The amazing thing is that I never spent a night in jail. Through all the episodes of drunk driving, the procuring of prescription narcotics through illicit means, the missed child support payments, the passing of bad checks (yes, I did that, too, a couple of times, quite deliberately, but no one ever pressed charges)—I somehow managed to avoid any serious interaction with law enforcement. Perhaps it was divine intervention. I’m careful about invoking the possibility of that sort of thing, for I believe that God has enough on his plate without worrying about whether I have a soft landing every time I stumble.
Yet there is no disputing my good fortune not just in surviving the mess that I made of my own life (and of the lives of so many around me), but also in the resurrection that I have been so blessed to receive. I believe God bestows on us free will and holds us accountable for our actions, but I also think he is willing to open his arms to anyone who seeks help and forgiveness, and who is willing to undertake the work to set things right.
It’s something of a cliché in the world of addiction treatment to say that asking for help is the hardest and most important step. It’s also not really true. I asked for help (or at least accepted intervention) multiple times without really meaning it, simply because it was a way to at least temporarily end the misery and to get people off my back—to accommodate doctors and attorneys and employers. In other words, to stay one step ahead of trouble. True change, though, comes only with diligence. It is emotionally and physically exhausting. It is spiritually transformative.
It’s also worth it.
From 2008 through early 2011, I was utterly adrift, existing but not really living. Whatever money came in—for example, a $100,000 settlement from the new owners of my restaurant, who changed the name and politely asked me to stay out of their way—quickly went right back out. For all practical purposes, I was completely broke. I moved into the modest home in which I had been raised, while my parents stayed in the more spacious home that I had purchased for them many years earlier. I rarely left the house, preferring instead to simply sit alone in my living room, watching television (until the cable was turned off) and drinking myself stupid. Weeks and months passed in a blur. At some point I stopped drinking Bacardi 151 and went back to Hennessy, rationalizing the move as a step toward healthier living. Not sobriety, though. Not even close. I just knew that 151 would kill me sooner. Hennessy I could drink all day.
For the last six months of my life as a drinker, I put away between a gallon and a gallon and a half of Hennessy every single day. Aside from what it did to my body, I couldn’t afford the habit. Hennessy at the time cost nearly fifty dollars for a one-liter bottle, and I needed at least four or five a day just to stave off the effects of withdrawal. So, you’re looking at a two-hundred-dollar-a-day habit, or roughly fifteen hundred dollars per week. It’s fair to say that every penny I had went toward drinking. And when I ran out of money, I’d sell stuff, which is how I ended up pawning the old tires out of my mother’s Mercedes.
There is no act too humiliating for the addict, no deed that will shame him into sudden remorse and a different way of life. He thinks only of the next fix, and of how he can avoid the pain that accompanies an absence of his drug of choice. I judge no one, because I have been this low. I know in my heart that the gap between me and the wretched soul who sells her body for a twenty-dollar hit of crack or meth is almost too small to be measured. Different drugs, different methods of obtaining a fix. Same outcome.
A slow and steady slog toward death.
Eventually it got to the point where I couldn’t take the pain any longer. For six months, beginning in mid-October 2010, I started every day in the same exact manner—with a swig of Hennessy, a mouthful of food, and several minutes of ferocious nausea and vomiting. I’d need a good half hour to an hour just to recover from the physical ordeal, and then I could start drinking again. I hardly ate at all, which is why my weight slipped to 190, some sixty pounds below my NBA fighting weight. I’d shuffle around the house all day, in slippers and sweats, one hand clutching a glass filled with Hennessy, the other holding on to the waistband of my pants, to keep them from falling down. From the neck down I was skeletal, but my face was bloated and puffy, except for my eyes, which had sunk into my skull and had taken on the ghastly yellow pallor of a man who is flirting with cirrhosis. I couldn’t sleep on my back, because the pressure caused intense pain in my liver. I developed sores in my mouth and throat, a by-product of the corrosive effect of chronic vomiting. Sometimes I’d vomit blood instead of bile, which freaked me out at first but eventually just became another symptom of my descent into alcoholism.
