How Lamar Odom’s Co-Occurring Disorders Contributed to His 2015 Overdose

Launched in 2013, the harris project is a nonprofit dedicated to the prevention and treatment of co-occurring disorders (COD) — the combination of mental health challenges and substance use issues. Us Weekly has partnered with the harris project to bring you The Missing Issue, a special edition focusing on the stories of celebrities who struggled with COD. Here, we’re revisiting our past coverage of some of those stars.

This story ran on usmagazine.com on October 23, 2015:

ORIGINAL STORY: Lamar Odom Overdosed on Cocaine and Unidentified Pill, Authorities Suspect

[Read the full original story.]

NEW STORY: Lamar Odom Overdoses on Cocaine and Unidentified Pill — While Self-Medicating for Depression

In October 2015, NBA superstar Lamar Odom — who was also known to reality TV fans for his marriage to Khloé Kardashian — was found unresponsive in a Nevada brothel. Authorities reported that he had a combination of cocaine and a Viagra-type medication found in his system, and he was near death. Though the couple was estranged at the time, Kardashian stayed with Odom through recovery from twelve strokes, six heart attacks and liver and kidney damage — and supported him as he fought through the near-fatal episode.

While she filed for divorce shortly after his recovery, Kardashian recently revealed the depth of their connection. “Lamar was, and is, definitely someone that I felt was the love of my life,” she said during a February 2025 episode of The Kardashians. “I got married when I was 24 and although him and I got married 30 days to the day we met, I loved him with all of my heart and soul.”

Odom, who has said he began using drugs at 12 — the year his mother died of colon cancer — has revealed that he has struggled with co-occurring disorders: substance use, grief, depression, and anxiety. And in his 2019 memoir, Darkness to Light, Odom also said he had sex addiction, which had also led him to use cocaine. “With cocaine especially, there’s a high, and then an emotional low,” he wrote in a first-person essay for The Players’ Tribune in 2017. “So it’s like a roller coaster. You go high, and then you go low. High, low, high, low. After you do it, you feel shame. You think about all the reasons why you shouldn’t have done it. Then the cycle starts again.”

Loss, Grief and Anxiety

The loss of his mother, Cathy Mercer, at just 12 was a blow that Odom didn’t have tools to process or get treatment to deal with — he just tried to go on with his life, raised by his grandmother. His father “wasn’t really around,” he wrote in The Players’ Tribune … “but my mother was my best friend in the world. She was just so caring. My first memory in life is hearing the sound of her voice … She was like the center of the universe in Jamaica, Queens.”

Losing a mother at such a young age “leaves a mark on you,” Odom wrote. “I don’t care how strong you think you are.”

Ongoing loss led to his first experience with cocaine. He was 24 years old and his grandmother had died, followed by several other family members. On summer vacation in Miami, when offered the drug, he decided to take it. “When I did coke, I felt good for a minute,” Odom shared. “I stopped having so much anxiety. I didn’t think about the pain. I didn’t think about death. So I kept doing it more and more.”

Just two years later, Odom had been out partying all night when the mother of his then-six-month-old son, Jayden, called and hysterically told him the baby wouldn’t wake up, that the ambulance was there and they were taking him to the hospital. By the time Odom arrived doctors told him his son was “gone,” and had no explanation as to why. The case was determined to be sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS,) and Odom was haunted by the not-knowing and by the hurt in Jayden’s mother’s face.

“I think everything probably picked up at that point, with the drugs,” he wrote. “Even subconsciously. 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.”

In the essay, he went on to remark, “You think I wasn’t feeling shame? You think I was blind to what I was doing? Nah, I wasn’t blind to it. Shame …pain. It’s part of the whole cycle. My brain was broken. As the years went on, and I got into my 30s, my career was winding down, and things just got out of control.”

Learning About His Anxiety

Odom went into rehab and became more aware of the reasons behind his substance misuse.

“In rehab you learn to submit to everything,” he wrote in The Players’ Tribune essay. “I’ve always been a really anxious person. I’ve been a worrier my whole life. But I’m learning to release everything. Or at least I’m trying to learn.”

In a Nov. 12, 2024 Instagram Reel, Odom is seen speaking to a group about his journey, something he has said is helpful in his recovery. “Drugs don’t discriminate,” he says. “No race, color, creed. I loved cocaine. Have you tried it? Don’t ever … I call it getting low. It’s like getting low. I’m fighting the fight … I’m a professional athlete, it hurt me severely in the media, cost me a couple of dollars, like $30 million … It hurt my pride too.”

As he continues working to address the co-occurring disorders he faces, he says that his children with former partner Liza Morales — Lamar, Jr., 23, and Destiny, 26, — have attended rehab therapy sessions with him in the past and are reasons for him to keep going. “I’m sober now,” he wrote in The Players’ Tribune. “But it’s an everyday struggle. I have an addiction. I’ll always have an addiction. It never goes away. I mean, I want to get high right now. But I know that I can’t if I want to be here for my children.”

To purchase The Missing Issue for $8.99 go to https://magazineshop.us/harrisproject.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health and/or substance use, you are not alone. Seek immediate intervention — call 911 for medical attention; 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline; or 1-800-662-HELP for the SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) National Helpline. Carrying naloxone (Narcan) can help reverse an opioid overdose.