SALT LAKE CITY THE tall young man is speaking softly now, so his words can hardly be heard. But the words come quickly because he is eager to tell his story. ''Hi, I'm John,'' he says, ''and I'm a drug addict.''
With that simple phrase, John Drew introduces himself on this day - and every other one - to the other addicts at a gathering of Alcoholics Anonymous, which also counsels drug addicts. He is addicted to cocaine, and has been, he says, ever since he began freebasing, which involves cooking the drug until it reaches its purest form, three years ago. He'd snorted it for two years before that. ''I tried something, and liked it,'' he says. ''And by liking it, it almost destroyed me.''
It came very close to destroying his career in pro basketball. Last Nov. 22, at the beginning of Drew's ninth National Basketball Association season - his first with the Utah Jazz - he received a telephone call at 7 A.M. while he was asleep in a hotel room in Cleveland. It was Dan Sparks, the team trainer.
Sparks told Drew to meet him in the room of Frank Layden, the coach, which led the player to think he'd been traded. Yet when he arrived, Drew learned what he'd suspected all along: They knew.
When Layden looked at him and told him he had a drug problem, Drew denied it. Yet in less than three minutes, he acknowledged his addiction. And in just two hours, he and Sparks were on an airplane heading for Baltimore, where he underwent an intensive, eight-week detoxification treatment.
''It was the biggest relief in the world,'' Drew says of his confrontation with his coach and trainer. ''It took a lot of energy for me to hide what I was doing. But right then, I had a release. 'Thank God,' I thought to myself. 'Somebody knows.' ''
Drew returned to action on Jan. 25. Going into last night's home game with Los Angeles, he had played 10 games and averaged 24 points since rejoining the Jazz. In the nine games before undergoing treatment, he averaged 14.1 points.
At this recent A.A. meeting, Drew had just come from practice, wearing a green and gold Jazz sweatsuit. At 6 feet 6 inches tall and 205 pounds, he is a striking contrast to the people sitting with him in the small church on the south side of the city.
There is a middle-aged man, crying as he tells of his daughter, who has survived a drug overdose; a woman speaking of seven suicide attempts, and a younger man, who says that if he has just one beer, he's got to have ''every one in town.''
They listen to Drew introduce himself, and then respond in unison with: ''Hi, John. Welcome.'' Like the others, John Drew lied to his family and his friends - and to himself - about his habit. And like them, he went to great lengths to satisfy his dependency. Also like them, he has a story to tell, one of fear and dependency. And he wants to tell it every day.
''I'm a very happy person,'' he says to them. ''And I want to let people know that what happened to me can happen to them. But I also want them to realize that they can get what I have now if they do what I did. But there are no shortcuts.''
Later that evening, Drew would score a game-high 33 points in a triumph over San Antonio, the leader of the Midwest Division. But such events are just minor triumphs in contrast to the one he relates to his companions on this afternoon.
''I was in Phoenix,'' he began, speaking in a tone that reflected the fear of that moment, ''and after a game, this guy - he used to be a friend of mine - came up and told me he'd heard about what I had done, the treatment. He said, 'That's great, man. Let's go celebrate. I've got a gram of coke.' I was so scared, I started shaking. I went right to a phone and called an A.A. contact in the city. He helped me through it.''
When Drew repeated the story to a companion, he added this: ''You can do drugs for a while and get away with it. You can play for a while, too. But eventually, it'll get you. It'll be fine for a while. But at the end, you'd rather be dead. Before I go back to it, I'll kill myself. I'd rather be dead than go through that again.''