There was psychic pain as well, the steady drumbeat of loneliness and depression. I hated my life. I hated myself. I couldn’t stand the misery any longer, and despite my best efforts to drink myself to death, my body refused to give out. Instead, it just doled out pain on an epic scale, day after fucking day. Unable to endure it any longer, I finally surrendered. I gave up. I asked God for help, and then I called my father, and together we drove to the Rushford Center, a rehabilitation hospital in Middletown, Connecticut. I drank on the way to rehab, not because I lacked commitment, but because I physically needed to drink. I’d been through the drill before, several times, and knew that a bit of time could pass between my arrival and the first dose of medication designed to stem the tide of withdrawal, so I wanted to make sure I was well oiled before I checked in. My father glanced at me as he drove and did not even respond to my drinking. My dad is a hard man, but he’s also a spiritual man, a preacher, and he could see the depth of my pain. If this is what it took to get me on the road to recovery, it was a small price to pay.
“I’m never drinking again after today,” I told him.
“I know, son. I believe you.”
This was not an empty promise. I had made a commitment to God and to myself to lead a different life, one based in spirituality and honesty and service. My father was the only person left who would listen to me, the only one willing to distinguish bullshit from a sincere desire to change. There was no one else.
Only my dad.
Part of this was paternal love, but it also stemmed from the fact that my father was a deeply religious man. He knew from being a pastor that there was a higher power, and that by turning my life over to that power, I could find redemption. Dad believed in me; he believed in the power of the holy spirit, and the possibility of change.
“You can do this,” he said on the drive to Rushford.
I didn’t need to hear that, but I liked hearing it.
Even then, with a bottle of cognac between my knees, I was excited about the prospect of starting over. But I had to fix my broken body first; I had to go through detox, clean out my system. Once that was accomplished, I knew I’d be okay. I knew it was true. I felt it in my heart. I was done with drinking. I was ready to put it all behind me. I had died in every way but the physical, and if I didn’t clean up my act, that was coming, too. I entered Rushford battered and beaten, but with a sense of spiritual determination I had never known. I walked through the doors accompanied only by God, armed only with prayer. I had no expectations of what life would be like afterward; I just knew that I wanted to be alive. Every other time I had gone through rehab, it was because I was trying to work an angle of one sort or another. This time my motives were pure. I wasn’t doing it to save my job or to meet the terms of a contract. I wasn’t doing it for the Celtics or for John Lucas, or even for my family.
I did it for me.
Until I took care of myself, I couldn’t possibly hope to take care of anyone else. I wanted to be a dad, to get back into the lives of my children, but that wasn’t possible unless I was sober and healthy.
This was my fifth attempt at rehab and ultimately one of the shortest. It also was the one that worked. It worked because I had experienced a fundamental change in attitude. On every previous attempt at rehab, I merely went through the motions. I was ashamed, lonely, resistant to treatment. My ego got in the way. I wasn’t truly ready to embrace sobriety. This time, emboldened by a desire to serve God, I had made up my mind. I was all business when I walked through the doors of Rushford. No swagger, no aliases, no con jobs. I was there to get clean and sober. On the very first day, when they came into my room at three o’clock in the morning to distribute medication and take my vitals, I was already awake.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I’m ready.”
On any of my other trips to rehab I would have greeted the staff at that hour with a grumble and a sour face. I would have pulled the blankets up over my head and pleaded, “Leave me alone.”
Not this time. I was eager to get to work. The sooner I got healthy, the sooner I could leave and get on with my life and my ministry. It was that simple. It was that clear.
Unlike in my previous stints in rehab, I did a lot of listening this time. I’d always been the talker, trying to fake my way through treatment with charm. After a while I’d get comfortable and be honest about my story. I’d tell everyone that I was a professional basketball player, and that I was an alcoholic, but there was as much bragging as there was contrition.
