Former Celtics player Chris Herren remembers sitting in his Fall River high school gym in 1994 when a recovering addict came to warn students about drugs and alcohol.
Nearly 30 years later, Herren was in the Marblehead High School gym, sharing his own story of losing almost everything to addiction. Later the same day, Jan. 10, he spoke to parents.
“We put way too much energy and effort into talking about the worst day, and we forget about the first day,” he said, explaining why he talks to students about small, stupid choices that can change your life forever.
Hoop dreams
A star high school basketball player, Herren went on to play in college and the NBA with the Denver Nuggets and the Celtics. But by 24 years old, drugs had killed his career.
Herren started drinking his father’s Miller Lights (his dad is also an alcoholic) and smoking marijuana as a freshman in high school.
“It was swept under the rug, as long as you were winning,” he said.
He tried cocaine at Boston College.
“I promised myself it would be just one line,” he said. “That one line took 14 years to walk away from.”
After failing drug tests, Herren was kicked out of B.C. and later went on to play at Fresno State.
He was drafted by the Nuggets and traded to the Celtics. Playing for the Cs had been his dream since he was a little boy.
“What should have been my dream come true, I knew in my heart was my nightmare beginning,” he said. At that point, he was spending $20,000 a month on Oxycontin.
He was cut from the Cs after one season and went to play in Europe, where he started using heroin.
Herren and his wife and young children came back to New England after 9/11, and he says spiraled downward, becoming a “street junkie.”
“In the morning, I would drive to Dunkin Donuts in Portsmouth, Rhode Island,” he said. “My drug dealer would pull up, and I would shoot up. Every single morning. I would lay my seat back and wait 10 minutes and then drive back home to my kids.”
One morning, though, Herren overdosed. He woke up to a police officer standing over him.
“You hit the woman in front of you,” the officer told him. “This little secret you’ve been living with is about to be a public tragedy.”
Herren bailed himself out… and immediately called his drug dealer.
‘By the grace of God…’
On June 4, 2008, Herren overdosed for the fourth time. His friend and former Nuggets teammate Chris Mullin called and offered to pay for Herren to enter his second rehab. Two months later, Herren remembers falling to his knees and praying.
“By the grace of God, Aug. 8, 2008, is still my sobriety date,” he said.
Herren eventually launched the Herren Project, and speaks to students, athletes and others across the country about his journey.
“We’ve given out $8 million in scholarships (to rehab) to 3,300 people that were just like me and had a family behind them with a broken heart, but had no resources to do anything about it,” he said. “Five years ago, we opened Herren Wellness, a treatment center in Seekonk.”
Herren’s treatment center helps people with all kinds of addictions.
“The scariest thing I see today at my center is little teenagers with cannabis-induced psychosis,” he said. “These 15-year-olds with their (vape) pens — they can’t function without them.”
Herren also spoke about his own three children, now 15, 22 and 24.
“If I catch my little guy drinking, I won’t be like my mom and dad and say, ‘He’s a teenager, just accept it,’” he said. “I won’t punish him. I’ll walk into his bedroom, hug him and say, ‘I need you to tell me why.’”
Herren continued, “Addiction is in my family. I’m not wasting any time. I’ll find out why my son would take that chance.”
‘You never asked me why’
Herren shared that his mother died at age 51 “of a broken heart.” She did not live to see him in recovery. If he had a chance to talk to her again, he said he would tell her how much he misses her, and he’d ask her one question: “How come, as a mom, you weren’t curious?”
“I was 14 and drinking my father’s Miller Light,” he said. “I was 18 years old putting cocaine up my nose. I was 24 years old with a needle in my arm, and you never asked me, ‘Why?’ Not every parent asks it, but I promise you… kids like to talk about it.”
MHS social worker Gina Hart introduced Herren to parents.
“It is extremely important to provide programming like this in order to address the needs of prevention, education, awareness and, most importantly, the de-stigmatization of substance use disorder for our students and our families,” Hart said.
For Herren, it’s all part of his recovery.
“I truly believe in my heart that I’ve made a difference,” he said.
For more information about the Herren Project, visit herrenproject.org.
