Drugs ended his NBA career. Heroin almost killed him 4 times. New goal: prevention

Former NBA star Chris Herren was 13 years old when he had his first beer. By 15, he was drinking and smoking marijuana. He snorted his first line of cocaine at 18 years old. And by his early 20s he was in his first rehabilitation center. It didn’t take.

After a successful, “healthy” year with the Denver Nuggets, he said he tried his first oxycontin pill and was quickly hooked. He was traded to the Boston Celtics and soon realized he needed oxycontin just to function.

“I was taking 1600 milligrams of oxycontin a day. I was spending $25,000 a month on pills,” Herren said.

The hoop star eventually went on to play basketball overseas and an attempt to wean himself off of the oxycontin proved futile when he found himself desperate for a fix without the drug in Italy. He turned to heroin.

Over the next eight years, Herren overdosed four times.

“Any time you put a needle in your arm for eight years straight, it’s a nightmare. That means eight years in a row I took a chance at dying every day,” Herren said.

But Herren survived and after several earlier failed attempts at sobriety, he clawed his way out of the pit of substance abuse and stood before the world that learned of his addiction through the media and addressed it head-on. Herren became an advocate. His heartbreaking story of addiction became a cautionary tale of hope that has now helped thousands.

On Thursday afternoon, he shared his story with a crowd of Seahawks who filled an assembly hall at Myrtle Beach High School.

“Our community is facing some issues,” Principal John Washburn told the students before Herren took the stage. “Unfortunately, we have lost some alumni - still Seahawks - to drugs.”

Much like the rest of the nation, Horry County has struggled with the heroin epidemic that claimed more than 60 lives in overdoses last year.

“Every county I go to has a heroin epidemic. This whole country is suffering from this,” Herren said. “The stigma that’s associated with heroin I think is that it only fits a certain person. Nowadays, I meet 15-year-old heroin addicts. I meet 60-year-old heroin addicts. ... Today’s heroin addict comes in all shapes and sizes, all forms and religions and cultures and from all, all areas of life.”

Herren came to speak in two Myrtle Beach presentations Thursday. One was for the students. The other was for the public. But he faced both with the same purpose to empower and inspire in a hopeful mission to prevent others from taking the path he took.

“When I first started doing this, it was more about me than them and I’ve had to learn over the last six years that I’ve had to pivot and switch it and make it more about them,” Herren said. He gives around 250 presentations a year and now instead of just talking about his journey, he encourages others, and especially the youth to share their stories.

“Unfortunately, I think we’re behind in the way we educate our kids. I don’t think we give them enough opportunity to talk and communicate and heal,” he said. “I often say I won’t stop doing this until wellness becomes a core class, a core class from kindergarten on. A kid should be able to walk into a classroom and know that, that day he can open up.”

He encouraged students with friends who are struggling to help them. Herren also advised the students, who may think drinking and smoking a little aren’t bad, to consider their younger siblings, nieces, nephews or cousins.

They look up to you, he said, posing the question would you want them to be doing what you are doing? Because when they look up to you, they’ll follow you, he said.

“I think we’ve gone horribly wrong in so many areas around addiction,” Herren said. In “the area of prevention I think we’ve put so much focus and emphasis on the worst day of addiction and we’ve forgot the first day. We want to show our children pictures of prostitutes and drug addicts and say, ‘look what happens to you, if you do drugs.’ Why not rewind those pictures and go back to when they weren’t, when they were walking in high school hallways and having no idea what was coming? The first day is just as important as the last day.”

“Chris is the founder of The Herren Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing treatment navigation, educational and mentoring programs to those touched by addiction and to educate people of all ages on the dangers of substance abuse. In 2012 The Herren Project launched a national anti-substance abuse campaign, Project Purple, to encourage people of all ages to stand up to substance abuse,” according to his website for Hoop Dreams.

This story was originally published January 26, 2017 at 6:30 PM with the headline "Drugs ended his NBA career. Heroin almost killed him 4 times. New goal: prevention."