#2025UMMCGrad: Chris Glasgow embraces the life he almost lost

Published on Monday, April 21, 2025

By: Gary Pettus, gpettus@umc.edu

Photos By: Jay Ferchaud/UMMC Communications

Chris Glasgow was in his 20s, living on a beach in a room barely big enough for a futon and his addiction. 

“The door wouldn’t shut,” he said. 

One Friday night in town, he was arrested for doing drugs, got out of jail Saturday morning and was back in Saturday night – “same thing, same cop.” 

For years, drug and alcohol misuse stalked him, despite his hope that tomorrow would be different, he said. “It never was.” 

Finally, he realized what was most important to him; one of those things was helping people who, like him, wanted to heal.  

On Commencement Day, Glasgow will become one of about 160 graduates from the University of Mississippi Medical Center to receive a medical degree.  

For his official life’s work, he’s highly qualified, having healed so much of himself. 

‘Another life’   

Although he spent most of his childhood in his birthplace, Jackson, Glasgow lived in many places, including in that cramped room on a South Carolina beach. 

The only child of a military officer who spent a lot of time overseas, he started drinking as a teenager, entered his first treatment center at 17, and left his parents at 18.  

Now 40, he met his best friend 11 years ago. Three years later, they were married.  

“Bonnie has never seen me not sober,” he said.  

They were in Hattiesburg together several years ago, dining with friends who were about to graduate from William Carey University’s medical school.  

“I made the offhand remark that, at one time, I was going to be a doctor, but it didn’t work out,” Glasgow said. 

“Later, Bonnie asked me if I had been serious. I said, ‘Yes, but that was another life.’” 

It was a life that had fallen apart. 

It was a life, a plan, that had much to do with the fact that his mom was a nurse. “And her best friend was a nurse who was married to a doctor. And my mentor in high school was a doctor,” he said. 

“I decided that was the ultimate job – make a living helping people.” 

To prepare, he had taken pre-med courses at Mississippi State University, where he lost a full-ride scholarship because he failed sobriety. He failed MSU too, transferred to the University of Southern Mississippi and failed again.  

Failure pursued him through his back-to-back arrests in South Carolina. If that was his low point, it was also the beginning of his journey to higher things. 

“When I’d had enough, I was willing to try to stay sober,” he said. “But I had also been lucky, or blessed, to be in the right place at the right time. 

“My parents were in town when I was arrested. My mom stayed while I detoxed. She picked me up and I went to a treatment facility for 90 days.  

“I began surrounding myself with sober people.”  

He dove into Alcoholics Anonymous, he said. “I thought that, once I got sober, the way to keep it was to give it away. I threw myself into helping others, listening to their stories and telling them what had worked for me. 

“Getting sober was the turning point in my life. If I hadn’t done that, I probably would be dead. 

“Even then, the biggest moment in my life was meeting Bonnie. I’ve never had that kind of connection with anyone else.  

“She’s one reason I finally got to medical school.” 

‘A powerful feeling’  

Glasgow studied at a community college, then earned a bachelor’s degree at USM; he was around 28. 

He majored in biological sciences – ecology, and got his master’s degree in “spiders, because they were more interesting than mosquitoes.”  

Apparently, the spider-expert market was glutted. “I couldn’t get a job with my degree,” he said. 

But he had persuaded himself that he was too old to get a degree in medicine. Bonnie helped un-persuade him, he said. 

“She helped me find my self-esteem to do that.” And perseverance.  

After taking the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) three times, Glasgow was accepted to medical school, in 2020, and entered in the fall of 2021.  

One of his last jobs before that was managing a Hattiesburg restaurant. He learned a lot from the kitchen crew, but not about cooking. 

“We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up,” Glasgow said, “but I didn’t want for anything. At the restaurant, I saw people working in the kitchen eight straight hours before going to another job. They were still driving cars that were 20 years old.  

“You don’t finally get sober at age 24 by smelling too many roses, but seeing so many people working that hard was what made me want to work at the Jackson Free Clinic as a medical student. You see the same kind of people there: They don’t have anything.” 

He volunteered at JFC, a student-run, physician-supervised health care clinic for people who are underinsured or uninsured. Some have no home. 

“It’s almost as if I’m their doctor,” he said. “That’s a powerful feeling. It’s a feeling of ‘this shouldn’t have happened with my history, but here I am helping these people – and they’re helping me.’” 

Proof: He recently received the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award because of his compassion for patients. 

Haley B. Williams of Smithville serves with Glasgow on the JFC supervising board.  

“Even when he’s not scheduled to work at the clinic, Chris is there,” said Williams, another graduating medical student. “He was there the other day to fix the bathrooms; they leak.   

“He shows up whenever we need something there; so does Bonnie.  

“If you know his story, you understand he had every reason to stop when he was in medical school, because it’s not easy. I’ve looked up to him from the very beginning.” 

She admired him even more when he became class president their first year and made flash cards of every medical student’s face. “He knows everybody,” she said. 

As the medical school’s associate dean for student affairs, Dr. Michael McMullan also came to know Glasgow.  

“I’m amazed at all he’s done and overcome. He’s truly a servant, whether it’s for the Jackson Free Clinic or his medical school class,” McMullan said. “Love that guy.” 

On Match Day, in March, Glasgow spoke to his classmates on the occasion when they learned where they will train as residents. He urged them, wherever they go, to “leave things better than you found them.” 

Glasgow won’t be leaving UMMC, at least for now. He matched at the Medical Center in anesthesiology, “which I fell in love with,” he said. 

“I see my patients for five minutes, and then don’t see them anymore. I battled with that. But, in five minutes, you can still make a very meaningful connection with people at a vulnerable time in their lives.” 

Glasgow believes he has put his most vulnerable time behind him, as do those who will be in Jackson on May 23 to see him graduate. 

“It’s humbling and scary,” he said, “but also a good feeling to have so many people here who were behind me, to make people like my parents proud. I didn’t do that for a very long time.”