When Lamar Odom (right) woke from a drug fuelled four-day coma, he found Khloe Kardashian (left) next to him. Photo / Getty Images
When Lamar Odom (right) woke from a drug fuelled four-day coma, he found Khloe Kardashian (left) next to him. Photo / Getty Images
Lamar Odom's ex-wife Khloe Kardashian has revealed the first words spoken by the NBA after he regained consciousness from a near-fatal drug overdose in 2015.
Odom suffered the overdose in October, 2015, while overindulging in both women and drugs at infamous Nevada brothel The Love Ranch, reports news.com.au.
"Sex was a trigger for me to do drugs," he told People Magazine in an interview to promote his new book, Darkness To Light. "Because you double up on [that] good feeling."
In the memoir, as excerpted by People, Odom gets candid about his drug addiction and near-constant affairs throughout his four-year marriage to the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star. He maintains the pair started out as blissfully happy newlyweds but is haunted by his infidelity.
As the marriage wore on Odom's mental health started to deteriorate and he turned to drugs and women to cope. He claims there were more than 2000 women, in fact, as Odom confessed to being a sex addict.
"I've had sex with more than 2000 women. There were too many strippers to count," he writes. "It wasn't a big deal, but often I would pay them. I never thought less of them."
Kardashian put their divorce on hold as she stayed by Odom's side throughout his health crisis following a drug overdose in October 2015. The incident where he was found unconscious in a brothel was almost fatal for Odom as he was left in a coma on life support, but he made a miraculous recovery and he knows he's lucky to be alive.
"Her love for me must have been unconditional," Odom said. "That's the only thing (I think) that gave her the strength to still love me at that time."
Odom and Kardashian finalised their divorce in December 2016.
(L-R) Khloe Kardashian, Lamar Odom, Kris Jenner, Kendall Jenner, Kourtney Kardashian, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Caitlin Jenner and Kylie Jenner attend Kanye West Yeezy Season 3. Photo / Getty Images
In a recent interview with her divorce lawyer, Laura Wasser, for an episode of PodcastOne's Divorce Sucks With Laura Wasser, Kardashian, 34, revealed what happened in the moments soon after Odom woke up.
"He OD'ed during the divorce and I was his next of kin, even though it was still, the divorce was still — it was on the judge's desk," Kardashian said in an E! News sneak peek of the episode.
"It was like two years, or like a year or two of us trying to get the divorce going and then this happened."
After four days in a coma, Odom woke up to see Kardashian by his side.
"I remember he woke up and the first thing he said was, 'Hey babe,' " said Kardashian.
"I was like, 'Oh God. What year does he think this is?' I remember I was like, 'Oh no. What did I do?!' Because I was like, 'Does he know?'
"And then he went right back to sleep because he was in a coma, woke up, saw me and I might've put him back into a coma I don't know, he probably was terrified."
Despite the acrimonious split — the divorce was finalised in 2016.
Meanwhile, writing in his book, Odom told the tale of the time he was selected for the 2004 Dream Team but was petrified he would never get to join the team in Athens due to being unable to pass the drug screening, with a heap of drugs in his system.
"There was absolutely no way I was going to pass. I'd been smoking weed every day that summer. Panic set in," Odom wrote.
But then he had an epiphany of how to skirt around the issue and jumped online to google "fake penises".
"After an exhaustive search we ordered a giant, rubber, black ***k to arrive the next day."
Odom then had his trainer — who was drug-free — "urinate in the reservoir of the phallus, which was hidden in the balls."
His trainer then passed him the urine-filled prosthetic in the bathroom and Odom strapped it to his leg — he then squeezed the urine out of the tip of fake penis, while the NBA security official looked on.
"I unzipped my pants and carefully slid the fake penis through the zipper hole. To get the pee to come out of the tip, I had to squeeze the shaft repeatedly."
