Eminem is opening up about a painful chapter in his life and how it led to a powerful turning point.
In the newly released documentary Stans, the rapper gives a raw look at his battle with prescription pill addiction, a struggle that nearly cost him everything.
Reflecting on his dependency, which began in the late ’90s and stretched into the 2000s, Eminem shared how it spiraled, as per E! News.
“I got into this vicious cycle of, ‘I’m depressed so I need more pills,’” he said.
“Then your tolerance gets so high that you end up overdosing. I woke up in the hospital and I didn’t know what happened. I woke up in the hospital with tubes in me and s–t and I couldn’t get up, I wanted to move.”
The now 52-year-old, whose real name is Marshall Mathers, said that even after the overdose scare, the cravings didn’t just disappear. “I felt like I needed something,” he recalled. “Like I was gonna die if I didn’t get it.”
But what really shook him was missing a moment that mattered deeply, his daughter Hailie Jade’s birthday party.
“I cried because it was like, ‘Oh my god, I missed that,’” he said.
“I kept saying to myself, ‘Do you want to f–king miss this again? Do you want to miss everything? If you can’t do it for yourself, you f–king p—y, at least do it for them.’” That moment became a line in the sand. “I realized I’m never doing this again.”
Getting sober was not easy. Eminem revealed that at the start of his recovery, he had to “relearn how to walk, talk and for the most part had to relearn how to rap again.”
He admitted, “My writing had gotten terrible.” But slowly, things started clicking again.
“When I started to get it back, it was exciting. Because I felt it. It would be conversations, just having conversations with people or the TV,” he said. “It was hitting me really fast and I was writing songs really quickly.”
Working on his 2009 album Relapse gave him a sense of clarity and confidence. It became a creative outlet for everything he was going through and a celebration of his progress.
“It did something. It turned the light on,” he shared. “I realized I’m not embarrassed anymore about [sobriety]. I started treating sobriety like a superpower and I took pride in the fact that I was able to quit.”
Now sober for 17 years, Eminem stands as a reminder that even in the darkest times, change is possible, and healing, no matter how hard-earned, can be the most powerful victory of all.