This time I tried to keep my mouth shut, not because I didn’t want to share my story, but because I thought I could learn more by listening to others. People knew who I was, but I didn’t make a big deal about it. It didn’t matter anymore. I had been humbled. I wanted to be quiet. I wanted to take care of the business at hand, as opposed to turning rehab into my own personal show. The irony of it is, I knew the drill; I knew the right things to say. I knew what was expected and what would have played well. None of that mattered anymore. This time it was in my spirit.
The first few days of rehab were all about survival. I was a very sick man, trying to recover from years of self-abuse. My existence had depended entirely on alcohol, and now I was paying the price yet again. Like everyone else going through detox, I wandered the halls like a zombie, withered by my own pain and suffering. But I’d been through this before and I knew that it would end soon enough. I avoided the conversations and camaraderie that help make the experience bearable for many patients—the sharing of war stories and the dark humor that marks conversation outside a formal group setting. A lot of the patients were smokers. On break they would all go outside together and share cigarettes. I was not a smoker, which gave me an easy excuse to pass up these interactions. In the past I would have jumped in. Now it was merely a distraction that I did not need.
There’s something that happens after a few days in rehab, when the body begins to clear itself of toxins. We call it the “pink cloud.” It happens to almost everyone—a euphoric feeling of freedom and clearheadedness.
Oh, my goodness. I’m sober! I’m going to stay this way forever!
I’d been in the pink cloud several times, and it always produced a false sense of security. This time I would not be fooled. When the pink cloud lifted me up at Rushford, I did not overreact. It was just part of the process.
They gave me Librium again, but I viewed it strictly as a tool to facilitate my goal—a release from the pain of addiction. Three days into what was supposed to be a thirty-day program, I began telling the staff that I would be out in roughly a week, as soon as I had completed detox and was out of danger. They’d heard this sort of thing before, usually from patients who were either scared or lacked commitment, or both.
“Vin, you’ve been down this road,” one of the therapists said to me. “If you leave early, you’ll go right back to your old life. We both know that.”
I didn’t argue with her. She had every right to feel that way. She had the wisdom that comes with experience, and she knew my personal story. But I had something else: faith.
As much time as I spent in group and individual therapy at Rushford, I spent even more time in prayer, and reading my Bible. I asked God to give me strength. I asked for one more chance. I vowed not to let him down again.
In rehab, doctors and therapists generally have nothing against religion or spirituality; they just don’t believe in miracles, or even shortcuts. They believe in science. They believe that healing takes time and diligence, particularly if the patient has already relapsed multiple times. I understood their concern. But this time was different.
I was different.
I wasn’t at Rushford because I was trying to save my basketball career or because I had violated the terms of a contract. There was no employer or union standing behind me, ordering me to complete a certain level of treatment or face dire financial consequences. I had nothing left. No money, no career, no home, no family. I was far beyond the point where anyone wanted to stage an intervention on my behalf. I wasn’t worth the effort. I was beholden to no one, and that made it all a little bit easier. I had entered Rushford because I wanted to be there. This was the first time I ever went through rehab without a single visitor or phone call, in part because I wanted it that way, but also because there weren’t many people who knew I was there, or who would have cared anyway. It was just me saying, This is it. I’m going to get sober. There were no conditions to it. I found that liberating and empowering.
I was alone, and because I was alone, there was less pushback from the staff than there would have been in the past. The Celtics weren’t checking up on me. The NBA had long since stopped caring. Rushford didn’t even have to contend with meddling family members. Without any sort of outside pressure, there was only so much the staff could do to coerce me into a longer period of treatment.
I stayed at Rushford for only a week, just long enough to safely detox. I knew I didn’t need thirty days of therapy. I just wanted to make sure my vitals were clear and that I wouldn’t have a seizure after I left the hospital. I didn’t want to be shaky and craving alcohol or Librium or Xanax. Once I had reached that point, I checked myself out. Technically, I left Rushford AMA—against medical advice. I signed the appropriate paperwork absolving the center and its staff from any liability in the event that I relapsed or suffered some type of catastrophic medical event after I went home.
