Grant Hill was pegged as the next Michael Jordan before his ankle went.
He endured 11 grueling surgeries, including one that almost killed him, before he admitted defeat and hung up his 33 jersey, becoming arguably the biggest ‘what if?’ in NBA history.
But for years, he refused to take no for an answer. For years he was willing to try anything. Short of a magic pill to undo the impossible, he was offered modern medicine’s closest alternative: opioids.
‘I can’t keep track of all the pills they offered me, all the names. I had so many surgeries you need three hands to count them,’ he explains.
Like millions of Americans, Hill accepted that the highly-addictive painkillers were part and parcel of his procedure and recovery in his first 10 operations.
Unlike millions of Americans, he never wedded himself to the drugs, which have claimed so many lives that overdoses are now the leading cause of death for under-50s in the United States. This is partly to do with the fact that he suffered a severe allergic reaction to the combination of two opioids after one of his operations (‘I can’t remember which one, they all blur into one after a while’).
But as the nation’s drug addiction epidemic reaches new traumatic heights, the now-44-year-old star is speaking out about his harrowing experience with the heavy duty medication in a bid to encourage patients to seek alternative therapies.
‘It’s really personal for me. I had a lot of surgeries and exposure to opioids during my process, and I had no idea about the issues with overuse,’ he told Daily Mail Online.
