Pencil-drawn portraits of nearly three dozen people line the walls on the second floor of Walter Webb Hall at UT Austin’s campus. Each portrait is of a person in Central Texas who lost their lives to addiction. The “Into Light” exhibition puts faces to the disease of addiction and the opioid crisis, reducing stigma and spreading awareness about overdose deaths.
Family Stories and Stigma
Mothers Annie Hernandez and Lisa Lasch submitted their sons’ stories to the Into Light project. Josh Bell, age 33, and Brandon Lasch, age 27, never knew each other but died of overdoses. The women met through an overdose loss group at the Christi Center, which provides grief support to Central Texans. Hernandez noted that losing a child to addiction carries different stigma than losing a child to disease, with people often afraid to speak to families of overdose victims.
Josh began taking opioids prescribed by a pain management specialist after a car accident. He took more than prescribed, bought extra pills on the street, and eventually ventured into heroin. He died of an overdose in 2019, which Hernandez believes was caused by a pill laced with fentanyl. Brandon was described as a sensitive, charismatic young man and animal lover. He donated his body to the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State for scientific research.
Addiction Crisis Scale and Response
Into Light is preparing to visit its 21st state, each time partnering with a local museum or university to show portraits of overdose victims from the area. Austin’s exhibit is hosted by the UT School of Social Work. The 34 individuals memorialized represent a small fraction of addiction-related deaths. Drug-poisoning deaths skyrocketed by 68% statewide between 2019 and 2024. However, signs of improvement have begun to emerge: drug-related deaths in Travis County decreased by 22% between 2023 and 2024.
Kasey Claborn, director of UT’s Addiction Research Institute, credits widespread distribution of naloxone, the overdose-reversing treatment. The nation is still in a “dangerous phase” of the opioid crisis, with only around 20% of the 48.7 million Americans with a substance abuse disorder getting treatment as of 2024. Into Light is open through May 23 at UT’s Walter Webb Hall.
This article is an AI-assisted summary. All facts and figures are drawn from the original report: https://www.kut.org/life-arts/2026-04-15/austin-tx-into-light-addiction-drug-overdose-portraits-exhibit