On the day I walked out, none of the doctors or therapists expressed anger or disappointment. It wasn’t like I was the first person who had checked out AMA. Moreover, I had not been belligerent or arrogant.
“I’m ready to go home,” I said. “I’m going to be okay.”
The same therapist who earlier in the week had tried very hard to convince me that I was making a huge mistake now offered only a smile and sincere encouragement.
“We don’t want to see you back here, Vin. We’re rooting for you.” She paused. “Remember—thirty meetings in the first thirty days.”
I nodded. “I know.”
I had no idea what I would do next; I knew only that alcohol would not be a part of it. I’d been a hard-core drunk for ten years, but that person was dead now. In his place was someone who wanted to get on with life.
My father picked me up the day I checked out. We hugged at the door, although this time the embrace was fueled not just by love but by happiness and hope. On the ride home I started talking to my father about spirituality and how much I missed the church, which had been the foundation for my life—for everything good that happened to me—when I was growing up. I quoted scripture to him, and he soaked it all in without an ounce of judgment. I told him that I had changed, and that I was never going back.
He nodded.
“I mean it, Dad.”
“I know you do, son.”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
“I want to go to church with you this Sunday, if that’s okay.”
He smiled, almost imperceptibly. “Of course.”
Until I got sober I didn’t realize the enormity of the damage I’d done. I had burned so many bridges in the preceding decade that it was nearly impossible to find anyone willing to accept the notion that I had changed. My drunk charm was gone, along with my money. I reached out to various people to both apologize and reconnect; more often than not, the response went something like this: “Vin, I don’t think you understand the magnitude of what you did.”
“Yes, I do. And I’m truly sorry. But I’m sober now.”
Long pause. “Doesn’t matter, brother. Too late.”
I may have tried a little too hard to convince people that this time I was serious, that finally I could be counted on. I had to remind myself that I’d been gone a long time. It wasn’t like the world was sitting around eagerly awaiting my return, as Shawnee pointed out to me during one of our first conversations after I got out of Rushford.
“Vin, no one cares whether you’re sober. You’re trying to make this a badge of honor, and it’s just not. You’ve done so much harm. The last thing anyone cares about is your sobriety.”
There was so much rubble, so many people suffering because of the choices I had made. I was trying to stop the train, and all around me people were saying, “Too late, the crash already happened.” The anger was understandable. It would have been nice for everyone if I had experienced this epiphany several years earlier, like when the Celtics told me to stop drinking. I would have had $20 million in the bank. Now I was crawling from the wreckage while everyone around me was dying.
I had no right to expect anyone to celebrate.
Ultimately, I went back to the one place where they had to take me: Full Gospel Tabernacle in Old Saybrook, the church in which I had grown up, and where my father was still a minister. I had a lot of work to do in order to fix my life, but I figured it had to be built on a foundation of sobriety and spirituality. If I could remain healthy and connected to God, I’d be okay. I could handle anything else.
I went to church the following Sunday, just a few days after getting out of Rushford. I wanted to keep a low profile for a while, but my father was so excited to have me back that he decided to introduce me to the congregation. Full Gospel Tabernacle is a small church, but the place was packed that day. My father looked out over the congregation and basically told them that the prodigal son had come home.
“I took my son to rehab. He was there for a week, and now he’s back! Stand up, Vin.”
I slowly rose from my seat, raised a hand of acknowledgment, and felt the eyes of the crowd on me. I looked at the faces, some of which I recognized. There was a mix of appreciation and confusion.
Wait a minute. How long was he in rehab? A week?! And now he’s okay?
It probably seemed implausible to just about everyone except my father and me, and only one of us understood that it was a bit too early for a grand entrance. But Dad believed in me. Buoyed by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the unwavering love of a parent, he welcomed me back into the fold in a very public way. The problem was this: Dad had invoked my name on numerous occasions over the years, often from the pulpit. He would describe my struggles and then proudly announce that I was in treatment and getting help. And then I would relapse. I don’t doubt that some people began to tune him out after a while when he talked about my supposed rebirth. It’s only natural for people to be skeptical, just as it is only natural for a father to never lose hope.
