Damon West had a perfect life on paper: loving family, star quarterback, promising career. Then he got hit with a life sentence at a maximum-security prison. The rosy biography belied a serious addiction problem that had begun at a young age, after a traumatic incident went unaddressed.

First it was pot and alcohol, then cocaine, and finally meth. The meth led to continuous theft on West’s part, until he got caught. His sentencing was a reckoning, and prison was one fight after another, but he knew he had nowhere to go but up.