Inside Brittney Griner's Life in Prison: The Friendships — and Bad Habit — That Helped Her Survive (Exclusive)

During the 10 months Brittney Griner spent being wrongfully detained in Russia, the WNBA star experienced horrifying conditions and inhumane treatment that was only survivable thanks to a few unlikely friendships — and a habit she wasn't happy to adopt.

Two years and three months after her Feb. 2022 arrest at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for possession of vape cartridges containing small amounts of cannabis oil, Griner is speaking for the first time about her experience in Russia. 

The infraction, and the subsequent show trial, resulted in a 9-year sentence in IK-2, a remote, notoriously harsh penal colony, but Griner says her lowest point came before she was transferred — when she was first locked up in the Russian equivalent of a “county jail.” 

“That first cell, in isolation, that was hard,” Griner, 33, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, promoting her new memoir, Coming Home. “There were no essentials. Nothing but me in that nasty room, and a lot of unknown. At least when I got my sentence, I knew there was work going on at home, people trying to get me back, momentum picking up. Even though it sucked, I knew what was going to happen: I was going to a work camp. But that first part, not knowing anything, having so little conversation with my lawyer before they took me. That was the lowest.”

Griner says she survived those first months — of barbaric treatment, squalid conditions and spoiled food — with the help of some unlikely friendships she made after a mandated period of quarantine. 

“I had to find [human connection],” says Griner. “That’s just me. You put me in a room with a bunch of people I’d never [normally] be in a room with and I can find something we can connect on. I guess it’s my niche.” 

Griner recalls an older woman — “the mother of the cell” — who shared food with her. “I hadn’t had protein in a very long time at that point,” she recalls. “She sat me down at the table and made me eat [some of her] meat and bread. She cut it up and everything.” 

One of Griner’s closest friends was a 27-year-old Russian inmate named Alena, a former volleyball player who had studied in London and spoke English. The two shared food and cleaned their cell together, and Alena even translated Russian television for Griner line-by-line. They formed their tightest bond, however, in consoling each other when doubt and loneliness crept in. 

“When you’re in that predicament, the first things that come to mind aren’t good,” says Griner, referencing the fear she felt that her wife Cherelle, 31, would grow tired of waiting for her to return. “I saw a lot of women in there get those letters [from their partners] and break down in tears. So Alena and I talked a lot about it. She had a significant other as well, so we bounced [those fears] off each other. It’s not like I could just call a friend [back home]. Alena helped me process things.” (Griner hasn’t been in contact with Alena since returning to the U.S. but plans to contact Alena’s father through her lawyers for word on her well-being.) 

While Griner says she found humanity in the unlikeliest place, she also picked up an unlikely habit for an elite athlete: smoking “a couple packs a day.” She recalls immediately after her sentencing, an outpouring of compassion — and cigarettes.

“When I got the nine[-year sentence], I got back to the room at the jail, and there were two other ladies in there. They didn't know English at all, but they [said], ‘How many?’ I had my papers in my hand, and they were pointing at them like, ‘Can we see?’ And I don't care, it's all in Russian anyway, there's no secrets. So I gave the papers to them, they read it and they're immediately mad. They're mad! And they just start handing me cigarettes. Because that’s what everybody does: stress and smoke.”

Griner has since kicked the habit and rehabbed her lungs to resume playing for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and, hopefully, Team USA in this summer’s Paris Olympics. In Coming Home, she writes about some of the first words she remembers saying to her wife Cherelle when they were reunited on a tarmac in San Antonio in December 2022.

“Sorry if I smell like cigarettes,” I whispered in Relle’s ear. “You don’t,” she whispered back. “But, honey,” she said, “let’s get outta here.”

Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, with Michelle Burford, is available now.