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He has been sober for 17 years, but there was a point in his life when Eminem was so addicted to prescription drugs that he thought he was “gonna die.” The legendary rapper made this admission and much, much more in a just-released documentary Stans.
In the documentary, Eminem discusses how his addiction to pills like Vicodin, Valium, Ambien and Xanax began in the late 1990s and grew until a health scare occurred in 2008, causing him to make some serious life changes.
“I got into this vicious cycle of, ‘I’m depressed so I need more pills,’” Eminem said in the documentary, reports Us Weekly. “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— and I couldn’t get up, I wanted to move. After the overdose, I came home like I needed something … like, I’m gonna die if I don’t do anything.”
He says his addiction caused him to miss his daughter Hailie’s birthday. “I cried because it was like, ‘Oh my god, I missed that.’ I kept saying to myself, ‘Do you want to f—— miss this again? Do you want to miss everything? If you can’t do it for yourself, you f—— p—-, at least do it for them.’ I realized I’m never doing this again.”
Things had gotten so bad at that point that he says he had to “relearn how to walk, talk and for the most part had to relearn how to rap again.”
Dealing with “stans”
Eminem also spent time talking about his relationship with his fans, some of which go a little overboard at times. He remembered visiting a mall early in his rap career with his daughter when he realized his life had changed.
“I’m walking fast and faster they’re walking faster and faster and I feel like I’m being chased out the f—— mall,” he said. “And that was one of the points I thought my life really has changed, I can’t do this anymore, I gotta protect my baby. So that was a scary moment. Scary for her too. She doesn’t remember, she was too little to remember it, but I remember it and it was f—— crazy.”
So, while he still has to deal with the occasional overzealous fanatic, Eminem says he does appreciate all of his “stans.”
“They see some of themselves in me … For every young person who gets older and wants to pay the world back, that’s the person who connects with me most,” he said. “Because they understand me, and I understand them. I get them because they are really me.”
“Released in 2000, Eminem’s song ‘Stan’ — about an obsessive, unstable fan — remains iconic,” reads the synopsis of the film. “So iconic that the term stan was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017. In the song, the titular character handwrites a series of emotional letters to Eminem, repeating the line: I’m just like you. That refrain serves as a guiding light for this unconventional and fully authorized feature, which follows a highly curated cast of real-life stans whose deep personal connections to Eminem mirror some of the themes found throughout his lyrics. More than just an exploration of fandom, the film examines the complicated relationship between one of the world’s most private artists and his massive public persona. Through stylized recreations, rare archival footage, intimate interviews, and an exclusive original interview with Eminem himself, it offers a raw, loud, and revealing journey across his career — and the passionate audience that has grown with him.”
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