Lamar Odom has opened up about his past drug addiction and marriage to Khloé Kardashian, saying he regrets ever cheating on his former wife.
“That haunts me every day,” Odom said during an interview on BuzzFeed News’ Facebook Watch show Profile that aired Wednesday. “You marry someone after 30 days, they never leave your heart.”
Kardashian and Odom famously married in 2009 after knowing each other for just 30 days. After being estranged and filing for divorce, Odom was hospitalized and became comatose after a suspected overdose at a brothel in Nevada.
The former LA Laker revealed how Kardashian helped him in his recovery.
“She was my angel,” the former Laker said about Kardashian, who visited him regularly when he was hospitalized.
“When I woke up out of the coma, my memory was terrible and I couldn’t walk or talk, and just her spirit, always being there, her bringing pictures of my mother, my grandmother, just to help me bring my memory back.”
“She’s a trooper,” he said.
Odom, who is promoting his new memoir Darkness to Light, said that he still hears from Kardashian once in a while, although he wouldn’t consider them to be friends or closely acquainted. According to Odom, she’s almost able to laugh about his infidelity now.
“She texted me yesterday, she texted me, ‘Laugh out loud. I didn’t know that you remembered that story,’” Odom said. “And the story she’s talking about is when she comes to the hotel and finds two women and puts her hands on one of them.”
But in Darkness to Light, Odom wrote that one of the most “regrettable” moments of his life was when he threatened to kill Kardashian when he was high on cocaine and ecstasy with his friends.
“Khloé came down and knocked on the door. I opened it suddenly and grabbed her forcefully by the shoulders, which frightened her. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I screamed, out of my mind,” he wrote in the book.
“I said: ‘You trying to embarrass me in front of my friends? I’ll fucking kill you! You don’t know what I’m capable of.’”
Odom also said he’s had sex with over 2,000 women, something he’s not “especially proud of” because of how it affected his marriage to Kardashian. The former couple’s divorce was finalized in 2016.
Kardashian hasn’t publicly commented on Odom’s new memoir and her representatives didn’t immediately respond to BuzzFeed News’ request for comment.
According to Odom, writing his memoir was a therapeutic process after experiencing different traumas in his lifetime, from his mother dying when he was young to the death of his infant son, to grappling with his drug abuse as an adult.
“Hopefully, I became a better person because of those losses,” Odom said.
Odom said he’s hopeful that the experiences and stories he shares in his book will help people who have suffered from addiction and who have “been through trauma.”
“I think everyone at least knows someone or somebody in some which way, form, or fashion who’s suffering from addiction. So if I can help some people by just telling my story, it’ll help me keep my head high.”
“Even in my darkest moments,” Odom continued. “I always try to walk with my head high.”