face, fifteen years in an abusive relationship, two DUIs, a drunk-driving crash that nearly killed her, and jail. She buried her mother, raised someone else's children while her own world fell apart, and eventually watched her oldest son walk out the door — gone for seven years.

Her turning point came when the man who would become her husband set a hard boundary: get help, or lose him too. Polly got sober through faith, service, and sheer determination — and today, twelve years later, her life is almost unrecognizable. She's reunited with her son, married to the man who stood by her, mentors people coming out of jail, is opening a sober-living home in her own backyard, and — after losing her sister to a fentanyl overdose — founded an annual overdose-awareness 5K that now draws hundreds. This is a story about how it's never too late to become the person you were meant to be.

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Elena Sanders grew up anxious, highly emotional, and feeling like she never quite fit in — a sensitive kid carrying far more than any child should. By the time she was a teenager, she'd found the one thing that finally quieted her mind: alcohol. She drank alone, blacked out from the very first time, and never had an "off switch." What started as escape spiraled through weed, psychedelics, pills, and eventually cocaine — the first line of which made her think, "I never want to feel any other way." Deep in Birmingham's rave scene, she was spending everything she had to stay high, calling out of work, and waking up in places that could have cost her life.

Her rock bottom came when she woke up in an emergency room, having been found face-down in her own vomit. That was the morning everything changed. Today Elena is coming up on a year sober — she found a home group, a sponsor she met at a book study, and a relationship with her family she never thought possible. In this raw, honest conversation, she opens up about anxiety, bullying, the lies addiction tells, and what it actually took to finally get free.

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From the outside, Mike Cavallaro had the blueprint: prep school, college athlete, investment banker with the title and the money. But a career-ending back injury stripped away the only identity he'd ever known, and in the years that followed he chased that sense of self through fraternities, bartending, and the high-pressure finance world — numbing the emptiness with weekend benders that got longer and darker every year. It cost him his health, his peace, and two relationships with women he genuinely loved before he finally looked in the mirror and admitted something had to change.

What makes Mike's story different is what he did next. Instead of just getting sober quietly, he set out to rebuild nightlife itself — founding Move More Collective and its Midnight Moves experience series, creating alcohol-free events where people can go out, connect, and have a real night out without booze or drugs. In this conversation, Mike and Kevin dig into losing yourself and finding your way back, the lie that "the fun is over" when you get sober, and the fast-growing sober-curious movement that's giving a whole generation a better option.

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From the outside, Mike Van Holderbeke had no reason to end up where he did — a two-parent home, food in the fridge, gifts under the tree, a successful older brother. But addiction doesn't discriminate. What started with weed in seventh grade and a single oxycodone he calls "the warm blanket" spiraled into a full-blown fentanyl and benzo addiction — crushing pills behind the wheel, surviving multiple seizures, losing his best friend to an overdose, and eventually watching 16 officers raid his home. He got sober the day he was sentenced to prison, and served 15 months.

Prison could have broken him. Instead, with the help of a counselor who became a beacon of hope and a sponsor he met on the inside, Mike used the time to rebuild himself from the ground up. When he came home, he found the thing that changed everything: running. He ran his first marathon alone around his neighborhood on Christmas Day — and today, 3 years sober at 27, he logs over 100 miles a week and spends his life showing other people that the past doesn't have to define them. This is one of the most inspiring comeback stories we've had on the show.

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Ingrid Casares lived through the cocaine-fueled Miami of the 1980s, multiple trips to treatment, relapse, fame, the height of the South Beach nightclub scene — and even a federal investigation that brought the FBI to her door.

In this episode of Rise Above with Kevin Lanning, Ingrid opens up about discovering cocaine as a teenager, how quickly addiction consumed her life, running away, treatment and relapse, and eventually finding sobriety.

Her life then took an unbelievable turn. Ingrid became a major figure in Miami nightlife, co-founding the legendary nightclub Liquid while sober and building a life she once never thought possible. But success didn't make her immune to addiction. She shares how relapse returned years later — including after being prescribed Vicodin following surgery — and how one drink eventually progressed into drinking tequila every day.

Today, Ingrid is seven years sober again and shares what decades of addiction, relapse, recovery and the 12 Steps have taught her about staying sober one day at a time.

This is a story about addiction — but even more importantly, it's about second chances.

If you or someone you love is struggling, please know that recovery is possible.

Subscribe to Rise Above with Kevin Lanning for more conversations about addiction, recovery, trauma and the people who have found a way forward.

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From the outside, Victoria Treadwell was the picture of the all-American girl — raised on a 295-acre dairy farm in upstate New York, a crowned dairy princess and beauty queen, an honor-society athlete who seemed to do it all. What no one saw was the addiction underneath. Chasing acceptance and drawn to the "bad boy," she was introduced to heroin in a Walmart parking lot as a teenager, and within a year and a half it nearly killed her. In June 2016, at just 20 years old, she overdosed — waking up to CPR on a kitchen floor after being brought back with Narcan twice.

That night became the turning point. Through outpatient treatment, hard-won boundaries, and cutting ties with the people who kept her sick, Victoria rebuilt her life from the ground up. Today she's 10 years clean — a certified surgical technologist, a college graduate chasing PA school, a marathon runner, and a national pageant finalist who now uses her crown and her platform to prove that addiction doesn't discriminate. Her story is living proof that one choice can send your life in a completely different direction.

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William Ellis was 14 years old, a freshman in high school, when gas splashed onto him near a smoldering fire and he went up in flames from the waist up. He survived second- and third-degree burns, skin grafts, and months in a burn unit — but the narcotics that came home from the pharmacy with him started an addiction that would last most of his life. What began as prescribed painkillers turned into selling pills at school, forging prescriptions across four states with his mother, and eventually shooting heroin and fentanyl just to keep the sickness away.

William is the third of the Ellis siblings to sit down on the show — after his sister Brittany and his brother Cody — and together their stories are one of the rawest portraits of the family disease we've ever aired. He buried both of his parents, bounced from ministry to ministry chasing a geographic cure, survived being electrocuted and flatlining on a job site, and finally found his way to treatment in South Florida with his brother's help. Today he's sober, married, working as an electrician, and building the kind of ordinary, grateful life he never thought he'd live to see.

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Paris Bazley had her first drink at 13 — and blacked out that very first night. From the outside, nothing looked wrong: she was a straight-A student in AP classes, graduated high school two years early, joined a sorority at UCF, and became the bartender everyone loved. Underneath it, she was blacking out almost every time she drank, chasing the next party, and using alcohol and cocaine to fill a hole she'd carried since childhood. She survived a traumatic night at a sorority social and the disbelief that followed, and kept drinking to escape it — until her 21st birthday, when she found herself detoxing on her parents' couch without even understanding what was happening to her body.

What turned it around was a phone call from her dad — six months sober himself — asking one simple question: "Are you okay?" That was the moment everything changed. Today Paris is coming up on two years sober, back in school, working as a nanny, training for a Hyrox, chairing her home meeting and serving as an intergroup rep — living proof for a younger generation that putting the drink down isn't the end of the fun. It's where the real life begins.

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