I Had A D1 Lacrosse Scholarship — Then I Started Shooting Heroin

Rise Above with Kevin Lanning · Oct 25, 2026 · 1h 8m

Mac Chase had one goal growing up in the Annapolis area: become a Division 1 All-American lacrosse player. He got there — a scholarship to UMBC — but his drinking, which started around age ten, already had its grip on him. Within two years the scholarship was gone, and what followed was a decade-long slide through cocaine, pills, OxyContin, and eventually shooting heroin. He talks openly about it all: getting paid in OxyContin through a shady deal at the lacrosse shop he managed, driving eight hours each way to score, smoking pills in his hospital bed after a head-on crash nearly killed him…