“Dad, I don’t mean to be ungrateful,” I said after church that first day. “But you have to understand—I’ve been to rehab five times. It might be best not to talk about that part of it too much. I went there because I wanted to physically get better. I didn’t go there to be cured of addiction. Spiritually, I made a commitment, and I’m going to trust in God. I’m going to pray. And that’s how I’m going to get better.”
Dad nodded. “I understand.”
I don’t mean to sound preachy, but the fact is, I am a preacher—a licensed minister. It’s just that my evangelism now is less about standing in the pulpit than it is speaking with youth groups and others who have faced struggles similar to my own. I’m not a fire-and-brimstone kind of guy, but I do believe that by sharing my story, and demonstrating that recovery is possible, I’ve found meaning in life. Fame is fleeting, fortune is a lie. Without friends and family and a connection to something bigger than ourselves—community, society, God—we are lost. Buoyed by that connection, we can endure all manner of tribulations, and accomplish almost anything.
For me, the first steps back to a whole and normal life involved recovering my health and spirituality. I knew how much damage I had done to my body and mind. Drinking had destroyed my foundation. I knew that I had no shot at rekindling a relationship with God unless I healed my mind and body. That’s why it was so important for me to get into rehab: not as a long-term fix, but as acute care. Getting sober was just a part of the bigger picture, which was getting closer to God and restoring my relationship with him.
It took strength and prayers to go into rehab. But my goal, and my plan, was different than it is for many people who enter rehab. I’m not saying it’s the best course of action; I’m just saying it worked for me. In AA they talk about the importance of sticking with the program after you get out of rehab—getting to thirty meetings in thirty days, for example, finding the right sponsor and leaning on him or her for advice and support. I think that’s great, and I understand why it has been such an effective program and helped so many people over the years. But I was getting so much from church that I just felt like that’s where I needed to throw all my energy and purpose. I don’t have anything against AA meetings—I went to a few when I got out, and found them supportive and beneficial. For me, though, it wasn’t the right vehicle. I needed something more intense, something from a spiritual and theological standpoint.
Nothing about my fall or recovery has been anonymous. I’m certainly not going to suggest that fame makes it harder to maintain sobriety, but it does complicate matters. Look, I’m not asking for pity. I accept full responsibility for my actions, and I know that I’m not the first public figure to become an alcoholic or a drug addict and lose all his money. It happens, and a certain degree of schadenfreude can be expected. If you’re stupid enough to lose $100 million, you shouldn’t expect much sympathy, especially if alcohol, drugs, and gambling contributed heavily to the loss. But I was committed to recovery and I wanted to go about the process differently, in a way that made sense for me personally. I had to put the process of physical and emotional restoration before the process of redemption. As soon as I felt healthy and physically free of the craving of alcohol, I jumped headlong into reconnecting with my church and, by extension, with God.
Full Gospel Tabernacle conducted Bible-study classes every Wednesday night. I became a fixture. There were Sunday school and traditional church services on the weekend. And there were other opportunities as well. I tried to get to at least four church services a week in an effort to restore my relationship with Christ and with God. It’s strange—I had never been at a lower point in my life, and yet I was filled with hope and optimism. I had lost everything—money, fame, livelihood, family, dignity—but in God’s house I was not judged; I was accepted. In church, at least, I had a fighting chance, and it quickly became my refuge.
For the better part of a month I sat quietly in a pew and listened to the services. I read the Bible with a fervor I had never known. I was raised in the church, but like a lot of kids had not felt a personal connection to the messages I heard. They washed over me and gave me a blueprint for behaving appropriately and honorably in a world that does not always value these things, but the connection was tenuous. Now it was different. Scripture and parables spoke to me in a way I’d never known. They reached into my heart and into my soul, as if to say, “This is about you, Vin. Are you listening?” And I was. Intently.
One day after Sunday services I approached my father with a proposition.
“I’m ready to teach, Dad.”
