In Memoriam: Adam Harrison of ‘Pawn Stars’ legacy
Adam Harrison, son of ‘Pawn Stars’ Rick Harrison, has passed away at 39 from a suspected drug overdose.
Rick Harrison is opening up about grief more than a year after his son’s death.
In an interview with Graham Bensinger released Wednesday, the “Pawn Stars” creator, 59, reflected on the loss of his son Adam, who died in January 2024 from a drug overdose. He was 39.
“I think about him every day,” Harrison shared. “In his 20s, he had the drug problems, and I put him in rehab so many times. Every time, he’d be doing great, and then it would fall back. You hear the same story from a million people. It got really, really bad, and apparently, it wasn’t heroin. He ended up getting some fentanyl that killed him.”
Harrison added that “when you lose a kid, you second guess” everything.
“Could I have done something different?” he asked. “I think I did everything right, but you just sit in your head (thinking), ‘What if I did this? What if I did this?’ … You have a hundred things go through your mind. There is nothing worse than losing a kid.”
Adam Harrison was pronounced dead after he was found unresponsive in the Las Vegas guest house he was living in, according to a police report by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department obtained by USA TODAY. A representative for the family told USA TODAY that Harrison died of a fentanyl overdose.
“The fentanyl crisis in this country must be taken more seriously,” Rick Harrison told TMZ last year.
All the news from Hollywood: Sign up for USA TODAY’s Entertainment newsletter.
The cause of death was later confirmed to be fentanyl and methamphetamine toxicity. The Clark County Office of the Coroner/Medical Examiner said the manner of death was accidental.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, overdoses involving fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, have “risen sharply” in the past decade. In 2022, the rate of overdose deaths that involved synthetic opioids was almost 24 times the rate in 2013, the agency said.
Harrison told Bensinger that as the parent of a child struggling with drug addiction, “you try to give them tough love,” but “you never see the OD coming.”
“I never thought that would happen,” he said.
Harrison added that he gets through the grief by thinking “about the good times” and spending time with his other children and grandkids. He also said that his son’s death taught him to “appreciate what you’ve got, because you’re not always going to have it.”
In a 2024 tribute on Instagram announcing his son’s death, Harrison wrote, “You will always be in my heart! I love you Adam.” Adam’s older brother Corey Harrison also wrote at the time, “I will always love you bubba.”
Contributing: Ahjané Forbes and KiMi Robinson
Leave a Reply