What Happened to the First Winner of Hells Kitchen

Michael Wray: What The Original Hell's Kitchen Winner Is Doing Now

Hell'due south Kitchen has it all: competition, suspense, bleeped-out cursing, and a sense of satisfaction that lets you, dear viewer, know that y'all can do a much amend job of it than they can.

It's impossible to know how a show is going to go when information technology starts out. Does information technology seem even more impossible that the showtime flavor hitting televisions style dorsum in 2005? Information technology did, and the winner was Michael Wray. He was but 27 years onetime at the time, and when he won, he had this to say (via the BBC): "For the first fourth dimension, I feel similar I'm in control of my own future. I've proven myself to myself, and that's important."

That'southward tear-jerkingly lovely, right? It's everything we wanted to come across — a young, talented chef being given the chance that well-nigh of us can just dream of. And so, what happened? Unfortunately, Wray's path hasn't been an easy i, and that optimistic young chef was on the verge of some insanely difficult years.

Michael Wray had to brand a tough choice

Michael Wray was familiar with Gordon Ramsay's reputation long before they met on the set of Hell's Kitchen: he spent two years in London, preparation to be a chef, at the same fourth dimension Ramsay was coming upwardly through the ranks and making a name for himself. He even spent a year trying to get in to work at 1 of Ramsay'due south restaurants, but told the BBC that it was super exclusive even in 1999.

His audition for Hell'southward Kitchen came as a mode to try to do what he hadn't been able to practice on his ain: go shut to the chef. And it worked — he was selected.

Knowing that bit of dorsum story makes the choice he was presented with even more meaningful. Originally, when he walked through the door as the winner of the very first Hell'due south Kitchen, he thought he had won $250,000 to go toward starting his ain restaurant. But Ramsay offered him something else: a chore, working alongside him.

In that moment, Wray agreed — but he never went. Later on, he'd say: "Information technology was the hardest decision I've ever had to make. I regret it all the time. I was in Hell's Kitchen with a drug trouble. I was deathly afraid of going to London with his giant addiction."

Michael Wray has been open almost his addiction to opiates

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Michael Wray'due south struggle with addiction started well earlier his time on Hell's Kitchen, and he told the BBC that information technology all kicked off when he had dorsum surgery — for scoliosis — a few years earlier. Doctors inserted metal rods into his spine, and later, when he had a seizure, the screws broke. Doctors prescribed him opioid painkillers, and he was notwithstanding taking them when he was on the evidence. Some he smuggled in, some he gave to producers to keep tabs on. Even so, when information technology came time to fly to London and get a glimpse of the life he could accept, he couldn't do it.

In 2019, Wray spoke with Spectrum News for their slice on the opioid crisis, and said he was never warned of the possibility he might get addicted — he was just given more pills. In improver to what he was prescribed, he says he was also given hundreds more pills "to try, to run into if I liked it."

He says he considered himself a "functioning addict" at the time of Hell'south Kitchen, and it wasn't long before taking pills didn't work, so he started injecting — and his doctors were happy to prescribe them.

"They had to have known, beforehand, what the impact was, you know what I mean? Just like the tobacco companies."

Michael Wray suffered some terrible personal tragedies

After turning down Gordon Ramsay's offer of a task, Michael Wray did open up his own restaurant. But what should accept been a happy, exciting time quickly turned tragic.

He and his wife, Lola, were expecting their first child. Merely when Lola went into labor merely a few weeks after his eating house opened, the birth didn't go smoothly, and his newborn daughter passed abroad.

Wray told the BBC, "We had some complications at nascence where she lost her jiff for seven or viii minutes. She lost too much oxygen to her brain, and died. It put me in a tail-spin for the next couple years. It was all starting to crumble around me."

He stayed at the restaurant for around the next 6 weeks; at the time, LA Eater was speculating on where he was. The loftier-profile Hell'southward Kitchen winner had been the confront of Tatou, but by June of 2007, the eating house confirmed that while he was still involved with the eatery, he was no longer executive chef. It wasn't revealed until much, much later that he'd simply walked away, finding odd jobs in restaurant kitchens and living in his truck. His relationship with his wife vicious autonomously, and it wasn't long before he was homeless, sleeping beneath an LA underpass, and getting his meals from homeless shelters.

Michael Wray's addiction nearly got the best of him

Finally, doctors told him that they weren't going to be giving him his medication anymore, and Michael Wray told Spectrum News that all of a sudden, he knew it was the end of the line for him as an addict — one style or the other.

"Similar, I'thou the frickin' winner of Hell's Kitchen, graduated from Le Cordon Bleu London, and I'thousand like this skuzzy dude living in my motorcar, begging my doctor for drugs."

His medico refused, and hospitals wouldn't admit him to see him through his withdrawal, so Wray bankrupt into his local chemist's, stole what he needed, and headed out into the desert. He lived out at that place, on his ain, with cypher to eat and merely the drugs to sustain him, for weeks. After trying to cutting his ain pharynx, he realized that he needed to practice something. He tied his backpack to his leg and crawled to a nearby road. Fortunately for him, a passer-by not only found him, but stopped, chosen 911, and got him the assistance that he needed.

Merely Michael Wray is getting his life dorsum on track

There's good news, though: that practiced Samaritan who stopped to help Michael Wray upward from where he lay at the side of a New Mexico desert highway saved his life — and he's making the nearly of it.

He told Spectrum News that when he woke up in the hospital, the get-go thing he was offered was help. He knew he had to practice any he could, and was introduced to some other drug chosen Suboxone, used for the treatment of opioid habit. The drug allows those with addictions to level out — they don't get the high they go from opioids, and they don't go through withdrawal.

Four years after that day, Wray was still taking it. He too still had the pocketknife he'd used to try to commit suicide, and the scars. Merely information technology's a reminder: he was also happily married, and living in San Diego with his new married woman.

"I am admittedly in love with where my life is right at present. Like, my levels of happiness are off the charts." The best part? "To take my son back in my life, and not having anything in my life that comes before him. This is the prize I'1000 holding onto every bit tight every bit I can."

Michael Wray has started a GoFundMe

Michael Wray hasn't given up, and he's still chasing his dreams. Those dreams just look a little more unlike than they did when he walked through that door on the set of Hell's Kitchen — he told Spectrum News that he was hoping to beginning his own food truck... but, he added, it was going to exist more than just a food truck.

Wray wants to use that food truck to travel back and forth across the country, serving expert food and, at the same time, reaching out to those who have institute themselves in the same position he was in for so many years. With nutrient every bit the vehicle, he's hoping for the chance to get out in that location and let addicts across the country know that at that place is a style out, a way dorsum, and that he knows: he constitute a way.

Wray started a GoFundMe page to try to raise the funds, which he says volition be matched by a single donor. He wrote: "I'thousand truly asking for some other chance to make a difference. I take a mission."

If you or anyone yous know is having suicidal thoughts, delight call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

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Source: https://www.mashed.com/171701/michael-wray-what-the-original-hells-kitchen-winner-is-doing-now/