Surviving A DAD’S addiction
Lamar Odom’s daughter Destiny and her mother open up about dealing with the EX-NBA player’s drug abuse and marriage to Khloé Kardashian
On Oct. 15, 2015, 17-year-old Destiny Odom sat on her father’s bed as he lay unconscious in the intensivecare unit of a Las Vegas hospital and spoke to his body, praying for his life. Outside the quiet of the hospital, crowds of camera crews and reporters were waiting to discover the prognosis of the former NBA star and estranged husband of Khloé Kardashian. Lamar Odom, 37, was comatose and had suffered 12 strokes and two heart attacks after a drug overdose in a brothel. Doctors had told Destiny and her brother Lamar Jr that their father might never regain consciousness. “We all thought that this was it for him, and he was going to pass away,” she says. But by the morning everything had changed. “We just talked to him for, like, 30 minutes and went back to our hotel to sleep, and next morning he was ripping tubes out of his mouth,” adds Destiny. “I don’t really think that’s a coincidence. I think he was meant to be here because of me and my brother. It sounds like a cheesy movie, but I think that everything happens for a reason.”
For Destiny, now 18, part of that reason is giving her the chance to help other families struggling with addiction. With her mother, Liza Morales, 38, she is speaking publicly for the first time about her father’s overdose and his subsequent battle to get clean. Together they hope to explore opportunities to help children with addicted parents. “I used to worry that addiction was my own fault,” says Destiny, “but after talking to therapists and drug specialists, you just know the way that an addict’s brain is chemically wired. They can love you, they would do anything for you, but at the end of the day, there’s a chemical dependency on drugs.”
And Destiny saw first-hand the havoc dependency can wreak on a family. Although she never directly witnessed her father using drugs, she learnt early on to recognise the signs. “For me, when my dad is using, he’ll slip away,” she says. “That’s my No. 1 sign. When he’s not texting me, not calling me, I know he’s using. But all I can do is let him know that I love him and that I’m here for him. You can’t force an addict to get better; they have to want it for themselves.”
Odom’s problems began back in the late 1990s, when he was a rising star in the NBA. He and Morales—high-school sweethearts who were raising a young family— enjoyed the fruits of Odom’s successful NBA career, with homes in New York, Miami and Los Angeles, but struggled with his newfound fame. “I think it was hard for him,” says Morales. “You’re 19, 20 years old, and you start making all this money. There’s a lot of temptation.” In 2001, while playing with the LA Clippers, Odom was suspended twice (for five games each time) for failing drug tests.
Then, in 2006, the pair’s life changed forever when their 6-month-old son, Jayden, died of sudden infant death syndrome. Odom tried to cope with the grief by using cocaine and pills and having affairs.
The couple parted ways but remained cordial, co-parenting Destiny and Lamar Jr. In 2008 Morales helped Odom’s friends stage an unsuccessful intervention in LA. “There was a lot of denial,” Morales says.
After Odom’s whirlwind romance and marriage to Khloé Kardashian in 2009— as seen on Keeping Up with the Kardashians and the spin-off Khloé & Lamar— his addiction grew and relations with his children suffered. Destiny says, her relationship with Kardashian was always strained. “I feel like we tried,” she says. “I tried for my dad. I wouldn’t say it was a matter of my dad loving Khloé more than me. I think my dad has an addictive personality, so he was addicted to the attention he got with Khloé more than me. It was a very toxic relationship.”
The relationship also created problems for Destiny among her peers. “The bullying started when he married Khloé,” says Destiny, who no longer has any relationship with Kardashian. “There were regular snide comments at school. And when his addiction became public, then it became a social-media thing. Even people that I thought were my friends were saying stuff on social media. It was humiliating.”
Odom wasn’t around for many of the usual markers of parenthood, missing a high-school graduation and special occasions with his family. “When you see everyone with their mom and dad, it’s like, ‘I wish I could have these moments with my dad here,’ ” says Destiny. Morales agrees: “It was devastating to see the pain. At the end of the day, it was the addiction.”
After Destiny came across a headline on a celebrity-news site declaring Odom was using “hillbilly heroin,” Morales sought help from a therapist to learn how to talk to her children about their father’s addiction. “She told me to be honest with them,” recalls Morales. “Even though they were so young, she was like, ‘Don’t hide things.’ ”
Destiny even played a role in an intervention friends staged with Odom after a relapse last November that got the former athlete into rehab again. “I basically gave him the ultimatum that it was rehab or me not speaking to him anymore,” she says. “I think that hit him really hard.”
Odom declared in April that he was drug-free. (Odom had no direct comment, but a source close to him says, “He’s still sober and doing well.”) “When your parent’s an addict and they get clean, it’s like a whole new world,” says Destiny. “When he’s clean, he’s more able to see the pain that he’s caused.” But Destiny, who is currently taking a gap year and wants to pursue a career in fashion ( her mother is a clothing designer), knows addiction isn’t a battle that’s won easily. “After seeing my dad struggle with addiction, I don’t ever want to touch a drug in my life,” she says. Although they do text, she hasn’t seen him for three months and isn’t sure whether he’s off drugs for good or not. “Two years ago he was completely in denial about using drugs. Now he’s a lot more open, and he’s a lot more apologetic,” she says. “I feel like we’re trying to get our communication going, but it’s definitely one step at a time.”