Delonte West has opened up about one of the darkest chapters of his life, and the story starts in a place that sounds almost ridiculously ordinary.
A family barbecue. West recently explained how his addiction began with what was supposed to be a quick trip to buy liquor. Five minutes. That was the plan.
Grab the drinks, come back, enjoy the barbecue.
Simple, right? Apparently not.
West said that one drink in a parking lot eventually became the beginning of a 10-year battle with addiction.
That is the terrifying part of his story. There was no dramatic warning. No giant sign saying, “Congratulations, your life is about to change.”
It was just a normal day.
West was sitting on a curb next to a brand-new Range Rover while getting drinks for the family gathering. He had success, money and had an NBA career.
Everything looked fine from the outside. Then addiction showed up.
Delonte West on the single errand that cost him 10 years pic.twitter.com/BoK2pG3Hpx
— Rise Above with Kevin (@RiseAboveWithK) September 20, 2026
And it did not care about the Range Rover, the NBA, the money, fame or potential.
West told Lanning that the day started innocently enough. He simply needed to restock the home bar, so he headed to the liquor store.
Walking out with a box of cognacs and vodkas, West then noticed a few guys hanging around. Nothing unusual there. He said he knew most of them from the neighborhood. They were out there all day, every day. Soon enough, he joined them. They dapped. Made some small talk. Chopped it up about basketball, too.
Eventually, as West recounted, the box went back in the car. He grabbed one bottle and asked for a cup. It was a warm day. The cups piled up until, in his words, he realized he was drunk.
The reasonable thing would have been to stop right there. West, unfortunately, went a different route entirely.
A joint went around first. Then a guy rolled another one, this time with something mixed in. West didn’t specify the extra ingredient. He only said he “took something home mentally from that store that day.”
One decision became another, then another.
Before West knew it, something that appeared harmless had turned into a decade-long struggle.
West acted on the feeling he got in that parking lot. He started doing the same mix. Like with every addiction, though, the tolerance kept building. So the next step became countering it. He recounted how that soon had him wanting it straight. That was even despite friends warning him off.
“I know what I’m doing,” he recounted telling them.
West’s mother had warned him years before that certain things are gateways and that the bill might not come due for a decade. That’s exactly what happened.
West recalled that from the time he first used what had been mixed in that initial joint “by itself,” ten years were “gone” just like that.
“I sat down on the curb,” he remarked, “and I didn’t get back up for another 10 years.”
West also explained why the substance had such a strong hold on him. He said it amplified things he already enjoyed in life, making the feeling especially difficult to walk away from.
Now, by speaking openly about how it started, he is giving people a look at the person behind the headlines.
The lesson is not that one drink automatically destroys a life.
It is that addiction can develop in unexpected ways, and getting help early can matter enormously.
