NEWARK — He may be called Iron Mike Tyson, but the former heavyweight champion of the world told a packed auditorium today how drugs have knocked him down time and again.

"The fight’s not over," Tyson told a startled group of drug court graduates, some who leapt to their feet, at the Mary Burch Theater in Essex County College. "You think you graduate and it’s over?

You come back. You won this round but you’re gonna struggle with it until the day you die. Relapse is part of recovery."

The appearance by Tyson, whose tumultuous career has been plagued by drug use, had been kept secret from participants in the program.

"I’m really proud of these graduates right here because now this is the first time in all your life you can start fresh," he said. "To overcome this adversity, we all came out looking like wounded warriors, but we won."

Tyson spoke about his troubled childhood, his mother’s addiction to drugs and his own struggle. Later, in an interview, he said that despite being sober for four years, he was tempted all the time.

"Sometimes everything’s just going great, everything’s going great, and in my mind I say, ‘I want blow and a ho.’ Everything’s going great. I’m married with a kid. I love my wife and all the sudden I want blow and a ho."

Tyson’s candid style kept graduates laughing and applauding, but his words also carried the more serious message of what he had lost to his addiction.

Essex County Drug Court Judge Ramona Santiago, who presented certificates to the 17 graduates dressed in silver robes and blue sashes, had invited Tyson to speak. He did so for free.

"No matter how great he was, he fell," Santiago said of Tyson, "But he got back up. I want (the graduates) to feel they’re the heavyweight champions of themselves, of their futures."

The Essex County program has 600 participants, including 159 who joined this year, and completion of its four phases usually takes five years to complete.

Eric Spann, a 2012 graduate who received the distinguished alumni award, described how he and his wife lived on the streets, stealing anything they could sell for drugs.

When Irvington police arrested Spann in 2008 for eluding authorities, he had three previous gun charges and two previous prison terms, and he expected to be going back a third time.

"This is the first thing I’ve completed in my life," Spann said. "Today I no longer get high. I try to give back because I understand the disease of addiction. My whole life I never got nothing but jail. I got an award today."

Drug Court has expanded in recent years under Santiago. In addition to treatment and rehabilitation, participants are required to get their GED, maintain a job and show that they are paying off any fines or outstanding child support expenses, Santiago said.

The Essex County drug court program started in 1996 and paved the way for models across the state.

Today’s graduates join the ranks of about 3,000 who have completed the three- to five-year program statewide. Thanks to an additional $4.5 million allocated to the 2014 state budget, the program will be expanded next year to include 250 more participants, said Jennifer Velez, commissioner of the state Department of Health and Human Services.

According to statistics from 2012, 8 percent of New Jersey Drug Court graduates were convicted of new offenses after their graduation.

Tyson, who grew up in a rough part of Brooklyn and was in court dozens of times as a youth, said the use of cocaine and heroin tore down everything he had built up for himself.

He said that behind his anger and his boxing success, he was a self-conscious and deeply sad man.

"You gotta beat it with determination, persistence," he said. "It’s all about living and wanting to. Most of us we don’t feel comfortable in our skin that’s why we do this. You stop drugs by stopping pain."

The 47-year-old Tyson, who lives in Las Vegas, was the undisputed heavyweight champion and is widely considered one of the greatest boxers of all time. Controversy has followed his career from the infamous fight where he bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield’s ear to a 1992 rape conviction for which he served three years in prison. Tyson still insists he was not guilty.

Today, Tyson has gone through a self-described transformation, becoming a vegan, raising champion racing pigeons in Jersey City, and telling his story in an effort to help others battling similar demons.

And in recent years he has become a pop culture mainstay, appearing in both ‘The Hangover’ and ‘The Hangover 2’ as well as performing at the Tony Awards, a nod to his one-man show, "Mike Tyson: The Undisputed Truth," directed by Spike Lee.

A documentary series called ‘Being Mike Tyson’ starts next month on Fox Sports 1, and he has launched a boxing promotions company called Iron Mike Production. And according to his publicist, a memoir is to be released on Nov. 12.

Despite his renaissance, Tyson said in an interview he doesn’t think of himself as a star.

"I don’t look at life through those frames because that’s nothing but a gateway to getting high again, thinking I’m something special," Tyson said.

As he put it: "I’m just a junkie and I’m working on my sobriety. That’s me. That’s who I am."

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