‘Gangster Al’ Puts the Pieces of His Life Back Together : Recovery: Alex Black, former Corona del Mar basketball star, survives success, drug and alcohol binges and prison.

Of all the people Alex Black has tried to be, the one he likes the best is that big-lug-of-a-warehouse-supervisor he is today.

The devoted husband. The father of three. The guy who’s just glad--not to mention lucky--to be alive.

Yeah, Black likes this guy.

He’s certainly an improvement on Superstar Al , whose entire life revolved around basketball. That 6-foot-8 monster from Corona del Mar High School who felt he was owed something--on a silver platter, if you please.

But even that guy was better than Gangster Al , whose life was a continuous drug and alcohol binge. That frightening figure, the one who went from high-to-high, then hospital-to-hospital and eventually to prison.

Yes, Black is glad to be rid of both of them . Now, it’s just Al, thank you, that ordinary guy.

“I always thought I had to act and be a certain person,” said Black, 32. “Now I can be myself. I’m just a guy trying to get by in his life. I just had a hard time finding that guy.”

The search took 15 years.

Occasionally, Black will show up unannounced at a hospital and ask to talk with the patients in the detoxification ward. Sometimes he speaks to a group, sometimes it’s a one-on-one chat. But it’s always the same message.

“You don’t need to be here.”

It was from such a ward that Black was discharged in December 1990, after another bender. This time, though, he had finally had enough.

“I’m not really sure why,” Black said. “I just knew that I was going to end things once and for all. I was either going to get some help or kill myself.”

It was his first sober day in nearly 10 years.

Now, with more than two years of those days behind him, Black can hardly believe the man he used to be.

He salvaged his life through counseling and determination, the kind he used to have on the basketball court. There has also been the support of Doreen, his wife, who was with him through the 15-year ordeal.

She stuck with him through the ego trips and drug trips. She filed for divorce twice, but did not go through with it.

“I knew he had this charming guy inside of him, that guy I knew when we met,” Doreen Black said. “I knew someday he would resurface. But when ‘someday’ finally got here, I’ve got to tell you, even I was surprised.”

Doreen first saw him in a dormitory hallway at the University of Nevada. On the day of his arrival, Black--the superstar from Corona del Mar--was making the rounds, trying to meet all the women on his floor.

He immediately asked Doreen for a date. She was so intimidated by his status as a basketball player, she tried to spruce up her own image by lying about being the homecoming queen at her high school in Butte, Mont.

Not that it mattered to Black, who was only out to satisfy his ego.

“I even went to her boyfriend and told him, ‘She’s mine now,’ ” Black said. “Of course, I was telling her that she could date only me, but I could date anyone I wanted. That’s the type of guy I was then. I had an ego the size of Mt. Rushmore.”

He didn’t come by it naturally.

Black was always the biggest kid on the block. By the time he was a sophomore, he was the starting center for the Corona del Mar basketball team. As a senior, he was 6-8, 225 pounds and began to play the role of superstar.

“Maybe Al was too big,” said Paul Akin, who also played at Corona del Mar. “He was this great guy, but people picked on him because of his size. I think he decided he had to prove he was the big guy.”

The Sea Kings were 25-0 when Black was a junior, but lost to Muir in the first round of the Southern Section 4-A playoffs in 1976. The following year, they won the 3-A championship and Black’s self-esteem was on overload.

His drinking became legendary among his friends, none of whom could keep up. He began smoking marijuana regularly. He also was suspended from games for fighting.

Black’s father didn’t help much. An alcoholic, Alex Black Sr. advised his son not to get into fights during games, but to wait until afterward, then go get them.

“I became known as the ‘Bad Boy of Orange County Basketball,’ ” Black said. “I had no direction. I basically thought the world owed me something and I was going to be rich and famous no matter what.”

Going to Nevada changed nothing. That “Bad Boy” image was too strong.

“He was a nice kid. He just didn’t have his priorities right,” said former Nevada Coach Jim Carey, who now coaches at Garden City Community College in Kansas. “I talked with him a couple times about shaving his beard and cleaning himself up. But at that age, he wasn’t going to listen.”

Black, unhappy with the amount of playing time he was getting, left after the first semester, taking Doreen with him.

“I basically told them to take the scholarship and shove it,” he said. “I was Al, the superstar. I was going to make it wherever I went. The ego was totally out of control.”

After returning to Newport Beach for a semester, Black went to Independence Community College in Kansas. This time, everything was going to be perfect.

