by Vin Baker
The downward spiral continued for several more years, with sustained periods of heavy drinking interrupted by brief and half-baked attempts at sobriety. Basketball ended well before the drinking. In three years—from 2003 through 2006—I played for four different teams: the Celtics, Knicks, Rockets, and Clippers. People kept giving me chances, but I’d let them down, or discover that too much had been lost. I tried to blame some of my problems on depression, but I never received a firm diagnosis. The depression was a by-product of alcoholism. I drank because of loneliness and anxiety, not depression.
I did another stint in rehab in 2005 after playing part of the season with the Rockets, and then stayed in Houston, working with John Lucas, a former NBA player, a recovering drug addict, and a counselor who has done terrific work with athletes over the years. John is a tough-love kind of guy who likes to get in your face and break down your defenses. I needed that.
“Who am I getting today?” John would shout when we’d get together. “Am I getting the old-ass Vin Baker . . . or the old Vin Baker?”
That was his mantra, and here’s what it meant: Am I working with tired, old washed-up Vin Baker . . . or am I working with the guy who used to be an NBA all-star? John was loud, too, so when he’d say this kind of stuff, everyone could hear it. There was no escaping his wrath. Anyone who has ever worked with John knows that he does nothing halfway. He is fully committed to his job, and to helping the men with whom he works. It’s not for everyone. God knows, it wouldn’t have been for me when I was younger and more sensitive, but I was desperate enough now to take whatever John dished out, and to do my best to meet his high standards. I got stronger, fitter, and began to look like a professional ballplayer again. I wasn’t drinking at all—not even Listerine. For the first time in more than two years, I was totally clean and sober.
That’s when I discovered Xanax.
It was first prescribed to me in the fall of 2005 by a doctor in Rhode Island who determined—not unreasonably—that since my primary issue was anxiety, why not treat the anxiety in a professional and supervised manner? This is an old and heated argument in the fields of both addiction counseling and mental health. There is a school of thought that says many people become addicts while trying to self-medicate. Certainly this was true in my case. I smoked weed and drank alcohol primarily to ease the anxiety that I sometimes found to be crippling. But now, many years later, I wouldn’t let myself off the hook quite that easily. I also liked getting high and I liked getting drunk; for a long time it was fun. But when it became a crutch used primarily to help me play basketball in a more relaxed state, then it became an addiction, pure and simple. My doctor felt that if we used medication to alleviate the symptoms of my underlying anxiety, I would no longer feel the need to self-medicate with alcohol before playing basketball.
There was just one problem: Xanax, like its cousin Valium, is a highly addictive drug. Both are in the benzodiazepine family and are noted for providing fast and effective relief of symptoms related to all manner of anxiety and panic disorders. Simply put, Xanax works, which is why it used to be so commonly prescribed for patients struggling to cope with anxiety. Xanax is best (and safest) when used primarily for crisis relief, as opposed to daily maintenance. I was instructed to use it only “as needed,” but of course I quickly decided that I needed it all the time.
The first time I took Xanax, I took only a single pill, as prescribed. I wanted to see how I would feel on it, and what effect it would have on my coordination and fitness, so I swallowed one pill at home, waited about a half hour, and then went out into my backyard, where I had a basketball court, to put up some shots. To be honest, I didn’t feel much of anything. The Xanax hadn’t made me groggy or disoriented, which was good, but neither had it made me feel any looser or different in any way. In other words, it seemed ineffective. But this was a controlled and stress-free environment, so it was hard to tell. I took another pill just to see what would happen, and sure enough, I felt a warm sensation and an instantaneous feeling of relaxation.
Oh, yeah . . . this is great!
