Eminem Admitted It Took His Brain ‘A Long Time’ to Recover After His 2007 Overdose
Grammy-winning rapper Eminem has been open about his battle with substance abuse over the years, which culminated in a near-fatal overdose in 2007. After his brush with death, it took a while for Eminem to get back on his feet, and there was a point where some weren’t sure if he’d ever be able to recover fully.
Eminem suffered a methadone overdose in 2007
In the early 2000s, Eminem was at the top of his game. But at the same time, his long days of work led him to develop an addiction to prescription drugs, including Ambien, Vicodin, and Valium.
In 2007, Eminem consumed the equivalent of four bags of heroin in the form of methadone, and was rushed to the hospital. He was just a few hours away from death.
He spoke about his road to recovery in a 2010 interview with HLN. “It took me a while to actually admit that I had a problem,” the rapper said. “In the hip-hop world we live in, I think that it could be mistaken for weakness, and the last thing you want to do in hip-hop is admit that you’re weak. But if I didn’t admit that I was weak with this sort of thing, I was going to die.”
“I certainly [was] probably a couple hours away from death,” he continued. “Not to make this too tense of a moment but yeah, I overdosed and almost died.”
“I had to admit that I had a problem. I had to be ready for myself. I had to be ready for me. I don’t mean to make it sound cliché, but you have to do it for yourself; you can’t do it for other people,” he added.
It took Eminem’s brain ‘a long time’ to recover from his overdose
With the hindsight he has today, Eminem has been able to take a much more sober (no pun intended) look at that difficult time in his life. In a 2022 interview on the Paul Pod podcast, Eminem explained to longtime record executive Paul Rosenberg about what his recovery from his overdose was like.
“It took a long time for my brain to start working again,” Eminem admitted.
He then asked Rosenberg about how he was involved in Eminem’s return to music at the time. “Didn’t you ask the doctors when I first started rapping again and sent it to you, didn’t you say, ‘I just wanna make sure he doesn’t have brain damage’?” he asked. Rosenberg confirmed that he was worried about Em’s health.
He’s 14 years sober today
Eminem celebrated 14 years of sobriety in 2022, and for him, he’s never looked back.
“I remember when it first got sober and all the s*** was out of my system I remember being really happy. Everything was like f***ing new to me again,” Em said of that time.
He recorded his smash comeback album Relapse, which helped him back into the music world. “It [Relapse] was the first album and the first time that I had had fun recording in a long time,” he said. He admitted that he had to re-learn how to rap to make the album happen.
How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.
