LOS ANGELES, USA –Lamar Odom has disclosed he used a prosthetic penis to cheat drug-testers to make it to the Olympic team in 2004, Agence France Presse reported, citing the former NBA star said in an upcoming memoir, “Darkness to Light.”
Odom reportedly said he panicked after being named to the US Olympic team for the 2004 Games in Athens apparently because of his drug use.
“The joy of being named to the twelve-man roster quickly turned to anxiety when Olympic officials informed me that I would have to pass a drug test before officially joining the team,” Odom was quoted as saying in the AFP report.
“There was absolutely no way I was going to pass. I’d been smoking weed every day that summer,” he added, according to excerpts of his book published on People.com. “Panic set in.”
Odom said he turned to the Internet to come up with a solution.
“We started googling ‘fake penises’ and studied different ways to beat a drug test,” he wrote, before ordering a prosthetic penis online.
Odom said he used urine supplied by his drug-free trainer to pass the test when a doping control officer arrived at his house. The drug-tester watched from a few feet away as Odom produced a fake urine sample.
“He stuck a thermometer in the cup to gauge the temperature … satisfied that the pee was mine, and said ‘Welcome to Team USA,'” Odom writes in the book.
The US basketball team would go on to suffer disappointment at the Olympics, finishing with a bronze medal.
The 39-year-old Odom, a member two NBA finals-winning Lakers teams in 2010 and 2011, suffered a life-threatening breakdown in 2015 when he was discovered unconscious at a brothel in Nevada, according to a Rappler report citing AFP..
He had suffered kidney failure and multiple heart attacks and strokes and was in a coma before later recovering consciousness.
Odom says in the book that he is still struggling with addiction.
“I’m still an addict,” he said. “I still struggle … (But) I will not go into the darkness. Ever again.”
