I Was A Cop Taking 55 Pills A Day

Rise Above with Kevin Lanning · Jul 28, 2026 · 1h 17m

Mike Morgan spent 30 years in law enforcement — a decade of it working the most violent part of one of the most violent cities in America. On his very first shift, he saw two homicides in five hours. He describes a career of natural deaths, suicides, fatal car accidents, and children he couldn't save — and the armor he'd started building as a kid, growing up with a hypercritical, verbally abusive father, only got thicker with every scene.

That armor had a cost. Mike traces his addiction back to the pills he was prescribed as a teenager and the painkillers that made him feel, for the first…