‘Queer Eye’ expert Karamo Brown on suicide attempt: ‘I just felt alone and lost’

Every little thing was going nice at Karamo Brown’s swanky pre-Emmy Awards soiree till a buddy busted out the cocaine. As Brown recounts in “Karamo: My Story of Embracing Goal, Therapeutic and Hope” (Gallery Books), the “Queer Eye” tradition expert and life coach had spent his late 20s battling a disastrous coke habit, which he overcame. Even so, staring down the white powder in a lavish, Ritz-Carlton suite, the 38-year-old admits that he thought of just snorting it. “I used to be considering . . . perhaps!” Brown tells The Put up. “It is a get together surroundings, folks received’t know. It’s been years!” Fortunately, he managed to withstand temptation. Brown requested his buddy to go away, and hid within the toilet to gather himself. He finds that taking a couple of minutes alone may help him deal with disturbing moments like these — moments that inevitably spring up in Hollywood. “Once you’re thrust right into a world . . . of press, of fame, of not being round your loved ones, it may be troublesome,” he says. It’s a hard-earned lesson, and one which dates again to Brown’s first stint within the highlight: In 2004, when he was 22, Brown was solid on MTV’s “The Actual World: Philadelphia.” “I used to be like, ‘OK, I’ll go and have a great time, perhaps ruffle a couple of feathers,’ ” he says. However then, because the present began filming, “it turned darkish actually rapidly.” Brown felt uncovered residing life below the lens, and compensated by getting confrontational along with his solid mates. In a single now-infamous scene, he made a joke about slitting a fellow roommate’s throat in the event that they ever discovered themselves collectively on a desert island. His habits earned him the “horrible” nickname Loopy Karamo, which adopted him for years after the present aired. Karamo Brown (left) joins different “The Actual World” franchise alumni Janelle Casanave, Tonya Cooley and Zach Mann at a reunion occasion in LA in 2008.Katherine Christine/WENN Though he majored in enterprise and did peer counseling in faculty at Florida A&M College, Brown says his time on “The Actual World” damage his probabilities of getting a daily job. And so he did membership appearances — partying with drunk faculty college students for $10,000 a pop — and developed a brand new, nasty drug behavior to gasoline his life-style. “Cocaine made me really feel extra on high of issues, as a result of I’ve a Sort A character, I’m like go-go-go,” says Brown. “However it was really making me extra depressed, extra alone, extra damage and extra ashamed.” Brown says the trauma of rising up with an abusive, alcoholic father was catching up with him. At his worst, he writes, he was utilizing continuously, getting violent along with his boyfriends and disrespecting his beloved mom. As soon as, he even tried suicide. “I just felt alone and misplaced,” he says. “I believe I might have saved going till it was ‘Karamo, lifeless at 26, former ‘Actual World’ star.’ ” However then, at 25 years outdated, Brown was shocked out of his downward spiral: He discovered that he had a 10-year-old son, Jason, from a high-school fling. She moved away quickly after they slept collectively, he got here out as homosexual and they fell out of contact. ‘I believe I might have saved going till it was ‘Karamo, lifeless at 26, former ‘Actual World’ star.’ ‘ Reeling from the information, Brown did medicine within the airport toilet at LAX earlier than boarding a flight to Texas to fulfill Jason. However the Houston native says that assembly his son had a profound impact. “That’s after I began to understand I’ve to be higher not just for myself, however for him.” Brown bought clear from medicine that very same 12 months — although he nonetheless has an occasional glass of wine or a beer — and took full custody of Jason, now 22, together with adopting his half-brother Christian, 18, in 2010. Although he misses them and fiancé Ian Jordan when he’s on the street with the Fab 5, he’s in a significantly better place now to deal with that stress. “I’ve a wealth of individuals now, counselors that I work with and my very own therapist that I speak to,” he says. “I’ve discovered what to do after I’m feeling stress and nervousness . . . I just make sure that I sort out it head-on.” Karamo Brown might be signing copies of his ebook at Barnes & Noble Union Sq., 33 E. 17th St., on Tues., March 5 at 7 p.m. Share this: https://nypost.com/2019/02/28/queer-eye-expert-karamo-brown-on-suicide-attempt-i-just-felt-alone-and-lost/ The post ‘Queer Eye’ expert Karamo Brown on suicide attempt: ‘I just felt alone and lost’ appeared first on My style by Kartia.