Rick Harrison of “Pawn Stars” fame is still picking up the pieces after losing his son, Adam — and no, time hasn’t healed everything. A year after Adam’s death, the reality TV veteran admits life hasn’t been the same since.
In January 2025, news broke that Adam had died at 39 years old. Harrison later confirmed the cause, saying in a statement, “Yes, I can confirm Adam died from a fentanyl overdose,” and issued a powerful call to action that addressed the national crisis and slammed the lack of urgency. “The fentanyl crisis in this country must be taken more seriously,” he added. “It seems it is just flowing over the borders and nothing is being done about it. We must do better.” At the time, he also lamented the effect of the drug on his son, saying it ruined his life. “Fentanyl turned my son into someone he wasn’t and that brought with it bad decisions and spending time in jail,” he said in another statement.
Even with all that grief, life hasn’t slowed down for Harrison. He is still running his iconic Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Vegas, still shaking hands, signing autographs, and in March 2025, he even dropped some major personal news — he’s engaged to girlfriend Angie Polushkin. But before anyone jumps to conclusions about him moving on, Harrison made it clear that he hasn’t. The loss of Adam still stings to this day, and he’s not pretending otherwise. A year later, he admits that it still weighs heavily on him, casting a long shadow over his everyday life.
Rick said he is now ‘second guessing’ everything
Over a year after the heartbreaking death of his son Adam, “Pawn Stars” frontman Rick Harrison is finally speaking out — and the grief is still raw. In an emotional sit-down on “In Depth with Graham Bensinger,” Harrison admitted he’s been mourning every single day and revealed just how hard he fought to save Adam from addiction.
“I think about him every day,” he said. “In his twenties, he had drug problems. I mean, God, I put him in rehab so many times, and every time he’d be doing great, and then he would just fall back. I mean, you’ve heard the same story from a million people, and it got really, really bad, and apparently, it wasn’t heroin he got — he ended up getting some fentanyl. It killed him.” Despite years of effort, Harrison can’t shake the guilt. “When you lose a kid, you second-guess f***ing everything. It’s like, ‘Could I have done this?’ … And it’s like it goes through your brain constantly. There’s not a day I don’t [think] about him,” he explained. “I think I did everything right. [But] you just sit in your head, ‘What if I did this?'”
Still, if there’s a lesson in the pain, it’s this: treasure what you have. Harrison now makes an extra effort to spend quality time with his other sons, Jake and Corey, and his four grandkids “[You have to] appreciate what you got, because it’s not you’re not always going to have it,” he said. “I spend as much time with my kids as I can. I talk to all my kids on the phone almost every day. I love my kids, love my grandkids. You enjoy life … It’s really it’s not that hard to be happy.”
