Willie Cauley-Stein He was the No. 6 pick in the 2015 NBA draft and played for the Kings, Warriors, Mavericks, and Sixers. A promising center whose career in the world’s best league was cut short much earlier than expected. Today, he gave a lengthy interview in which he acknowledged his problems with pill addiction, explaining that he had purchased fake Percocet pills on the black market containing fentanyl.
“He could easily be dead,” says Cauley-Stein, who in his last NBA season (2021-2022) averaged 1.7 points and 2 rebounds in 20 games. The American recounts how his addiction developed to overcome the problems that began in 2019 and reached their peak in 2021 with the death of his grandmother, going so far as to go to a detox clinic for these pills that, unknowingly, were fentanyl, a powerful painkiller. which causes many overdose deaths in the United States.
“I could die without any problem. I’m happy and it’s different because I know the ball I really dodged. “I asked for help before it was too late and I got better, but basketball was much harder to recover,” he begins by saying Athletics.I didn’t know what was going on. I hear stories all the time of people who go to a party and have never taken anything before and decide to take a Percocet pill, it ends up being fentanyl and they die. From one pill. I was taking hundreds of them for months, that could have been me,” he adds.
The Cauley-Stein drama
Willie Cauley-Stein He describes how his problems with pills began: “It all started from 2019. “It started a mental health spiral and trying to deal with what was happening off the pitch and playing for a new team at the same time, with my wife pregnant… there were too many important things going on and I took painkillers to try and escape reality.”
“I was taking so many pills that I was sleeping all the time and when I was awake I wasn’t really there. I didn’t handle it the right way. I couldn’t say goodbye to my grandmother with whom he should have been more in touch. I was a coward. Every time I spoke to her, she was worse and I didn’t want to see her like that,” he reveals.
Six days after his grandmother’s death, Cauley-Stein entered a drug rehabilitation clinic, as he himself recounts: “The team realized they had no powerno love, no personality, nothing. The drugs took everything from me. I thought I was playing hard, doing my part, and then I’d hear, “He doesn’t seem to like basketball.” It wasn’t until I got over it that I realized they were right. The spark I have when I talk, I didn’t have it. “I couldn’t look people in the eye because I felt like they could see into my soul and see that I wasn’t myself anymore.”
“I told my agent, ‘I need help.’ As soon as I called and signed up for the drug plan at NBA and I told them everything, it was an immediate relief. This feeling came over me; “I’ve done a lot of things, but I’ve never felt so good, like my grandmother came to pick me up and give me the biggest hug,” he concludes.
