14 DAY TRIAL // “Relapse,” Eminem’s comeback album, is just around the corner, being set to drop in music stores on May 19. As is customary with the rapper, this material too was inspired from his real life, so fans shouldn’t be too surprised that Em is now doing the media rounds talking his past drug and pills addiction, as is the case with the latest issue of Vibe magazine, MTV News points out.
While this is not the first time that Eminem opens up about his troubled past, the Vibe interview does mark a first in terms of admitting how completely lost he was – and how close to even losing his life to his addiction. Moreover, in the same interview, the rapper reveals that it’s just now that he can understand his mother, with whom he often engaged in public feuds via the media, and how addiction indeed runs in his family.
“It’s no secret I had a drug problem. If I was to give you a number of Vicodin I would actually take in a day? Anywhere between 10 to 20. Valium, Ambien, the numbers got so high I don’t even know what I was taking. 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. 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.” the rapper says for Vibe, as quoted by MTV.
Once he admitted he had a problem, the slow journey to recovery began, according to Eminem. At the same time, he started to learn to love making music again and, in time, he rediscovered the pleasure he felt when he launched his career of laying down a track or shooting a video without being under the influence. Now, he says, he’s set to show the world that he’s back and means serious business – for good this time.
“I wanted to make an overall statement – I’m back. It was a slow process. […] I almost feel like a little kid again with rap. I wanna play around with different flows. If I don’t feel like it’s what I’m fully capable of, if there’s one weak line, I wanna change it. 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.” Eminem concludes by saying.