In the News: Eminem Opens Up About Drug Addiction

“My name is Marshall, and I’m an addict.”

In the Matthew Cooke directed documentary How To Make Money Selling Drugs, the “Lose Yourself” rapper reveals how caught up he got into an addiction that nearly cost him his life.

“When I took my first Vicodin, it was like this feeling of ‘ahh.’ Like everything was not only mellow, but didn’t feel any pain,” Eminem revealed. “It just kind of numbed things…People tried to tell me that I had a problem. I would say, ‘Get that f***kin’ person outta here. I can’t believe they said that sh** to me.’ They knew nothing about my f***kin’ life. Are they out of their f***in’ mind? I’m not out there shooting heroin. I’m not f***ing out there putting coke up my nose. I’m not smoking crack.”

Eventually, drug use spiraled out of control, and he overdosed.

“Had I have got to the hospital about two hours later, I would have died,” admits the rapper. “My organs were shutting down. My liver, kidneys, everything. They were gonna have to put me on dialysis. They didn’t think I was gonna make it. My bottom was gonna be death.”

Eminem’s Addiction

Most people know, from listening to his music, that Eminem suffered from a drug addiction and is now in recovery. We heard bits and pieces of it in his albums Relapse and the one following that, Recovery.

Eminem has rarely spoken about his addiction to prescription drugs, including Vicodin, Ambien, and Valium,  over the years. His group-mate Proof from D12 stated that Mathers “sobered up” in 2002 from drug and alcohol dependence. However, he did turn to Ambien sleeping pills for relief from sleeping troubles. This caused Mathers to cancel the European leg of the Anger Management Tour in August 2005 and eventually go into rehab for treatment for a “dependency on sleep medication”.

In a 2009 interview with British talk-show host Jonathan Ross, Mathers admitted that at the height of his addiction, he considered suicide, saying that, “I just wasn’t taking care of myself, at times I wanted to just give it up.”

He also confirmed that he is now sober, commenting that, “Rap was my drug … Then I had to resort to other things to make me feel that. Now rap’s getting me high again.”

Back in 2009 Eminem began opening up about his addiction to Vicodin. He started by talking about his first stay in rehab in 2005 and how shortly afterwards he overdosed on unidentified blue pills which his doctor later told him were methadone.

Shortly after detoxing, he suffered a knee injury that required surgery, but because of his drug abuse, he was not prescribed pain killers. “I started looking around my house to see if I had a stash box of Vicodin … I’m ransacking my house, finally find something in the basement, in a little napkin, seven and a half Vicodin – the big extra strength ones – and a few Valium.”

Relapse and Recovery

With his pill addiction spiraling out of control again, Eminem suffered his second relapse before accepting he was an addict.

But once he did things really started looking up from there. Eminem even managed to find out that drug addiction runs in his family and could finally understand why his mother was the way she was. “It never once hit me that drug addiction runs in my family. Now that I understand that I’m an addict, I definitely have compassion for my mother. I get it,” he says.

This was all shortly before his album Relapse was released. And at that time which was May, 2009 Eminem had said he had a year sober and was back. Well since then he has released the album we all know entitled Recovery and would have over 4 years clean.

“How To Make Money Selling Drugs” is now playing in select theaters.  The compelling documentary features interviews with Woody Harrelson, The Wire producer David Simon, Arianna Huffington, 50 Cent, and Russell Simmons.

If you or someone you love needs treatment for drug addiction, please give us a call at 800-951-6135.

Sources:

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20276424,00.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminem#Drug_issues