Ex-NBA player and fomer hubby of Khloe Kardashian shares details of drug use

  LOS ANGELES - Ex-NBA player Lamar Odom revealed details about his past drug use that nearly killed him. Although sober now, the 37-year-old Odom said in a Players' Tribune story titled "Done In The Dark", that staying drug-free is "an everyday struggle". Odom was found comatose in a Las Vegas brothel in October 2015, apparently due to cocaine overdose. He was brought to a hospital where he suffered 12 strokes and two heart attacks. In the article, Odom wrote: "At some point, the main doctor came in and told me what had happened. He said, 'Mr. Odom, you've been in a coma for the last four days. Do you understand?' I couldn't talk. So I just nodded. He said, 'It's a miracle that you're here. We didn't think you were going to make it.'" Odom said he was in shock over what happened and felt so helpless. He said it was no wonder he ended up in the hospital because he was already addicted to cocaine. "I was doing coke every day. Pretty much every second of free time that I had, I was doing coke. I couldn't control it," he said. Citing a popular quote by musician Rick James that goes "Cocaine is a hell of a drug", Odom said the drug made him do things he'd never imagined himself doing. For the most part however, he said he'd reflect on how he got there and those he'd lost because of his drug addiction. "When I was in that hospital bed, I kept asking myself that question. And I kept thinking about all the people in my life who aren't here anymore. Mostly, I thought about my mother. My dad wasn't really around when I was a kid. He had his own problems with addiction. But my mother was my best friend in the world. She was just so caring." Odom's mother succumbed to colon cancer when he was 12 years old. "When I was 12 years old, she got sick. I knew she had colon cancer, but I didn't really know how bad it was. She kind of kept it from me to protect me. I just remember that she went into the hospital for a while, and when I went to visit her, it seemed like she was getting ... smaller. Like she was disappearing." "I don't think anything can prepare you for losing your mother at 12 years old. It leaves a mark on you. I don't care how strong you think you are." Odom recalled that at that age, he swore to never touch cocaine. "I didn't try it until I was 24 years old, when I was on summer vacation in Miami. And ... I wish I could tell you there was a reason for it. There wasn't. It was just an asinine decision I made. If I knew that it was going to affect my life the way it did, I would've never even thought about it. Never. But I did it. It turned out to be a life-altering decision." After members of his family, including his six-month-old son, died one after the other, Odom said he dealt with the pain by using more cocaine, "and with it came reckless behavior and shame". "That's the thing people don't understand. Anybody who's lived a complicated, drug-infused life like I've lived knows the cycle -- with women, cheating on my wife. ... You think I wasn't feeling shame? You think I was blind to what I was doing? Nah, I wasn't blind to it." Odom said his "brain was broken" and his NBA career suffered. He said he lost his will to work out, to train, to practice. He said he was heartbroken when he was told by his doctors that his children had come to see him. Odom has two children – Lamar Jr., 16, and Destiny, 18. "The doctors told me that right before I woke up from the coma, my kids had come by to see me. And that broke my heart, because I had seen my own mother on her deathbed, with tubes coming out of her mouth. My kids are the only things that kept me going. I've been a big strong dude my whole life, so anytime my kids see me in a weak point like that is definitely hard for me -- even to talk about now." While in rehab, Odom said he learned to "submit to everything." He said he learned to deal with anxiety, which was "causing him so many problems." Odom credits his children for keeping him sober and that he's doing the best he can to stay that way while dealing with the fallout. "I'm sober now. 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," he wrote. "I shook hands with death. But you know what? Ain't no coming back from that." 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