Prior to its being prescribed to me, I had never even heard of Xanax. I did not know how strong or addictive it was; I didn’t even know that it was a controlled substance—a narcotic subject to some serious and stringent laws and penalties. I knew only that it gave me the same sort of buzz that I got from alcohol, only without all the unpleasant side effects. I could take a couple of Xanax and all my worries and anxiety would melt away. I could talk comfortably with anyone, and I could play basketball without feeling nervous. Best of all, no one had any idea what I was doing. There were no liquor bottles to hide, no smells to mask. I just flipped the cap on a tiny plastic container and shook out a couple of pills. I could do this literally anywhere without causing a disruption or inviting suspicion. Best of all, it was perfectly legal and socially acceptable. Hey, I had a prescription! I was under a doctor’s care, for goodness’ sake. I wasn’t a drug addict; I was just taking my medication.
The only voice of reason in all of this was provided by John Lucas, who wasted no time in calling bullshit.
“A drug is a drug,” he said when I told him I’d been prescribed Xanax for my anxiety. “Vin, you’re an addict. You can’t just trade one drug for another and not expect consequences.”
John believed in total abstinence as the only means to freedom from addiction. I would always be an addict, he said; it was just a matter of whether I was an active addict or an addict in recovery.
Within a month’s time I had become hopelessly hooked on Xanax. I wasn’t drinking—no need to do that when you’re gobbling thirty, forty, fifty pills a day. Which is what I was doing. At its zenith, my addiction required as many as eighty pills a day. Needless to say, I did not have a prescription to cover that volume of medication, so I had to find other, more creative ways to feed my habit. I developed a network of friendly physicians; I went underground and bought Xanax on the black market. As with any addiction, keeping the fire stoked became a full-time job.
I signed with the Clippers that winter and moved to Los Angeles, where the procuring of narcotics is something of an industry. I developed a network of contacts—friends, associates, doctors both reputable and shady, flat-out drug dealers. I learned to use my celebrity as a means to obtain prescriptions or refills. For example, sometimes I’d walk into a CVS, explain that I needed a new batch of Xanax, but didn’t have time to get to my doctor. I would smile and politely explain the situation, try my best to act charming and not desperate, and remind the person behind the counter that I was a basketball player for the LA Clippers. More often than not, I was able to talk my way into a refill. If not, I’d try a different doctor. If that didn’t work, I’d make a phone call. If you have money and status in LA, you can find drugs.
Xanax worked beautifully for me—it cut my anxiety down to practically nothing and did not inhibit my athletic performance nearly to the extent that alcohol did. Xanax, to me, was like a gift from heaven. Pop a few pills and instantly I felt the same sense of euphoria that I felt after guzzling a liter of Listerine, without any of the attendant queasiness or bloat. It was like I was taking a synthetic steroid: all the benefits with little risk of getting caught.
I was playing well in practice, too, although those performances did not translate into game time. For most of my tenure with the Clippers I was glued to the bench, in part because the team was playing well and there was no reason to mess with the rotation by the time I arrived, two-thirds of the way through the season. The thing is, I was killing it in practice. Seriously—we’d have these pickups games at the end of practice and I felt like a kid again. The coach, interestingly enough, was Mike Dunleavy, who had been my coach in Milwaukee when I first got into the league. Obviously there was some baggage there, but I don’t think Mike held it against me. I think he believed he had a playoff team and saw no reason to risk that status by making room for an old alcoholic power forward who hadn’t done much in the last few years. I tried to t
alk to him about playing time, but Mike did not give me reason to be optimistic.
With time on my hands and no great concern about getting meaningful minutes, I grew bored. Pretty soon, I began taking advantage of my new home’s proximity to Las Vegas. I liked playing cards and had made plenty of trips to Vegas and Atlantic City in the past, but it wasn’t until I moved to LA and developed a raging Xanax addiction that I became a compulsive and spectacularly ineffective gambler. I started making the trip to Vegas a couple of times a week—maybe more. It wasn’t unusual for me to drop ten thousand dollars or more each time I went. I rarely won, and if I did, I ended up giving it back—and then some—on the next trip. Probably no different from a lot of gamblers. Stay in the casinos long enough and eventually they will empty your pockets. That’s why the drinks are free while you’re playing: they want to keep you happy and preferably inebriated.
