Chris Herren had it all.
He was a McDonald’s All-American, a local celebrity, and had a basketball scholarship to the college of his choice.
But it wasn’t enough. The combination of pressure and a family history of addiction was too much for the Fall River, Massachusettes, native to overcome.
“Basketball wasn’t enjoyable,” Herren said before speaking to a group at Southmont High School on Wednesday evening. “It was a job at a very young age. I grew up in a basketball community. There was a lineage I followed. Expectations and pressure was obvious, and I struggled with that.”
Herren graduated from Durfee High School in 1994, before enrolling at Boston College. He broke his wrist in the first game of the season, and just a few months later failed his third drug test for cocaine and was dismissed from the basketball program and university.
Before cocaine it was alcohol and marijuana, which both started at a young age.
“Back then it was a culture of you go out after basketball games and you drink,” Herren said. “Unfortunately, most of my friends, we came from families with alcoholism, and that was never really discussed with us. There was a chance that we could be just like our dad if we go down that path.”
Legendary coach Jerry Tarkanian at Fresno State gave Herren a second chance.
Eventually he was drafted by the Denver Nuggets, and later traded to his hometown team in the Boston Celtics. Yet, no matter where he went, his addiction followed.
When it wasn’t cocaine it was alcohol, and then prescription drugs. In 2001, the Celtics cut Herren and he moved overseas with his family to continue playing basketball professionally for another five years.
His drug addiction followed him to Italy, Turkey, China, and eventually back to the United States where his life and family continued to unravel.
“There were nights with not heat, no lights, no money,” he said. “It was tough. Unfortunately, families are forgotten when it comes to dug addiction. Families are forgotten when it comes to substance abuse disorder and alcoholism. The focus is primarily on the person that is struggling, and I think that is where the community and even medically we’ve dropped the ball. You have to bring in the family, and you have to all heal on similar tracks.”
After four overdoses and a life-long battle with addiction, Herren again entered a treatment facility. However, a month later his wife was expecting the birth of the couple’s third child, and against the advice of many, he went to the hospital for the child’s birth, but once again failed to stay clean.
“I had every intention of doing the right thing, but after walking into that hospital and seeing my children, I had nothing to offer,” he said. “I had no job, no money, no health insurance. I was just a body. That was extremely difficult for me, and even more difficult for them to see me come home with high expectations and be let down once again.”
Herren left the hospital and went to the liquor store. When he returned the next morning to visit his wife she told him to leave.
He has been sober since Aug. 1, 2008.
“I hope that the message they heard is one of redemption,” Herren said of the talk he gave to the entire Southmont junior high and high school student body. “That no matter what, no matter how far, no matter how many family members struggle, there is a better way.”
For more than 15 years Herren battled a drug and alcohol addiction, and he hopes now, after forming the Herren Project and helping more than 4,000 people and taling to more than a million students, that people will understand recovry is more about the first day than the worst day.
“I just wish the tact was a little different,” he said. “The approach. I think when talking to kids about drugs and alcohol, there is so much emphasis on the worst day, instead of the first day.”
You can watch Herren’s documentary Unguarded on ESPN+.
