Lamar Odom Opens Up: Cheating On Khloe Kardashian, Drug Use, And That Brothel

Lamar Odom has come a long way since almost dying in a brothel back in October 2015. His journey to recovery has been bumpy, and it’s clear that he longs to be back with his ex-wife Khloe Kardashian, but a year and a half after what could have been a horrible tragedy, Lamar is still with us. Now the former NBA star is opening up and talking about how he cheated on Khloe Kardashian, abused drugs and of course, he’s talking about how he almost died in that brothel.

In a new interview with E! News, Lamar Odom opened up about his near-death experience after suffering an overdose while visiting a Nevada brothel just 17 months ago. Odom still maintains that he wasn’t doing drugs while visiting the Love Ranch. This is what he had to say about his decision to visit the brothel, something he likely wishes he’d never done:

“I was home by myself. Bored. I wanted to get out and have a good time. Looking back, I might have had a drink to get the mood started, but was I drunk or on drugs? Not at all. I remember lying in bed. Two women were in bed and then I fell asleep. That’s all,” the 37-year-old basketball player insists. “When I woke up four days later, I was trying to pull the tubes out of my mouth.”

Despite their separation and the contention between them, when Khloe Kardashian found out that Lamar Odom was fighting for his life, she didn’t even think twice about rushing to his bedside. Lamar said he was surprised to have so much support from Khloe during that time.

Khloe Kardashian did stay with Lamar Odom as he recovered. When he couldn’t talk and was confined to his hospital bed, Lamar said Khloe would bring in pictures of his mom and his grandmother to show him. She even slept in the hospital with him, refusing to leave Lamar there by himself. It wasn’t until he learned to walk again that Khloe felt comfortable leaving his bedside.

“It was definitely a moment of relief. I didn’t even know what had just happened. I mean, I’m a big strong dude who has made it to the highest level of doing what he loves. And now I can’t walk or talk,” Lamar recalled. “She was the first thing I saw. She said, ‘Hi, Mookah.’ ‘Mookah’ is a name my mother used to call me. She said it to let me know I wasn’t dead. She played a major role in me getting my memory back. She would bring pictures of my mother and my grandmother. I kept thinking, ‘Am I paralyzed forever? Am I mute forever?’ It was scary s**t.”

Lamar says it was faith that got him through the scary brothel overdose and lengthy hospital stay that followed. Unfortunately, even though Khloe Kardashian was there for Lamar Odom during his darkest hour, she still wanted a divorce. While he was in recovery, Khloe pulled back the divorce filing and waited until he was doing much better. She refiled the paperwork in 2016 after Lamar was caught drinking at the Beverly Center soon after completing another stint in rehab.

Lamar Odom also admitted that while they were married, Khloe Kardashian caught him doing cocaine in his man cave inside their own home. She stayed with him for two years after that even though she knew he was still using. Lamar says Khloe didn’t like that he was using cocaine but that she “tolerated” his drug use.

“When I became Khloe Kardashian’s man and on TV, it made me look more enticing. People who didn’t even know basketball would approach me because they knew Lammy. Bitches and THOTs came out of the woodwork,” Lamar Odom told US Weekly about his short-lived but highly rated reality show with Khloe. “If there is one thing I regret when I was married, it was having multiple affairs with different women. That wasn’t the stand-up thing to do. I wish I could have kept my d**k in my pants.”

Ultimately, Khloe Kardashian just couldn’t deal with Lamar Odom’s drug use and cheating, and she left her NBA-playing husband. And while it’s not Khloe’s fault that he ended up overdosing at all, it was when she left Lamar that he began the downward spiral that led to him nearly dying in October 2015 in a Nevada brothel.

Rather than try to fix his marriage to Khloe Kardashian, Lamar Odom says that he started using even more drugs. That led him to go to an even darker place where Lamar says he just didn’t care about anything besides getting high.

Lamar Odom was still playing basketball for the Los Angeles Clippers at the time, but his drug use was so intense that he said he didn’t even want to train for the NBA anymore or to keep himself in shape. He said that drugs took away his will to keep trying and it also killed his sex drive.

Now that he’s got his life back on track, Lamar Odom has been speaking up about the events that got him to where he is now. He recently took his kids to the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards and has been staying clean and sober.

“I’m a walking miracle. I had no choice but to become stronger,” Lamar said. “I’m here talking to you. So, I guess I’m winning.”

[Featured Image by Christopher Polk/Getty Images]