Lamar Odom is further opening up about his struggle with addiction in his new memoir. In an excerpt released to People, the NBA legend admitted: “I am a sex addict.”
In the book, titled Darkness to Light, Odom, who’s Khloé Kardashian’s ex husband, wrote that he’d had sex with more than 2,000 women. This number may sound big to you, but most advocates of sex positivity would argue that no one should be judged for their “number” of partners — whether they’re suffering from sex addiction or not.
“I have been obsessed with sex for as long as I can remember,” the 39-year-old writes in his book, according to People. “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.”
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He explained that his sex addiction was also a trigger for him to do drugs, and enabled him to cheat on Kardashian while they were married. She eventually found out that he was unfaithful.
Compulsive sexual behaviour — arguably a long-form way to say sex addiction — was only classified as a mental health disorder on the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases list last year, CNN reported. The American Addiction Centers say sex addiction can cause an unhealthy obsession with seeking, observing, or engaging in sexual activity that is disruptive to every day life. They note it’s been estimated that approximately 12 million adults in the US are affected by sex addiction.
Odom’s addiction problems culminated in 2015, when he overdosed and almost died at a Nevada brothel. People reported that in his memoir, he writes about this incident with contrition. “That was the wake-up call,” Odom writes. “Like, this can’t happen again.”