Apr 22, 2020 | By Tim Stoddart
Eminem Celebrates 12 Years Sober
Sober Celebrities
Eminem is celebrating 12 years of sobriety!
The iconic rapper took to Instagram on Tuesday to highlight the milestone.
The 47-year-old shared a photo of his 12-year medallion, writing, “Clean Dozen, in the books! I’m not afraid.”
“I Was Just Taking Anything”
Eminem, who’s real name is Marshall Mathers, has been public about his battle with addiction.
The Detroit rapper ended a multiple year addiction to prescription pills and Vicodin on April 20, 2008 also following a near-death experience from a methadone overdose in 2007.
“I used to get pills wherever I could,” he told The New York Times in 2010. “I was just taking anything that anybody was giving to me.” Eminem reported he was taking up to 20 pills per day.
At the time, the rapper went to a drug rehab but admitted he felt more overwhelmed than anything. “I felt like Bugs Bunny in rehab,” he recalled. “When Bugs Bunny walks into rehab, people are going to turn and look. People at rehab were stealing my hats and pens and notebooks and asking for autographs. I couldn’t concentrate on my problem.”
Instead, Mathers was able to work with a recovery coach and counselor on a one-on-one basis whom he still works with once per week.
“Getting Clean Made Me Grow Up”
In 2011, he opened up to GQ about what he learned from his journey to sobriety.
“The thing sobriety has taught me the most is the way I’m wired – why my thought process is so different…I’ve realized that the way I am helps with the music. Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I’ll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I’ve written a whole song in an hour. But sometimes it sucks, and I wish I was wired link a regular person and could go have a f–kin’ drink. But that’s the biggest thing about addiction: When you realize that you cannot – for f–k’s sake, you can not f–k around with nothing ever again. I never understood when people would say it’s a disease. Like, ‘Stop it, d–khead. It’s not a disease!’ But I finally realized, F–k, man – it really is.”
The rapper also received encouragement from a fellow musician and sober friend, Elton John, in an interview they did together in 2017 for Interview Magazine.
“Your sobriety day is in my diary,” Elton John told him. “I’m so proud of you. I’m 27 years clean, and when you get clean, you see things in a different way. It makes your life so much more manageable. It seems to have made all the difference—I can tell when I speak to you.”
“Getting clean made me grow up,” Eminem replied. “I feel like all the years that I was using, I wasn’t growing as a person.”
After a five-year hiatus at the peak of his career, he released the album, Relapse, which was his first attempt at recording after getting clean. In 2010, he took another step by releasing the companion album, Recovery.
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