He was skeptical at first, not because he doubted my sincerity, but simply because I was still in the early stages of recovery. The wounds were still raw, and in that state it’s not unusual to get carried away with the possibility of a new life, and yet be unable to follow through when the novelty wears off or when things get hard again. Moreover, I had no background in teaching or preaching, aside from the fact that it was the family business. But my worthiness stemmed less from theological wisdom than it did from practical, real-world experience, and from personal testimony. I figured that by merely standing up in front of the congregation and telling my story, I would have something to offer.
“Are you sure?” Dad said. But he said it with a smile, so I knew he actually liked the idea.
“Yes,” I said. “I feel like I’ve come back from the dead, and I want to share that feeling. I know that the process of restoration and redemption, starting with me praying and having faith in God, could heal me from addiction. I want to share that message.”
Testimony of this sort—in which a layperson takes over the pulpit—is not embraced in all churches. But Full Gospel Tabernacle, while located in the Northeast, is clearly rooted in the spiritual tradition of fellowship common in Southern Baptist churches. I was allowed to stand up in front of the congregation and talk about my journey. This wasn’t easy, of course. I’d grown up in this church. I knew these people. They were my friends and family. I had been a hero to them, a local boy who made good—who took all of God’s gifts and put them to use in a positive way. And then I lost everything. I had squandered God’s generosity, which is often viewed as a sin of the highest order. I had no idea how people would respond to hearing my story.
As it turned out, they welcomed me back with open arms. I really was the prodigal son! I had come after years of wandering, after years of self-destruction and moral decay. Instead of being rejected, I had been embraced by my father.
And by my Father.
All I wanted to do now was repay my debt, and the only way I knew how to do that was by sharing my story, by baring my soul in the hope that it might offer encouragement to others who were lost or struggling.
I had returned to the church in part because the church was my family, and I needed their support and acceptance and love. I went back to Full Gospel Tabernacle to strengthen myself. All the rubble that I had created—with my career and with fans and teammates and organizations—mattered not in the least once I walked through the front door of that church. I couldn’t go back to the life I once had, and I didn’t want to go back, anyway. The church was a place where I could rediscover who I was, as opposed to what I was. It was a place where I could be quiet, and I could listen, and the spirit of God could move me, and manifest itself in my life without any distractions, without anyone saying, “Oh, he lost it all. What’s wrong with him?” I wasn’t worried about anything other than my spirituality and my health. The financial wreckage? It didn’t matter. That was going to unspool in an ugly way for at least the next five years, and there was nothing I could do about it. And frankly, I did not care. A lot of people who once were wealthy and then become poor never recover. They stew in self-pity or beat themselves up over mistakes they have made. Mainly, they just miss the comfort they once knew and the lifestyle they once had. Ego becomes an enormous obstacle to acceptance and recovery. From the moment I returned to the church, I didn’t feel that way. Whatever pit I had thrown myself into, I knew there was only one way out: not by scheming or dreaming about reclaiming lost wealth and fame, but rather through cultivating humility and spirituality.
I was there to heal, and I did that by telling my story over and over, and by starting every testimony with an expression of gratitude for where I was in the healing process.
“I’m sober today. It’s been thirty days since I’ve had a drink. And I thank God for that.”
To me, the freedom was miraculous. The fact that I did not even want to have a drink was bigger than Peter walking on water. Not too long ago I had a conversation with my father about the fact that my six-year anniversary was approaching. I haven’t thought much about time lines and milestones since I stopped drinking, but this one hit me hard.
“Dad, do you realize I will be six years sober on April 17? And I’ve never thought about going back.”
It’s that last part that stops me cold, that fills me with wonder. In five years of sobriety, not only have I not relapsed, I’ve never even felt close to a relapse. I say that not with arrogance, but with a deep sense of gratitude. I feel like I’ve done the work necessary to remain sober, but I also know that many people still feel the pull of addiction, still think about what it would be like to have just one more drink. And I wonder why I’ve been so fortunate to escape that temptation. The only thing I can think of is that for me, the approach that works is one that involves committing to a higher power.
I can’t do any of this on my own. I won’t make it without God in my corner.