“He made an effort to fit in,” said Jim Munnerlyn, the coach at Independence at the time. “I remember after three games, he came to practice and had shaved his beard. I think he was seeking a little direction.”

He didn’t find it.

Black said he got into bar fights and was taking more and more drugs. He left after one semester.

“I wasn’t complying with the rules and regulations that a person needs to comply to in a society,” he said. “It’s really a shame, because I had a chance to make it there. But by then, I was too far gone on the drugs and alcohol.”

Black still remembers his last face-to-face talk with his father.

“He said, ‘Son, I envy you. You still have 20 years of hard drinking left in you,’ ” Black said.

Alex Black Sr., who died in 1979, had a strong influence on his son. Black started drinking when he was a sophomore in high school and soon got into drugs.

It was just one big party from then on.

“It was more important for me to have fun than anything else,” Black said.

When his basketball career ended, everything accelerated.

Black bounced from job to job, working at times as a bar bouncer, a house painter and in construction. None lasted very long.

He would also disappear for months at a time, once ending up in New Orleans and another time in Georgia. Doreen, who had married him in 1980, said she often didn’t know his whereabouts. His friends knew even less.

“We’d hear rumors about Alex,” said Mike Murphy, who played with him at Corona del Mar. “One story was that he joined a religious commune. Guys were always asking, ‘What happened to Alex?’ He was just a guy you never forgot about.”

On a trip to Texas in 1981, Black joined the Army, out of desperation, and was sent to Germany. He was discharged six months later, “by mutual consent,” according to him.

“I had lost my identity,” Black said. “Basketball had been my whole life. That’s where I got my ego. When it was gone, I lost touch with reality.”

Black started to get in trouble with the law.

At first, there were minor violations. Once, he and a friend were arrested for stealing a Christmas tree after spending all their money on alcohol.

There were other problems. After his father died, he was hospitalized after having a nervous breakdown. He said he was in and out of hospitals after that.

“It was the alcohol and LSD I was taking,” Black said. “No matter what happens, I always knew I could go to (my father) for help. Now he was gone and I was really lost. It took me 11 years to deal with it.”

His drug usage was so bad--LSD, cocaine, speed--that he began selling on the side to make money. He said there were times when he would stay up for 10 days, drinking and doing drugs.

Black, who ballooned to 350 pounds, let his hair and beard grow long and adopted the persona “Gangster Al.” He even had the nickname printed on T-shirts.

Doreen, who said she has never tried drugs and doesn’t drink, left him in 1984, taking their 1-year-old daughter Krissy with her.

“He had become this madman that I couldn’t deal with,” Doreen said. “He had gone completely overboard.”

In 1985, Black was living in Costa Mesa when police surrounded his apartment building.

“I heard, ‘Alex Black, come out with your hands up,’ ” Black said. “And I was inside trying to cut off my beard with a gardening shear, thinking they wouldn’t be able to identify me. That’s how far gone I was.”

Black said he was charged with armed robbery and aggravated assault and later was convicted of the lesser charge of robbery. He was sentenced to three years.

“It was reality,” Black said. “I had to fight for everything I got. I got hurt a few times and I got sent to the hole (solitary confinement). But you have to fight; you have no choice.”

Prison did little to change Black’s ways. After serving his time, he had Doreen drive him straight to a liquor store.

He became a regular at hospital detox centers.

“It was serious stuff,” Black said. “I would have convulsions and the DTs. They would have to strap me down and give me an IV to get some food in me.

“I finally got tired of the battle. The only way to win it was to give up, quit. I went for help.”

Black said he has not had a drink or used drugs since 1990. The counseling helped, but the support from Doreen might have helped more.

“All those years she had been this shy girl who did everything I said,” Black said. “She turned out to be an incredibly strong woman. She had a lot of gumption to stay with a guy like me.”

Black now works for a medical supply company in Tustin. Doreen is an assistant manager for an insurance company.

They live in Mission Viejo, raising their children, Krissy, 8, Alex, 3, and Katie, 6 months.

Black has even started to play basketball again, in a recreation league once a week. He can still dunk, which he said is all that matters. He also runs six miles a day, which has helped reduce his weight to 270.

He said he devotes much of his time to his church and much more time to his family. And there are those talks--at hospitals, at prisons, wherever he thinks he can help.

It’s a full life.

“The best feeling I can describe is when one of my kids comes up to me, grabs my leg and says, ‘I love you, daddy,’ ” Black said. “I’m a father. I’m a husband. I’m a low-key guy. I’m just Al.”