Lamar Odom has written a memoir called Darkness to Light, due out later this month. People Magazine has exclusive excerpts from it, excerpts which aren’t very surprising if you follow Kardashian gossip. Lamar was famously married to Khloe Kardashian for several years. Khloe really tried – I believe that. She tried to make it work, even when he was cheating on her constantly and doing drugs. Eventually, Khloe left him and Lamar spiralled even further, eventually bottoming out when he overdosed at a Reno brothel. Khloe came back to him briefly to nurse him back to health, but they never “got back together.” Now Lamar is telling his side of the story. Some highlights:
His sex addiction: “I have been obsessed with sex for as long as I can remember. I am a sex addict.” The 39-year-old reveals that he has had sex with more than 2,000 women. “There were too many strippers to count. It wasn’t a big deal, but often I would pay them. I never thought less of them.”
Khloe eventually found out about his infidelities & his cocaine addiction: “I was shocked and embarrassed. I wanted to take it back, but you can’t. [I] wanted to hide it. But that sick sin was hard for me to hide … I had a problem. I wish I could have been more of a man. It still bothers me to this day. But regret is something we have to learn to live with.”
He was so happy when he married Khloe: “For a while, being with her was bliss and I was the happiest I’ve ever been. We were one of the most famous couples in Hollywood and we made more money together than we had individually. At the start of our marriage I was faithful to her,” he writes. But eventually, he started having affairs, while at the same time hiding a full-blown cocaine addiction. “I could not handle the lethal cocktail of the spotlight, addiction, a diminishing career and infidelity. Oh, did I mention the paranoia, anxiety, depression. … I couldn’t keep my d— in my pants or the coke out of my nose. Drug addicts are incredibly skilled at hiding their habit. I’d get defensive and Khloé would just drop it.”
Sex was a trigger: “Sex was a trigger for me to do drugs. Because you double up on [that] good feeling.”
As I said, we’ve learned about all of this over the years, usually through Khloe or sources close to her. I’ll admit that usually when men use the “sex addiction” claim, I roll my eyes, but I’ve really started to get a better understanding of what sex addiction looks like, and how it really can be an addiction like any other kind of substance abuse. Lamar clearly had an addiction, a compulsion. Also: as he was doing coke constantly, for several of those years he was still an NBA player in good standing. I thought the drug testing would have caught that all of the blow in his system?
Book cover courtesy of Amazon, additional photos courtesy of WENN.
Dude TMI
Is “sex addiction” really a thing though? I have a very good friend who is a therapist and she has a lot to say about sex addiction claims, particularly about how we treat people with sex addictions. I had a conversation with her after all of the Jana Kramer stuff came to light. My understanding is that therapy for sex addiction often places the blame on the non-cheating partner in the form of questions like, “what are you doing to create an environment where your partner wants to cheat?” when the onus really should not be on the faithful party at all.
That was my experience with a cheating partner, the first visit with the therapist it was decided that while we were both to blame it was definitely me that caused him to visit brothels and use escorts repeatedly over an almost 20 year relationship. It stems from treating sex addiction with the same model as any other addiction (drugs, alcohol) where the partner is declared co-dependent and thus “supporting” the addict in the behaviours by helping them hide the addiction or denying the extent of the addiction with family or friends allowing the addict to continue the behaviour.
It caused me immense damage, self blame and guilt and caused me to remain in an abusive environment for another two years, it was only when I went “rogue” with another therapist that I got real help to deal with what my (now ex-) partner had done that I saw how badly his behaviour damaged me. I was then treated with the Trauma model, the difference being I was now being treated as any other person damaged by abusive behaviour would be, I was no longer labelled as a person “supporting” his behaviour for the simple reason that I never knew about it, he kept it all hidden, he was living a double life when he did these things when on work trips, at lunch time in work and once when he visited family for an afternoon, he left no trace of any of this, he had a separate phone, bank account and several email accounts for handling this side of his life.
There is help for spouses out there but you have to be very careful that the therapist is experienced and specializes in the area of infidelity due to sexual addiction type behaviours.
Yes! When “couple’s therapy” was developed, one of the parameters was supposed to be that both parties were mentally healthy and could thus fully participate. When one (or both) partners has some sort of issue, that partner is supposed to get their own treatment, keeping touch behind the scenes to work with the couple’s therapist to make sure their treatment plans are in sync. This. of course, has been thrown out the window, causing so much damage.
Also, the appropriate therapy for someone with the sort of issues you are talking about is DBT, which is a group therapy, which focuses on education, skills teaching, creating your own boundaries, and developing the self control to respect the boundaries of others.
I mean he clearly suffers from addiction in whatever form, so sure, but I had the sense it got worse when wrung through the Kardashian machine. Not blaming Khloe for his cheating as much as Kris for his needing to mentally withdraw from reality (which is what addiction fundamentally is).
Sounds like it will be a boring read… Kardashians probably had him under and iron-clad NDA, so they’ll have had to approve what he says, and won’t contain any dirt on them.
I don’t know if it’s true but I read once one of the Ks said he has a terrible breath. True or not, I always wonder how people don’t mind physical contact with others with this issue.
He loves candy. There was the whole episode where Khloe filled a bathtub full of candy to do a naked photo shoot in as a gift for him. There was also another episode where Kim told him she can smell his cavities. I’ve read that sugar addiction is common with drug addiction. I know when I was taking oxy for a back injury a few years ago I couldn’t get enough candy. Although maybe I’m wrong about Lamar and he’s just a regular sweet tooth kinda guy.
Whoa there, taking prescription pain medication for a legitimate reason is hardly “drug addiction” and conflating the two is not cool. Taking “oxy” for an injury or post-op does not cause a sugar addiction. I love candy, have always loved candy and I eat less of it now despite having chronic pain and being on pain medication for about 5 years. People who abuse illegal substances like meth, coke and heroin don’t tend to take care of themselves; they go from feast to famine, eating junk when they’re flush and not exactly taking good care of their teeth.
cokeheads often have terrible breath
Ewwwww. I’m no Puritan but whenever ppl start sharing their sex numbers and it gets into the high numbers (2k?!!!) I start grossing out a bit. I know a lot of men and women wear it like a badge of honor…I doubt all were quality bangs either. No thanks…
Same. STD’s anyone?
Wilt Chamberlain claimed he slept with more than 10,000 women!! Apparently it’s true, too.
Some poeples’ mission on this earth is just so exhausting!!!
He was happy in the marriage because they were famous and made money? O-kay then.
Is 2,000 really that many? I mean, for a middle-aged sex addict? That would be, like, 50 women a year. So, once a week he has sex. Meh.
Umm yes, 2000 different sexual partners is a lot.
He’s 39. 2k partners with 1 partner/week is 40 years. Unless he’s been having sex since birth, that’s more than 1x/week. I’m sure at least some of those people were partners/girlfriends with whom he had sex more than once. Also “sex once a week” is a bit different than “sex once a week with a different person every week”.
All that said…if he really was having sex with strippers while high on coke, I very much doubt he was keeping an accurate count of how many partners he has had. I am guessing the “2000” number is just some kind of number he pulled out of his ass that he feels reflects “I was having a lot of random one-off sex”.
Eh? Sure, if he started having sex the year he was born. Try again.
I went to college with him…. it was a lot more than a single girl a week at that point.
It is well known that he paid a lot of those women. So whatever. It annoys me when someone wants to brag about their number being so high when they paid people for it.
i think coke is out of your system pretty quickly, so it’s easier to avoid getting popped on a drug test on coke than it is if you’ve smoked weed.