Former NBA player turned addiction recovery specialist Chris Herren remembers being a teenager and having to sit through drug and alcohol assemblies.
“I remember laughing and being disrespectful,” he told the group of Cohoes High School students at a recent assembly where he shared his story of addiction and recovery. “I wanted to skip these assemblies.”
That attitude, he believes now, comes from how these topics are often handled—reduced to clichés instead of honest conversations. Students listened intently as he recounted his story of addiction and recovery. Growing up in Fall River, Massachusetts, a former mill town not unlike Cohoes, he was a star basketball player with a bright future, until he began a downward spiral into painkillers, drugs and alcohol. During the height of his career, he played for the Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics. He has also played professionally all over the world, including Italy, Germany, and Poland, Turkey, China and Iran.
For the past 15 years, he has dedicated his life to sharing his story. What began as a personal journey has taken him to every major sports platform and, more importantly, into high school auditoriums across the country. Yet despite the scale of his reach, the heart of his mission remains deeply personal: speaking to young people as both a survivor and a father.
“Many people can walk in here and tell you how bad drugs are, to just say no,” he said. “My goal is that if just one student returns to class, sits at their desk and thinks, ‘I don’t feel too good about myself, I’m not proud of myself, I want to be better,’ then I’ve done my job.”
“Everyone thinks this is about drugs,” he said. “It’s about self-respect, self-esteem and self-worth.”
He recalls receiving a message on social media from a young girl who had raised her hand during a packed high school assembly of 4,000 students, but she left before he was able to call on her. Later, she wrote to him about her struggles—honestly, vulnerably.
“The little girl who struggled in high school and emailed me – means more to anything I’ve done,” said Mr. Herren.
Students were deeply moved after hearing his story, calling it “powerful and emotional.” One freshman said, “It was the most powerful message we could get,” and another commented that, “It was much deeper than I expected.”