I was an incredibly easy mark. They didn’t even have to ply me with alcohol. I’d just sit there playing blackjack at one of the high-roller tables—just me and the dealer, one-on-one—playing all night long, pausing only to reach into my pocket and flip open the top to my tube of Xanax, and shake loose a couple of tablets. I’d have nothing stronger than Coca-Cola on the table in front of me, so no one had any idea that I was stoned out of my mind. But how else to explain what happened on one particularly memorable night that spring? It certainly wasn’t the kind of thing that one would do in a healthy or sober state of consciousness.
Today, a decade later, I could still walk right back to the exact seat at the exact table at the Bellagio hotel and casino, where the craziness began, for the location is burned in my memory. I sat there for hours, sipping Coke and discreetly popping pills, while the stack of chips in front of me continued to grow. At one point I did a quick and rough calculation. I was up approximately $190,000, which was a pretty respectable chunk of change. Certainly I had never come close to winning that much money at the blackjack table. But the winning gave me no great sense of elation or accomplishment, or even an awareness that I’d been spectacularly lucky. I felt peaceful, like there was no pressure at all—no pressure to play basketball, or to be a good father or partner, or take care of my money or my health. I was just sort of numb to all emotion and feeling.
“You’re having quite the night, sir,” the dealer said to me.
I stared at my chips, a multicolored miniature city of plastic high-rises.
“Yeah . . . I guess so.”
I didn’t feel the slightest urge to stop playing. I felt nothing at all. It was like I had melted into my seat. So I popped the top on my Xanax bottle, took a couple more pills, and . . .
“Deal the cards,” I said. It was like having an out-of-body experience, like I was standing by the table, watching this poor, pathetic, drug-addled soul throw his life away.
Needless to say, I gave it all back. Every penny of it. I kept playing until the chips were all gone, and then I bought some more and kept playing, until I had reached my credit limit with the Bellagio: $100,000. That’s right: a $290,000 swing. From up $190,000 to down $100,000.
Before the night was over I hit roughly another half-dozen casinos. I’d made enough trips to Vegas and had enough of a reputation as a high roller that I had secured a strong line of credit at multiple casinos, usually between $100,000 and $200,000. By the end of the evening I had exhausted all my credit. I was down more than $800,000. Tack on the $190,000 I had been up at one point, and you’re talking about a one-night loss of nearly a million dollars. I’d had bad nights in Vegas before, but nothing even close to this. In the past, even when I was drunk, I had always walked away before the damage became unmanageable. But the Xanax robbed me of all inhibition, common sense, and reason. It was like I had performed a pharmacological lobotomy on myself while in the middle of an epic night of blackjack.
It was breathtaking.
It was surreal.
It was devastating.
I remember leaving the last casino at the end of the night in a state of stunned disbelief. I’d chewed perhaps forty Xanax since I first started playing that night, so to say that I was sober would be wildly inaccurate. But I was keenly aware that I’d been through some sort of a life-changing experience.
This is not good, Vin. This is not good at all . . .
At thirty-four years of age, I was smart enough to know that I was very close to the end of my career, and certainly past the point where any team would pay me superstar money. I was a well-educated man. I had a college degree. I understood the basics of financial prudence and responsibility: always take in more than you pay out, income should exceed expenses . . . that sort of thing. Economics 101. But, like so many professional athletes, I had failed to exhibit any sort of restraint or logic in my personal life. People often wonder how a professional athlete can go broke—especially one who was fortunate enough to be among the highest-paid players in his league. But it happens. Here’s the basic problem: you think the money will never go away. In those years of spectacular earning power, you should be putting away three-quarters of your income, investing it wisely and conservatively, so that it will be there, hopefully compounded nicely, on the day your body calls it quits and forces you into retirement. Instead, you spend like an idiot, burning through every penny you make, as if you’ll always have a seven- or eight-figure salary.
