Karamo Brown Reveals His Son Overdosed on Drugs

Karamo Brown has spoken out about his son’s drug overdose for the first time. The host of Karamo reveals in an exclusive clip from Thursday’s episode that he found his son Jason overdosing two years ago. “Today, I’m going to be very vulnerable with you all,” Brown, 41, says in the video. “It’s something that I’ve never talked about publicly.” Brown continues, “Almost two years ago, I found my oldest son Jason, lying on the floor, dying from a drug overdose. And I was terrified. I was about to lose my son. I didn’t know what to do. I was in shock.” Turning to the cameras, he says, “For anybody else who’s out there that’s going through this stuff, there are people out there that want to help you.” Jason, 25, sits down with Brown before the clip ends. “What do you remember about that day?” Brown asks his son. 

Oct. 27’s preview teased the father and son discussing Jason’s drug use, what he remembers from that day, and how he is doing today. The Queer Eye host has always been open about having two sons, Jason and his half-brother, Chris, whom Karamo adopted in 2011, even though he didn’t discover he had a kid until he got a subpoena for child support of Jason at the age of 10. “I came out at 16 years old as a proud, gay man. My last girlfriend in high school — when I was 15 — became pregnant with my child but did not tell me,” Brown told Parents in 2018. “She moved away, and I never had contact with her again; remember this is before social media.” Despite having a non-traditional path to parenthood, he doesn’t regret it. “The adjustment process was challenging at times. New house means new rules and expectations not just for the children but for me — the parent — as well,” Brown explained. “Navigating each other’s expectations, the move-in, diet, friends, school, and homework can be overwhelming.” He added, “Take it one day at a time, never lose your cool and do just as much listening as you do talking.”

Brown and Jason wrote and published a children’s book titled I Am Perfectly Designed in 2019. The project gave the pair a unique opportunity to bond, according to The Advocate. “I think for me, first off, [the book’s title, I Am Perfectly Designed] was something my dad has always told me since I was younger,” Jason said in a Nov. 2019 interview. “It’s like a mantra at this point for me — it’s something I just live by, and it kind of made sense. Whenever he’d asked me if I wanted to write a book, I had the perfect idea for it… I was like, ‘Dad, we should literally do the lesson you’ve always taught me, which is that I’m perfectly designed.’ And we formatted it as a kid’s book, and it came out phenomenally.”

Even though I Am Perfectly Designed has an uplifting message, Jason admits he was reluctant to tell his dad he identified as pansexual when he was 21. “We have such a good connection of communication and I never hide anything from my dad, so when he heard this — and he was not the first person to hear this — I could sense that it kind of hurt him,” Jason explained, “and that’s why it transferred to a little bit of frustration.” In the end, Karamo called Jason and told him he loved him after he’d processed the information. Karamo began educating himself immediately after discovering his son was pansexual. “I didn’t know what that meant for him,” Karamo shared. “I felt betrayed by him lying to me and I had to go on this journey quickly, really quickly, to educate myself and then to remember this is his journey. He can let me into his life when he wanted, and I had to do all the steps that I teach parents in a quick span so that I could then be there to support him and show him love and acceptance.”