Letter: Basketball Star Warns Against the Dangers of Drugs

Imagine being an American, living in Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey. You have a job, a well-paying one, but there's a hitch: you're a drug addict and the 300 Oxycontin pills you smuggled from home, hoping to wean yourself off them, are long gone. And you need a fix.

You convince a friend from home to Fedex you some pills. As you approach the Fedex office, you notice two armed police officers inside and three Fedex workers standing near a package that's been opened and closed back up again with yellow tape. You know that's your package. Outside the office, scenes from "Midnight Express" run through your head in a flash. You know what they do to Americans found with drugs in Turkey, you know you should run back to your car, and drive fast and far away.

But you need those drugs, you're an addict needing your fix. So you push the door open, sweating bullets as you sign for the package, and leave.

This was but one of many situations related by Chris Herren in a riveting presentation Tuesday night at . Casually dressed in jeans, an untucked flannel shirt and grey Chuck Taylors, Herren paced back and forth in the front of the auditorium, and spoke non-stop for over an hour.

Herren, the former basketball standout from Durfee High School who went on to a college and professional career that was derailed by years of substance abuse, started off the night by relating what he calls his most memorable moment. He referred to this throughout his talk.

His basketball coach at Boston College brought some players, including the freshman Herren, to listen to Steve DeOssie, himself a BC alum and former NFL player who was a substance abuser and now spoke to young athletes about his struggle. "What a waste of time," Herren recalled thinking, "get this loser off the stage. I'll never turn out to be the monster this guy is talking about."

Now, Herren says, if he could change anything in his life, it would be to go back to that fall night in 1995, and pay attention to DeOssie's words.

Instead, the heavily recruited Herren, who was the subject of a Sports Illustrated photo shoot in his freshman year, delved into a world of drug use, starting with  cocaine in his dormitory room when a friend invited him to try it, telling him "it won't hurt you." Herren joined in, failed a drug rest the next day, then broke his wrist and, like that, his season was over. His academic career at Boston College ended shortly thereafter, as he failed a third drug test and was told that he "was a detriment to the university."

Suddenly back home in Fall River, Herren, who had seen himself as the player to save the BC basketball program, got deeper into alcohol, pot and cocaine. He was contacted by Jerry Tarkanian, basketball coach at Cal State Fresno, enrolled there, and was asked to serve a 28 day rehab program. At that program in Salt Lake City, Herren says, he went through the motions, judging the other addicts, telling himself, "this is pathetic."

Still using, Herren continued to play basketball, marrying his high school girlfriend and having two kids by his senior year. They moved back to the Fall River area after college,  bought a house, and Herren, who had been drafted by the Denver Nuggets, was preparing to go to training camp in the summer of 1999.

But, again, Herren told the audience, he made another bad decision. A friend offered him  Oxycontin, and he soon blossomed into a full-fledged abuser of the painkiller pills. He detailed how the habit cost him $25,000 a month, and consumed him. Speaking in a matter-of-fact voice, he told of the panic he felt on a night when he was going to start his first game for the Celtics at the Fleet Center, having been traded.

The panic didn't stem from jitters, or excitement at playing for his boyhood team, but from the fact that his drug dealer was stuck in traffic. In a riveting account, Herren told the crowd how he left the parquet minutes before game time, strode out through the incoming crowd in his Celtics warmups, and met he dealer in the parking lot. He then took the pills, and went out and played the game.

Injured that year, Herren played in a summer camp and had contract talks with several NBA teams. Again, though, his drug use interfered and no offer was forthcoming. He took an offer to play in Italy, making $50,000 a month, home and cars provided all the perks afforded a professional athlete.

Still, in probably one of the most harrowing accounts of the evening, Herren told how he drove to a the Bologna, Italy bus terminal, scoping out the drug dealers, and buying 15 bags of heroin; heroin instead of pills because he spoke no Italian and was desperate. He had never used intravenous drugs before and had to have the dealer inject him. At the age of 23, again referring back to the Steve DeOssie assembly where he said "that could never happen to me," Herren became a heroin junkie.

After stints of basketball in places as widespread as Istanbul and Poland, Herren soon returned to his home in Portsmouth, RI, jobless and an addict. He sold and pawned his family's possessions, including his kids' video games, to buy drugs, and overdosed more than once. Leaving the hospital one night, desperate, suicidal, Herren was approached by a nurse who had known his late mother. She told him that his mother was "telling me to help you". At this point, Herren paused and said simply, "That woman saved me."

After several attempts at rehab, Chris Herren has now been sober since August of 2008, telling the rapt audience, "I stand before you now, I have not had another ounce of alcohol or another bag of heroin. But you can't keep sobriety unless you give it away. If I can touch one life, that's all that matters....if I affect one kid, that's enough."

Now 32 years old, looking strong and healthy, Herren told the kids that the choices they make at age 16 or 17, will make them what they are as adults. He closed by saying that he wished he had said to himself, back in 1995, "I'm perfect the way I am. I don't need to get high. I don't need to drink." The audience applauded.