The Aftercare program of counselors is available primarily in cities with NBA and NFL teams created to provide services to professional athletes. John Lucas Enterprises is renowned for the successful rehabilitative work that is now done with professional athletes, celebrities and public figures that find themselves dependent on substances and not suited for optimum performance. It has been truly miraculous what John Lucas has done with his life. He has gone from alcohol and drug dependency to arguably basketball's most recognized counselor and coach. His largest contribution to the game extends far beyond his abilities as a floor general, assists, points and win-loss records. He is now in the business of saving lives, literally. While in recovery, there was a strong clinical component but nothing formatted for physical conditioning. Lucas began seeing exercise and conditioning as medicine.

During his treatment Lucas developed and proposed a program based on exercise and treatment. After his own treatment, Lucas really got to work developing this concept of fitness as a component of treatment and getting hospital-based treatment centers to partner with him. The Aftercare and counseling program that John Lucas helped to develop became the model used by the NBA to help recovering players maintain sobriety when attempting to return to the NBA. The challenge for returning players who are fighting their addiction(s) is to maintain sobriety. Lucas helps to prepare players to stay sober when going back into the environments and lifestyles that helped to contribute to their problems in the first place.

A large part of the solution comes when players learn that, "Basketball is what you do, it is not who you are." Free time, bad environments and bad influences only hold sway on you if you have no life outside of the game. That work in prevention led to programs that were put in place when the NBA and the NBA Players Association began to deal with drug issues. John Lucas has since been involved in helping the league and the Players Association develop these programs.

Clients in recovery need to attend Twelve Step meetings, visit with counselors about problems and emotions and continue to keep their personal life in order. Sobriety, and maintaining that sobriety, can be the greatest gift that a person in recovery can attain. When they see that no problem or situation they may face in life will ever be reason to go back to that former negative lifestyle, that's when they are really back on track. The gift is the sobriety, the ability to enjoy life to its fullest, to enjoy being who you are and waking up to face the next day.