Outside Magazine

When he was 19 years old, Adam Gorlitsky never wore his seat belt because—well, what could possibly happen? Life was good. He was a sophomore at the University of South Carolina and a fit guy. In high school, he’d run a 4:50 mile and played varsity basketball. Now he was a pickup-game star, a talented outside shooter, a business major, and an esteemed brother at Sigma Chi. On the day it happened—December 30, 2005—he’d just signed the lease on a sweet new apartment.

Gorlitsky moved furniture into the place that day, and then, just after nightfall, climbed into his dad’s Chevy Tahoe to make the two-hour journey home from Columbia to his parents’ house in Charleston. He was sober, but he was also weary, and he says that when he was careening along Highway 26 at 80 miles per hour, he nodded off for a second. An instant later, his car was rolling down the grassy slope of the median. It smacked sideways into some trees. The accident threw Gorlitsky around the inside of the vehicle until he lay, finally, in the back seat, spitting up blood. He was unable to move. Soon afterward he was airlifted to the Medical University of South Carolina, in Charleston, where X-rays revealed that he’d suffered a T9 spinal fracture. He was paralyzed from the belly button down.