Many professional athletes make the mistake of not thinking ahead, of not planning for the future. They believe they will be forever young, blessed with preternatural talent and unlimited resources. Doesn’t work that way. Everyone gets old and banged up. It always ends badly. The trick is to realize all of this far in advance, and to plan accordingly—as opposed to throwing it all away on drugs and alcohol, on gambling and women and catastrophic business investments. I lost my spirituality and my connection to the church fairly early in my professional basketball career, but believe it or not, I continued to see myself, and to think of myself, as a God-fearing person. Some people thought this was the height of hypocrisy, but I believed it to my core. Through all the drinking and drugging and gambling and whoring, I felt like God was watching over me, and that eventually he would come to my rescue.
I had no idea that it would take so long—that before he rescued me, I would be stripped of everything I owned and deemed precious. And I’m not just talking about material possessions; I’m also talking about family, friends, health, spirituality, and dignity.
Everything that makes us whole and human.
In my case, financial ruin stemmed less from hubris than from inattentiveness, fueled primarily by substance abuse. I blame only myself for the fact that I managed to go broke despite earning roughly $100 million. I know it sounds implausible, but it can happen. It does happen. I’ve been there, so I know. And when I left Vegas that night, I remember a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, as I considered the possibility that I might actually have trouble paying back the debt I had accrued at each of those casinos. I had five children to support, along with their mothers. I had multiple homes and cars. I had burned through millions of dollars thanks to alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling, and myriad bad investments.
I was in deep trouble.
While the Vegas debacle was lurid and sensational, and probably represented the last nail in my financial coffin, it was not the biggest mistake I made. It merely came along at a time when I could least afford such a loss. Less than one year earlier, when I was recently sober and just beginning to get back on my feet, I succumbed to an urge experienced by many celebrities: I decided to open a restaurant.
Have you ever seen the movie Midnight Run? There’s a scene in which a mob accountant played by Charles Grodin tries to dissuade a hard-edged cop portrayed by Robert De Niro from pursuing his lifelong dream of opening a restaurant.
“I have to tell you, a restaurant is a very tricky investment—over half of them go out of business in the first six months,” Grodin says. “If I were your accountant, I’d have to strongly advise you against it.”
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To which De Niro replies, “You’re not my accountant.”
Grodin sighs. “I realize I’m not your accountant. I’m just saying . . . if I were your accountant . . .”
I did not have a nagging accountant in my ear preaching frugality. I had investors and business partners and financial advisers who were only too willing to assist in my self-ruin. Thus was born Vinnie’s Saybrook Fish House, in my hometown of Old Saybrook, Connecticut. The restaurant actually opened in 2005, in between my stints with the Rockets and Clippers. I was trying to look ahead, to think of that time, which seemed to be coming fast, when I’d no longer be able to make a living playing basketball. That moment finally came in 2006, when I signed a free agent deal with the Minnesota Timberwolves. I was looking forward to playing for Dwane Casey, who had been an assistant coach while I was in Seattle, and who was now the head coach of the Timberwolves. The idea was that I would come in and play short minutes and maybe offer some guidance to the younger guys. But I never got the chance. My basketball career was beyond the point of salvaging. I was thirty-five years old, with a lot of miles on the engine. The Timberwolves released me on November 13, 2006, without my having appeared in a single game. I never played another minute in the NBA.
The thing about being a professional athlete is that you get old fast. But when the gig ends, suddenly you’re young again. Thirty-five is ancient in the NBA, but it’s not even middle aged in the real world. I had to find something else to do with my life, something to fill the days and feed my ego. In a way, I felt like the pressure had been lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t have to worry about living up to expectations anymore. I could focus on other things. But I still needed money to support my lifestyle—I needed a reason to get up in the morning. So, with the encouragement of my accountant, I began pouring money into Vinnie’s Saybrook Fish House. I built the place from scratch. It was a big, beautiful restaurant, two stories high, with a massive fish tank as a centerpiece. A high-end fish house catering to a well-heeled clientele.