Basketball Junkie, a memoir written by Chris Herren and Bill Reynolds was released on May 1, 2011 by St. Martin’s Press. For almost a year leading up to the release, Chris met with Providence Journal-Bulletin sports columnist Bill Reynolds (Fall River Dreams) at a local coffee shop in Portsmouth, RI to share and get his story down on paper in painful detail.
Chris had first met Bill Reynolds when he followed his basketball team during his junior year at Durfee High School in Fall River, MA and then wrote the book Fall River Dreams. This project was different than the first with Reynolds, it was focused on Chris and his story –the journey from high school, to college, playing overseas and all that came with it.
The end result of those long meetings in the coffee shop was a memoir that captured Chris’s storied basketball career, the decent into the disease of addiction, his ability to find strength in the struggle and battle back to a life worth living in recovery.
In the Fall of 2010, St. Martin’s Press asked Chris to share why he wanted to write this book and his story. “I heard a story about a young woman who shared openly and honestly her story on how she made it back from drug addiction and it basically was a turning point in my life”, said Chris. “To be upfront and honest in telling my story with the hope of one day reaching someone else and inspire them…..hopefully save some lives and give people some hope.”
Bill Reynolds recently shared, “Chris had an amazing story to tell and I thought he was at a perfect time in his life to tell it. It is a story that needed to be heard by people.”
Since it’s release in 2011, thousands of Basketball Junkie copies have been shared with those struggling from substance use disorder. The book has become a resource and road map for many who are searching for the road to recovery. Basketball Junkie is a testament that it is never too late to start the path to recovery. Even the best can falter. Even the most desperate can rise.
As we look to 2019 and celebrating 10 years of impacting lives on and off the basketball court, we are grateful for Chris’s willingness to share and the resolve to use his life experience to reach JUST ONE and make a difference.
