Talk about extremes: Michael Lawrence went from languishing at the bottom of a pit to crawling his way out and then to helping others avoid similar pits. And he did it with multiple sclerosis and racquetball.

Multiple sclerosis—MS—is a crippling neurological disease that affects more than half a million Americans-typically in their 20's and 30's-each year. Its symptoms are generally a lack of muscle control and sometimes an inability to use the muscles at all. Multiple sclerosis isn't fatal, but there's no cure for it, either.

Michael Lawrence was hit, bit by bit—first in one of his eyes, then his legs, then his fingers. Soon his whole body began to deteriorate, as well as his life. The following year, he sold his new clothing business and his marriage fell apart; at the age of 27, he was finally diagnosed with MS. His weight started dropping; it eventually got to 109, about a 40% loss.

"I was dying," says Lawrence now. "I couldn't believe it. Just like that, I'd lost everything a man my age could lose—wife, child, house, job, and my health." He had no health insurance and rented a cheap apartment. He faked symptoms so his doctor could give him lots of drugs. Some of the drugs he sold to pay his bills.

Lawrence tried to kill himself—several times. Each time he failed: The gun jammed, or he fell back into his room instead of out his window. The truth is that he was usually too high to be competent at suicide.

After a year of this, friends persuaded him to attend a motivational seminar, where he found a new attitude (and a woman who would become his second wife). Lawrence sums up the attitude: "You don't have to be a victim. You just have to put your life in a different perspective so that problems become opportunities."

And then he discovered racquetball, and it became his lifeline. "It's the greatest medicine I've ever had," he says. "It saved my life, it really did. It was my rehabilitation."

Some days are worse than others; some days he can't even stand up. And when he plays, he doesn't have much feeling in his feet, so balancing is sometimes difficult. But Lawrence plays hard. He has improved tremendously and increased his proficiency to near-professional grade. He even joined the staff of a sporting goods company, giving racquetball exhibitions around the country.

Everything changed. He remarried and he started the Lawrence Foundation, which specializes in "participation therapy," much like the therapy he himself undertook. "It's a matter of eliminating the poor mental attitude and deciding to live your life the way you want to," says Lawrence. "I saw a vehicle through my own experience to help other MS patients. I want them to realize the disease doesn't have to be as devastating as they may think it is."

He's his best model. When he isn't playing racquetball, husbanding, or working, he's jogging-up to 45 miles a week; plus, he works out with weights. He has big plans for the foundation: exercise classes, job placement and counseling, skiing workshops, nutrition and physical-therapy classes, and seminars in communication and attitude.

And he and his wife are expecting a baby.

The secret of his success? "When you get out and interact with people, it's funny how the aches and pains and cramps disappear. All of a sudden, you're not thinking about being sick; you're participating."

Lawrence has been sought after as a motivational speaker as well as a racquetball player all over the country. He's been praised for emerging from the pit that is MS as well as helping others to avoid their own pits, or if not to avoid them, then to escape them. As the President of a chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society told him, "You are an example to many, many people, and you help us give hope and courage to people to live their lives as fully as they can."

It's a choice, Lawrence points out. MS is a dreadful disease. "But you can't let it stop you."