Lamar Odom insists he wasn’t on drugs or drunk when he suffered his near-fatal collapse at a Las Vegas brothel.
The 37-year-old sportsman was found unresponsive in October 2015 and though he was out looking for a "good time", he was stunned to wake up in hospital four days after he’d gone to the establishment.
He recalled: "I was home by myself. Bored. I wanted to get out and have a good time. Looking back, I might have had a drink to get the mood started, but was I drunk or on drugs? Not at all. I remember lying in bed. Two women were in bed and then I fell asleep. That’s all. When I woke up four days later, I was trying to pull the tubes out of my mouth."
As the incident happened two years after he’d split from wife Khloé Kardashian – who delayed divorce proceedings to help Lamar with his recovery – he was amazed but "relieved" to see her by his side in the hospital and credits her support for pulling him back from the brink.
Asked if he was surprised to see the ‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians’ star, he said: "Hell, yeah. It was definitely a moment of relief. I didn’t even know what had just happened. I mean, I’m a big strong dude who has made it to the highest level of doing what he loves. And now I can’t walk or talk. She was the first thing I saw.
"She said, ‘Hi, Mookah.’ ‘Mookah’ is a name my mother used to call me. She said it to let me know I wasn’t dead.
"She played a major role in me getting my memory back. She would bring pictures of my mother and my grandmother. I kept thinking, Am I paralysed forever? Am I mute forever? It was scary s**t. Faith got me through."
But despite their close bond through his recovery, Lamar insists there was never any question of them getting back together.
He told Us Weekly magazine: "Honestly, at that time I was just blessed to be around her. I wasn’t making any more out of it than that. We haven’t been intimate in years."
Earlier this year, Lamar – who has kids Destiny, 18, and Lamar Jr., 14, with Liza Morales – entered rehab to seek help for his addictions at the urging of his daughter, and he admitted he has changed his life completely since his stint at San Diego’s Casa Palmera rehab clinic.
He said: "My daughter gave me the ultimatum to go. She said, ‘Pops, you get help or I won’t talk to you.’ I think she saw it in my behaviour.
"Coke is a real psychological drug. You can be getting high and feeling great and then on the way down cursing yourself out. So I think it was one of those moments on the way down.
"This last time I checked into rehab, I was able to stay the whole 30 days and get the most out of it. I learned about addiction and that it’s a brain disease. The choices we make when our brain is diseased are involuntary. So it was important and life-changing."
And the basketball player – who is now sober – has warned his children they may be susceptible to addiction themselves.
He said: "My kids were really scared that their dad wasn’t going to be here. It was good bonding time with them when they came to see me.
"They said, ‘Dad, we want you to be here.’ I was honest with them. There is no reason to lie now. But it was good for them to know it is a disease and one I may pass back to them."
Lamar Odom ‘wasn’t drunk’ when he collapsed
