The iconic rapper took to social media to celebrate his sober milestone.
Hip-hop superstar Eminem marked a milestone of sobriety on Instagram with an image of a medallion and the tag “11 years-still not afraid.”
The rap veteran has spoken in depth about his struggle with and recovery from a dependency on prescription medications, which he described in 2013 as “dark times… mostly due to taking a lot of pills and f—king drooling on myself.”
Since then, he has rebounded both personally and professionally, as evidenced by the reception for his most recent album, 2018’s Kamikaze, achieving the highest U.S. sales for a hip-hop album and ninth best-selling album globally for that year.
Eminem told Rolling Stone in 2011 that his dependencies on Vicodin, Ambien and Xanax began while he was filming the semi-autobiographical, Oscar-winning 8 Mile in 2002.
“We were doing 16 hours on the set, and you had a certain window where you had to sleep,” he recalled. Ambien “knocked [him] the f—k out,” which led to a prescription and constant use combined with the opioid painkiller Vicodin.
“I was taking so many pills that I wasn’t even taking them to get high anymore,” he told Rolling Stone. “I was taking them to feel normal. I want to say that in a day I could consume anywhere from 40 to 60 Valium. And Vicodin… maybe 20, 30?”
In 2007, Eminem tried methadone, which he was told was “just like Vicodin, and they’re easier on your liver.” He soon began consuming large quantities of that drug as well. “My doctor told me the amount of methadone I’d taken was equivalent to shooting up four bags of heroin,” he told People in 2009.
In late December of that year, Eminem suffered a catastrophic overdose that left him unconscious for two days.
But after only a week in the hospital, Eminem returned home, where weakness and exhaustion led to a torn meniscus, which in turn led to a relapse, seizure and a return to the hospital. “That’s when I knew,” he recalled. “I could either get help, or I am going to die.”
With the aid of a rehab counselor, a rigid exercise schedule and the support of friends and fellow addicts like Elton John, whom Eminem described as “like my sponsor,” he gained sobriety and in 2018, celebrated a decade of clean and sober living.
The experience has given Eminem perspective on the addictions that have run throughout his family – his ex-wife, Kim Mathers, was involved in a 2015 DUI, and her sister, Dawn Marie Scott, succumbed to a heroin overdose in 2016 – and his career, which remains both prolific and successful.
“Rap was my drug,” he told People. “It used to get me high, and then it stopped getting me high. Then I had to resort to other things to make me feel that… now rap’s getting me high again.”
