Daily Cocaine, Death and Infidelity: 5 Secrets We Learned From Lamar Odom's Players' Tribune Interview

Former star athlete recalls years of tragedy and drug addiction in new candid interview

By Samantha Schnurr Jul 27, 2017 5:56 PMTags

Lamar Odom could not have been more candid. 

In a new interview for The Players' Tribune, the former basketball star puts his entire life on paper, walking every reader through his turbulent life rife with a mix of success, tragedy and addiction. While most have not forgotten how the 37-year-old nearly died in 2015 after he fell unconscious at a Nevada brothel and subsequently slipped into a coma, few have heard the story from the man himself. 

The former court champion recalls the moment he woke up to realize his mouth was stuffed with tubes and chronicles all the events that lead him to rock bottom. Throughout the unfiltered article, Odom explains how his cocaine addiction began and how he went from a New York City kid with a dream to a multi-millionaire doing drugs in a motel room. 

Here are the most shocking revelations from Odom's own mouth: 

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Stars Send Prayers to Lamar Odom
Denise Truscello/WireImage

1. He realized things were serious when he saw Khloe Kardashian in his hospital room. 

As he said in the article, waking up from his coma and realizing the reality star was there with him put the grim moment into perspective. 

"My ex-wife was there in the room with me. After all the s--t I had done, I was surprised to see her," he said. "Honestly, that's when I knew that I was probably in bad shape."

2. Cocaine was a daily activity. 

While there were all kinds of reports that Odom had been involved in drugs before his hospitalization, it was never so clear exactly how much he was doing. 

"At that point in my life, I was doing coke every day. Pretty much every second of free time that I had, I was doing coke," he said. "I couldn't control it."

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Lamar Odom Unconscious After Brothel Visit: Everything We Know So Far
Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images

3. He started doing cocaine when he was 24 years old. 

According to Odom, he actually "looked down" on cocaine before he tried it. 

"I never wanted to touch anything stronger than marijuana," he said. "I didn't try [cocaine] until I was 24 years old, when I was on summer vacation in Miami. And…I wish I could tell you there was a reason for it. There wasn't. It was just an asinine decision I made. If I knew that it was going to affect my life the way it did, I would've never even thought about it. Never. But I did it. It turned out to be a life-altering decision."

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4. His son's death was the tragedy that broke the camel's back.

Odom's mother, Cathy Mercer, died from colon cancer when he was 12 years old. Then, when he was 27 years old, his infant son Jayden Odom died from sudden infant death syndrome when he was six months old. 

"I think everything probably picked up at that point, with the drugs. Even subconsciously," he recalled." You don't even know why you're doing it at that point. I think subconsciously, you make yourself an addict because of the trauma that you're going through."

5. Khloe Kardashian walked in on him snorting cocaine in a motel room with another woman.

Odom said he considers this moment "one of the darkest places I've ever been." "First of all I was in a motel. A motel," he said. "I'm a millionaire. I'd made it out of Jamaica, Queens, and won two NBA titles. And I'm in a motel, with some random person, doing coke. But I just wanted to get high with this girl, and I had no other place to go. I couldn't take her home. You know, I was being a scumbag. Nothing else I got for that. No excuses. No bulls--t. That's just the truth."

He added, "My dick and my habit took me down all the roads that you don't ever wanna go down."

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