Making a Clean Start : A Former Junkie Excels at School After Breaking His Habit

Ken Denson, former junkie and now 40-year-old college senior on scholarship, is enjoying his ride.

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A business major who lives in the dorm like other students at Chapman University, Denson said, “I don’t look my age, and I don’t act my age, and I hope I never do. My roommate is 19, and I think I’m older than his mother!”

Denson sees his circumstances with amusement and gratitude, because he almost never made it to college at all. At the age when people normally go to college, he was pumping gas to earn a few bucks to buy drugs.

For 15 years, Denson was a heavy user of various combinations of cocaine, Valium, marijuana and alcohol. But after seven overdoses, he kicked the habit, returned to school and started programs for other recovering drug users. Now, as a college senior studying business administration, he has a 4.0 grade-point average.

“He is a role model for others and a natural-born leader,” Chapman President James L. Doti said. “Ken is the kind of person who searches for ways to contribute and give something back to society.”

As a reward for his efforts, Denson was chosen this week to join a nationwide roster of outstanding college students.

Denson started life with little stability, he said. He was a Navy brat, moving from town to town as his father was transferred from post to post in the military. As a teen-ager in the 1960s, the hippie movement lured him away from his family.

“I was young, impressionable and rebelling against the military upbringing,” Denson said. He repeatedly ran away from home, lived in makeshift communes and smoked marijuana.

After high school, he began working at gas stations to get money for heroin and Scotch. When he moved across the country to San Clemente, he began using cocaine.

He overdosed on combinations of drugs and alcohol so often, he said, he became a virtual regular at the recovery unit of South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach.

His final overdose was in 1987. One August day, he said, he capped off a gram of cocaine with 800 milligrams of Valium, downing the pills with a pint of tequila to commit suicide. He woke up in a stupor two days later and dragged himself to Capistrano by the Sea Hospital in Dana Point. He stayed there for 37 days, he said, and he has been sober since.

He gained his focus by becoming involved in a church, and at the urging of friends, he decided to take a few night classes in accounting at Saddleback College. The more he learned, the more confident he became in his own success, he said. Within a year, he was offered a job in accounting for a Newport Beach developer.

Through the job, “I found out that I didn’t want to be an accountant,” Denson said, “but I really liked school.” He became a full-time student, driving limousines at night and studying during the day.

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As he approached graduation as Saddleback’s valedictorian, he decided he wanted to go to a four-year college to study business administration. He mentioned his hopes to John Crean, a Chapman University trustee who chatted with Denson and bought gas at the Dana Point filling station where he had worked.

Crean was impressed with Denson and helped him get a Chapman scholarship to pay for the university’s annual $16,600 tuition.

“In this day and age, he’s unusual, to be the gentleman he is,” Crean said. “He works, and does so well in school, and he’s very humble and involved in all these extracurricular activities. When he got a chance to go to school, he was off and running.”

For a few months, Denson, a bachelor, lived at Crean’s estate. Now he lives on campus to be near his fellow students and participate in college organizations.

At Chapman, Denson started a recovery and awareness program for students with substance abuse problems, with the university’s support. Called Choicepoints, the program allows Chapman students to act as peer advisers. They have talked to athletic teams, fraternities and numerous other groups.

He keeps up with topics that students are concerned about, he said.

“We’ve started talking about crystal (methamphetamines), speed, even steroids,” Denson said. “But our main focus today is on alcohol.”

Denson said the volunteer work at Chapman is part of his recovery.

“My personal contribution is my past experience,” he said. “Before, they didn’t have anyone actually in recovery who was doing this type of work with students.”

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Denson also started a shuttle service for students who have had too much to drink.

After graduating from Chapman, he hopes to study management at Stanford University and become a university instructor.

“I want to be of maximum service,” Denson said. “I want to help other people overcome the addictions I have overcome.”