Former NBA star warns teens of drug use

Herren, 47 years old and 15 years sober, was speaking to teens at Stowe High School last Thursday — he gave the same talk at Peoples Academy in Morrisville later that day — about his origin story, his “first day.”

Herren grew up in Fall River, Mass., a city near the Rhode Island border, about 20 miles from Providence. As a kid at Durfee High School during the early 1990s, he was widely seen as the next big thing in high school hoops, featured in the Boston Globe and Sports Illustrated. That’s also when he started using cocaine and marijuana.

He got kicked out of Boston College after failing multiple drug tests for cocaine and marijuana but managed something of a comeback playing at Fresno State under legendary coach Jerry Tarkanian.

He was drafted by the Denver Nuggets in the second round of the 1999 NBA draft and played one year for Denver before getting traded to the Celtics. It was the hometown team and a dream come true, but it was also perhaps the worst thing that could happen because he was right back with his old crew, buying opioid painkillers in the parking lot of the arena just minutes before tipoff.

After three years in the pros, he was done, although he became a journeyman player for overseas teams, turning from pills to heroin.

The first day

His rock bottom came in 2008 when he overdosed on heroin while driving in his hometown of Fall River and crashed into a utility pole.

He said he was dead for 30 seconds. He said he’s been sober since and has dedicated his life to talking to people about addiction — and not just the 2 million high school and college kids he has spoken to, but other professional sports teams.

A 2011 ESPN documentary about his life, “Unguarded,” was nominated for two Emmy awards. A shorter, 30-minute documentary, “The First Day,” is aimed at high schools, and was screened during last week’s assemblies at Stowe High and Peoples Academy.

Herren wasn’t pulling punches with the students, talking as if someone in that very room was using their parents’ money to buy booze or drugs; as if someone in the room had chosen to get high or drunk in order to hang out with friends they’d known their whole life; as if someone in the room was at that moment struggling with addiction, whether their own or a sibling’s or a parent’s.

He said he knows at least someone in the room was going through it because he and his friends were those kids, laughing at the requisite don’t-do-drugs school speakers, laughing at the kids who chose to abstain.

“There’s always a couple of people in the room struggling, and this room is no different,” he said. “You don’t feel good about you anymore. The saddest thing about that struggle, the beginning, the first day, is your friends know you’re struggling, man. And that kind of makes them uncomfortable, and they don’t know what to say about it, so instead they’ll sit in a room like this and laugh about it.”

Life lessons

Superintendent Ryan Heraty, who had seen Herren speak a few years back and invited him to Stowe and PA, said the Lamoille South Supervisory Union has focused this year on reviewing and re-designing school health curriculum, and Herren’s talk dovetailed with more frank talks about substance use.

He said students and educators spoke of being moved by Herren’s frank talk. Some of them may have even been triggered by his words — immediately following the Stowe High assembly, principal David Greenfield let students know that qualified educators and support staff were available if any of the teens needed to talk things though.

“I think that comfort with yourself is something that kids, more and more, are having a hard time with,” Heraty said. “I think that social media is having a major detrimental impact on kids, because they’re constantly questioning their own self value and worth and I think substance abuse is a coping strategy for kids.”

Stowe held its prom over the weekend, and Heraty said he thinks some students who caught Herren’s talk may have thought twice about drinking or taking drugs.

“For our students, it’s going to be something they remember for a long time,” Heraty said.

Jessica Bickford, coordinator for Healthy Lamoille Valley, said parents can learn a thing or two from their kids, even as they learn how to recognize signs of trouble.

“We’re really teaching them to be askable adults,” she said.

Herren said when he first started talking to kids 12 years ago, after being in recovery for three years, there was a girl who raised her hand to ask a question but was pressured by laughing classmates to put her hand down. However, afterward, she emailed Herren, telling her how she related to his life because her family was being torn apart by alcohol and drug use. That girl is now 30 years old, with her own family, and still writes to Herren.

“That young woman’s email that I get, occasionally checking in with me, saying she’s still healthy and happy, means more to me than anything I’ve ever accomplished in my life as a basketball player,” he said.