Former NBA player to visit Benedictine University to share personal story of how drugs ended his career and almost his life.

Former Massachusetts high school basketball legend Chris Herren accomplished his dream of playing in the NBA first with the Denver Nuggets and later the Boston Celtics, but he nearly lost everything to a gripping drug addiction.

Herren will share his story and address the dangers of drug use and addiction in a talk aimed at teenagers, young adults and parents at 6:15 p.m. Monday, August 27 at the Dan and Ada Rice Center on the campus of Benedictine University. The event is free and open to the public. Doors
open at 5:15 p.m.

Herren's rise to professional basketball stardom and the drug culture surrounding it was chronicled in a 2011 memoir, "Basketball Junkie" and the ESPN documentary "Unguarded." Both the book and documentary reveal how his drug addiction began as a student-athlete at Boston College and later at Fresno State, where he set school records in assists and steals and was named to the All-Western Athletic Conference team in 1996 and
1997.