Eminem is back on the music scene - his new album Relapse hits stores May 19 - and he's been clean and sober for a year after battling a devastating drug addiction. He said, "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."
Speaking to VIBE magazine, in its second annual Real Rap Issue for June/July, the rap star admits to taking as many as 20 Vicodin, Ambien and Valium a day. Here are some highlights via PEOPLE:
"The numbers got so high, I don't even know what I was taking."
Following his first stint in rehab in 2005, the rapper, 36, tells VIBE he nearly overdosed after an acquaintance gave him unidentified blue pills, which a doctor later told him were actually methadone. "My doctor told me the amount of methadone I'd taken was equivalent to shooting up four bags of heroin," Eminem says, noting that had he known, "I probably wouldn't have taken it. But as bad as I was back then, I can't even say 100 percent for sure."
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." With his pill addiction spiraling out of control again, Eminem suffered his second relapse before accepting he suffered from drug addiction.
With his new album, Relapse, due out May 19, Eminem says he has been sober for a year and is ready to return to the spotlight. "I'm back," he says. "Rap was my drug. 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."
Although I'm not a fan of his music per se, it's nice to see Eminem turning his life around, particularly because his daughter Hailie, 13, is heading into those difficult teen years. She needs a strong role model in her father (and her mom, too) to help her get through the challenges and peer pressure she will face.
[Source]
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