A formerly renowned NHL player Monday told a story of overcoming his drug addiction when he called on young people from a University of Toledo podium to try to refrain from trying drugs.

“We were going for our third Stanley Cup and life was good,” said Kevin Stevens. “And one night in New York City, I think, we had won like, 16 games in a row and our team was really, really rolling. [That’s when] someone came up and handed me something.

“I was 28 years old, [but] I never knew what drugs were, and I ended up doing that cocaine that night,” he said. “In the next 25 years, my life changed because of that choice.”

Mr. Stevens, who played on a line with hockey legend Mario Lemieux during the Pittsburgh Penguins’ Stanley Cup championships in 1991 and 1992, talked during a panel discussion at UT’s Doermann Theater. He is also a co-founder of a foundation that combats addiction through education.

Sponsored by the University of Toledo and The Blade, the third installment of the Perspective series drew on the diverse experiences of four panelists who discussed “The Mental Health Crisis among the Young People.” Organizers estimated at least 250 people attended the event.

Once he started using cocaine, Mr. Stevens said he trained less, then suffered an avoidable injury and eventually the disruption of his career.

“I ended up breaking the bones in my face when I hit a guy, and then a pain medication came in and opened up the can of worms with the other stuff,” he said.

The drug addiction to cocaine and then opioids took him 25 years to overcome, he said, noting that he has been sober for more than 12 years.

“It's true that you could get stuck in this addiction thing,” Mr. Stevens said. “I went to five or six rehabs, you know. I went through so much pain. So you don’t have to go through that, you really gotta know that it’s a dangerous, dangerous slippery slope, [and that] the addiction is very sneaky.”

As co-founder of the Power Forward Foundation which combats addiction through education, he said he often talks to young people.

“I remember sitting in an auditorium like this, and someone up there said, ‘You know, it’s not even going to affect me. This guy, what’s he talking about, he’s crazy, right?’” Mr. Stevens said.

“But the people that are sitting there, everybody has to hear the story,” he said. “And I’ve had a lot of kids come up to me that said, ‘You know, it really helped me.’ They didn’t really want to listen to me, but they were sitting there and they had to hear something that [would] help them realize that everybody’s affected some way with addiction.”

Along with Mr. Stevens, panelists included Kamala London, a University of Toledo psychology professor and department chairman with expertise on how children are handled in the justice system; Jenny Elliott, who handles day-to-day school operations as head of student and academic life at Choate Rosemary Hall boarding school in Wallingford, Conn.; and Dr. Michael Rich, who specializes in adolescent medicine and is founder of a Boston-based organization designed to promote healthy digital media experiences for young people.

Among other things, Dr. Rich and Ms. London talked about the danger from the availability of drugs on the Internet.

There’s added danger from the possibility that such drugs may be laced with deadly fentanyl, they emphasized.

“It has gotten increasingly easier to get hold of drugs,” Dr. Rich said. “There are people who put something out on Snapchat. … One of the advantage of Snapchat is that [the post] disappears after a period of time, so there’s no record.

“And what they do is send these kids to the dark web, where they buy fentanyl from China, which actually looks like Smarties, those little colored candies … so they don’t know what they’re putting in their mouth.”

Panelists also emphasized the importance of addiction prevention, particularly through talking to children and young adults on topics such as those discussed during the Monday panel session. 

Recognizing signs that a young person may be suffering anxiety or depression was discussed, as well as knowing the ways parents and other adults may detect or mitigate those conditions. Those include monitoring the use of social media, teaching children healthy stress-coping skills, and making sure they know they always have an adult to rely on in any situation.

"Our job is to keep showing up," Ms. Elliott said.

The discussion was moderated by David Shribman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning, nationally syndicated columnist and executive editor emeritus of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Patrick Kenney, chairman of the UT board of trustees, delivered opening remarks.

First Published March 25, 2025, 2:02 a.m.