It's Hard for Me to Live with Me
A Memoir
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4.2 • 56 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A powerful memoir from the University of Kentucky basketball legend, NBA veteran, and social media influencer about his recovery from addiction.
He is considered by many the greatest basketball player ever produced by the hoops-crazy state of Kentucky. In two years at the University of Kentucky, he scored over 1,000 points, led the Wildcats to a Sweet Sixteen appearance and was nicknamed “King Rex.” The first player ever drafted by the Charlotte Hornets, he spent twelve seasons in the NBA, dazzling in dunk contests and sinking one of the most memorable buzzer-beaters in league history. But by the end of his career, Rex Chapman was harboring a destructive secret.
Years before America’s opioid crisis would become national news, Chapman developed a dependency on Vicodin and Oxycontin, ultimately ingesting fifty painkillers a day. In addition, he developed a severe gambling addiction, once nearly losing $400,000 at a Las Vegas blackjack table. All this would cost him his family as well as most of the $40 million fortune he’d made in basketball, leaving him to live in his car and shoplift to support his addictions. Only when he was arrested—and his mugshot made national news—did he finally commit to getting clean.
In It’s Hard for Me to Live With Me, Chapman—who has amassed millions of social media followers for his relatable and uplifting posts—tells the story of his addiction and recovery in unflinching detail. With equal frankness, he describes his history with depression; the racism he witnessed growing up and how that shaped his outspokenness on matters of social justice; and his complex and volatile relationship with his father, also a former professional basketball player. Cowritten with New York Times bestselling author Seth Davis, Chapman’s memoir is an equally devastating and inspiring story about the human struggle for self-acceptance.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Basketball player Rex Chapman cops to a lifetime of fouls in this disarmingly honest memoir. The former University of Kentucky and NBA star comes clean about his biggest disasters, including the opioid and gambling addictions that led to his 2015 conviction for retail theft. But he also opens up about what led to his vices in the first place—namely, a lifetime of facing zero consequences for his misdeeds and transgressions, which he thinks is far too common in the world of young, talented athletes. Chapman even offers his unique observations as a white, Southern basketball player on issues like race. (Let’s just say he witnessed plenty of institutional racism in his career.) Get ready for a whole new perspective on the world of elite sports.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former NBA player Chapman recounts his struggles with addiction in this warts-and-all memoir cowritten with sports journalist Davis (Getting to Us). Chapman came to love basketball through his father, who coached Chapman's high school team in Kentucky. In 1988, after an impressive run at the University of Kentucky, Chapman was a first-round draft pick for the newly established Charlotte Hornets. He played for three other teams before retiring in 2000. Despite his athletic achievements, however, Chapman struggled, becoming addicted to both opioids and gambling during the height of his career. The addictions intensified following his NBA retirement, and in 2014, he was arrested outside his home after security footage caught him shoplifting from an Apple Store for drug money. The incident finally led him to enter rehab. Chapman's frank assessment of the toll his addictions took on his loved ones lends his account appealing humility, as when he acknowledges that his ex-wife was right to pursue his assets in their divorce ("Between my addiction to Suboxone, my gambling habits, and all the other stupid shit I spend money on, our dough is never gonna last if she doesn't grab all she can"). It's the off-court sections that lend this sports memoir its power. Agents: (for Chapman) Mel Berger, WME; (for Davis) David Black, David Black Agency.
Customer Reviews
Pretty good until the end.
As with most sports biographies, I read them to learn about their life growing up and then their sporting careers but when as in this book they start talking about politics and injustices I quickly lose interest and couldn’t even finish it. If I’d had known that Rex was such a liberal I would never have bought it. When he talks about how conservatives are all lying but never talks about all the liberal lies (and yes they both do it) he instantly lost me.