Fauquier County Public Schools News Release FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Sept. 18, 2017 Karen Parkinson, Coordinator of Information Phone (540) 422-7031 [email protected] CHRIS HERREN BRINGS SOBERING MESSAGE TO FCPS HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS Baller gone bad. Those three words perhaps best describe the old Chris Herren, former NBA player with the Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics who chose to let alcohol and drugs derail his professional basketball career and almost cost him his life and family. Man on a mission. Those four words perhaps best describe the new Chris Herren, sober for nine years and hoping to reach “at least one kid” in the gymnasiums and arenas where he now shares his fall from fame toward death and his painfully desperate climb toward life. Thanks to a PATH Foundation grant, Herren spoke to packed gymnasiums at Fauquier High School and Kettle Run High School on Sept. 13 and Liberty High School on Sept. 14. The one-time nationally ranked top-10 high school basketball player told local Fauquier County high school students, “Just like you, at my high school (Durfee High in Fall River, MA) I remember some 35-year- old guy talking to us about drug abuse. And, just like some of you, I wanted to skip this talk. I told myself – just like you’re telling yourselves – ‘Why am I here? That’ll never be me. All I do is drink and smoke. I’m never gonna be THAT guy.” But after a gripping, fast-paced video recapped Herren’s high school, college and professional career, his disgraceful spiral down into addiction, and his agonizing recovery, no one in attendance could deny that Herren did, indeed, become THAT guy, and worse. No one can deny that Herren was a baller. Every Friday night in the early 1990’s, he lit up his high school gym with electric performances on the hardwood, amassing a following, scoring 2,073 career points, breaking records and accumulating accolades – Gatorade New England Player of the Year two years straight, Boston Globe Massachusetts Player of the Year three years straight, and 1994 McDonald’s All American. In the video Herren’s high school coach said he once asked his assistant, “Have you ever seen anything this good in your life?” It was in high school, though, that Herren took his first step on a disastrous journey. “I started drinking and smoking pot as a freshman in high school,” he said. It was during his freshman year at Boston College (the year Sports Illustrated featured Herren on its cover with the headline “The Big East is Back!”) when the kid with so much potential went sideways. When he returned to his dorm room one day after practice, he found his roommate and two girls there snorting cocaine; they convinced him no harm would come from it. “I was 18 when I snorted my first line of cocaine. That opened doors for me that I was not able to close for the next 15 years,” he said. After a broken wrist during a game at Boston College and after failing three drug Continued on next page tests, Herren was kicked off campus and sent home, just three months into his college career. Even so, cocaine didn’t bring him to his knees just yet. Jerry Tarkanian, head coach at Fresno State College, called him with an offer – an offer for Herren to start over. Herren jumped at the chance and proved that drugs had not diminished his basketball prowess. At Fresno he ranked fifth in the nation in assists in 1998-99, ranked second in his school’s career assists at 465, ranked seventh with 138 career steals and was All-WAC first team in 1996 and 1997. Everyone believed he would be a first-round draft pick. “He was fearless,” Tarkanian said in the video. He was also an addict – basketball star by day and partyer by night – and he couldn’t sustain the charade. On Monday, Nov. 25, 1997, with his mother and grandfather in the back of the room, he announced at a press conference that he had tested positive. “I had to tell national T.V. that I’m a drug addict,” Herren said. He completed a 28-day rehab but “didn’t listen” to the life-saving treatment advice that came his way and simply kept using. Although professional teams were leery of Herren’s drug-riddled past, he was a 1999 Denver Nuggets second- round draft pick at the age of 22. The coaches and owners made it clear – no drinking, no smoking, no drugs. “For a whole year they took care of me, and it was my healthiest year ever,” Herren said. He played in 45 Nuggets games, contributing 3.1 points and 2.5 assists in 13.3 minutes per game. But when he went home for the summer with his wife and new baby, and didn’t have his mentors spending invaluable time with him promoting a healthy lifestyle, an old friend introduced him to oxycontin. “I immediately got hooked,” Herren said. “It became an everyday, physical addiction,” leading to a $25,000-a-month habit. He was relieved when it came time to return to the Nuggets training camp, anxious to return to his mentors’ influence. What he returned to, however, was news of a big change: “You’ve been traded to the Boston Celtics.” Thrilled to be part of his childhood dream team, the Celtics, Herren somehow managed to play well in NBA games while he was a self-admitted “absolute junkie.” He remembers Coach Rick Pitino telling him he’d be the starting point guard one night, but Herren was more concerned with whether or not his dealer would get through traffic to deliver his pills before the start of the game. “I stood out in the rain on a street corner, in my Celtics warmups, waiting for him to arrive. With four minutes left before the game, he arrived,” and Herren popped his pills just moments before joining his teammates on the court. He has no memory of the game. “It was a nightmare year. I was living a lie,” Herren said. That year he had a career-high 18 points in the Celtics/ Dallas Mavericks game in April 2000, but he was released by the Celtics following a knee injury. Smuggling oxycontin in his luggage, Herren moved with his family to Italy to play in a professional league. When the oxycontin was gone, he hit the streets to find a dealer. What he found was a man who introduced him to heroin. He eventually landed in jail when he hit a woman with his car after shooting the drug. Things got worse. For the next six years he used all his basketball earnings to support his habit. He did whatever it took to get money to get drugs. “I’m on a street corner hawking jewelry, and I’ve got two kids and a pregnant wife,” he said. On June 4, 2008, back in the States, he crashed his car during an overdose episode that almost killed him. “An ambulance came and brought me back to life,” Herren said. The former basketball star knew he was “just another junkie.” “I was tired of driving my wife and kids through the mud,” he said. “I began to see suicide as my best option.” Herren went through two more rehabs. On his 45th day in one of them, his wife went into labor so he left rehab to experience the birth of his third child. Afterwards, with his other two children in the car, he drove straight to the liquor store. His wife told him to return to treatment or don’t come back. A small-in-stature counselor gave him a big challenge: “Why don’t you do the most courageous thing you’ve ever done – call your family and tell them they’re better off without you and they’ll never see you again?” “I lay in bed thinking I might do that,” Herren said. He didn’t see his family for nearly a year while he remained in rehab. On Aug. 1, 2008, at he hit his knees and prayed in his rehab room, refocused his life, and has been drug-free and alcohol-free for the nine years since. Finally free but still in the battle, Herren now spends time speaking before some 250 Continued on next page groups a year, teaching basketball through “Hoop Dreams with Chris Herren, Inc.” and working with The Herren Project, a nonprofit dedicated to providing treatment navigation and educational and mentoring programs to those touched by addiction. He lives with his wife and three children in Rhode Island; two of his children are now in high school so he identified easily with his audience. Their Story, Not His With Herren’s heartbreaking life story seeming to touch everyone in the Liberty audience, he told the students, “This is not my story. This is your story. This story is more about self-worth than addiction.” He shared tender story after tender story of real-life teenagers just like them struggling with self-worth, teens struggling with family issues, teens struggling with loss of loved ones to drugs or alcohol, teens struggling with how other teens treat them. The empathy in the room was palpable. One such story recalled a young high school girl in attendance at one of his presentations who timidly raised her hand during the question-and-answer period that typically ends his time with teens. When fellow students jeered at her, she wouldn’t continue.