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Addict's salvation.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Chris Hansen The Register-Guard

Ten years after first getting high, eight years after being named the best player on the state's best high school basketball team, and two years after hitting rock bottom, Chris Lohrey has come clean.

Not sober, mind you, because he's been that since April of 2003, but willing to discuss an addiction to methamphetamine that nearly ruined the life of this once highly regarded basketball prospect.

"This is the first year I've played sober," said Lohrey, who at age 25 is a first-year senior on the Northwest Christian College men's basketball team, the No. 2 seed in this week's United States Collegiate Athletic Association postseason tournament. "But then, I wasn't sober since the day I turned 15."

Which includes the time he led Beaverton High School to the 1998 OSAA Class 4A title and was named the tournament's most valuable player.

Nor was he straight when he accepted a full-ride scholarship offer to play for Portland State, or when he actually played at Clackamas Community College, or Mesa State College in Grand Junction, Colo., or any time in between, really.

"I was a mess," Lohrey admitted.

Things are different today for Lohrey, who came out of his last rehab stint with a profound devotion to Christianity and is currently studying to be a pastor.

Lohrey, who is 6-feet-9, 240 pounds, is no longer the kid who tried to hide from the world under a baseball cap pulled down to his eyes, which were always staring at the ground as he walked with his head hung low.

Now he stands tall, smiles often and displays the jovial disposition of a man...

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