Chris Herren, a former Boston Celtics player, visited Dartmouth High School on September 26 to share his message about drug addiction at an event organized by Healthy Dartmouth and Dartmouth Public Schools.  Before a crowd of about 100 people, Herren told his life story.

Herren saw his dream come true: he was a star basketball in Fall River who once played for the Boston Celtics in the NBA. But a long struggle with drug addiction caused him to lose his passion for basketball, his family, and he came close to losing his life. Now, Herren runs the Herren Project, an organization that provides help for those struggling with addiction, and he gives talks and lectures about how his addiction began.

“We focus so much on the worst day and not the first day,” Herren said as he began his presentation. “We focus on how it ends and not on how it begins.”

Growing up, his father was an alcoholic, giving Herren his first exposure to addiction. Despite promising himself that he would never end up like his father, he ended up sneaking his father’s beer at age 13. Herren said that that single beer would begin his decades-long battle with addiction.

Herren’s basketball career began at a young age. By high school, he was already a star player for the B.M.C. Durfee High School varsity basketball team.

His battle with drug addiction would begin in his first month at Boston College. On the basketball team, he was required to attend a lecture on drugs and alcohol – a lecture Herren vividly remembers he thought he would never need. Shortly after the lecture, he went back to his dorm room and found his roommate and a girl doing cocaine, and after challenging him, he participated.

“I said I’d do the drug once and never do it again,” Herren said. “I had no idea that at 18 years old that would take 14 years away from my life.”

He ended up failing a drug test and was kicked out of Boston College. Several months later, he would be given a second chance, and began playing basketball for Fresno State, but his struggle with addiction continued and he failed another drug test shortly into the season.

“I was 21 years old and I blew the biggest opportunity of my life,” Herren said.

He went to treatment for the first time, at the request of the Fresno State athletic director, and was able to continue playing basketball. In his senior season, his dreams of playing in the NBA came true when he was picked by the Denver Nuggets.

It was around the same time that he was first introduced to the powerful opioid painkiller OxyContin by a high school friend when he returned to Fall River in the offseason. Four months later he went through a six-day recovery program.

He then received the call of his life: the Boston Celtics wanted him to play on their team. But by then, his addiction had progressed so far that he was now dependent on OxyContin, and Herren remembered that after getting the news, his very first call was to his high school friend for more OxyContin so he wouldn’t feel sick.

Eight weeks later, during a game, he learned that he would be the star point guard for the Boston Celtics. What should have been a dream moment turned into a nightmare as Herren realized he was too sick to play, and had his high school friend drive all the way to Boston to get him OxyContin before he was due to play.

“I missed it,” Herren said. “I don’t remember it at all because of the pills.”

Three weeks later, he suffered a rotator cuff injury that ended his season, but he received an offer to play basketball for an international team in Italy, which he accepted. Several weeks after arriving in Italy, he used heroin for the first time.

“At 24 years old I became an intravenous drug addict,” Herren recalled.

When Herren was told he would have to attend a 10-day training program in the mountains, he quit the team on the spot, knowing he could not last that long without heroin, ending his basketball career.

He returned home to New England, where his addiction worsened. He suffered several overdoses, at one point he ended up in a car accident as a result of one of his overdoses. He turned to alcohol as well to help forget what had happened. After several failed attempts at recovery, he finally beat his addiction and has been sober since August 1, 2008.