Eminem has sold an eye-watering 172,000,000 albums worldwide but today he shared an even more impressive milestone – ten years sober and clean from drug and alcohol addiction.
45-year-old Marshall Mathers III shot to incredible worldwide fame in the early 2000s but he’d already struggled with substance abuse problems while battling to make it as an artist.
Those struggles overpowered him and spiralled to dangerous depths before he made the decision to completely quit drugs and alcohol ten years ago.
Ten years clean is an incredible achievement and rightly his Instagram post has already gathered over one million loves:
His rise to fame was partly fuelled by lyrics that leaned heavily on drug use. So the decision to turn his back on that lifestyle was a big step.
One notable and incredibly catchy example of Eminem’s glorification of drug use is D-12’s Purple Pills that was released 17-years ago in 2001:
Speaking to The Fix, Eminem revealed that at his lowest point drug addiction left him hours from death.
He explained that he was rushed to hospital after an overdose:
Had I got to the hospital about two hours later, I would have died. My organs were shutting down.
My liver, kidneys, everything. They didn’t think I was gonna make it. My bottom was gonna be death.
He told The Fix that he got hooked on Vicodin pills but at the height of his addiction he was taking up to 20 pills a day: ‘Xanax, Valium, tomato, tomatoe, it’s same thing… take it.’
His near-fatal overdose prompted him to get clean, but he relapsed after a month. Relapsing is a common problem when battling addiction. But Eminem’s story proves you can relapse and still eventually be strong enough to reach ten years clean.
His second attempt to get clean started absolutely brutally:
A detox kept him up all night for three weeks ‘not sleeping, not even nodding off for a minute’
Surviving that experience without relapsing again shows an incredible amount of inner strength and determination.
It also shows that no matter how rich or successful you become, Eminem’s net worth is $190 million, addiction can still take hold of your life. And getting clean is the same brutal process for anyone no matter where they’re from.
The battle is worth it though, as his story proves to us all.
In his own words:
I couldn’t believe that anybody could be naturally happy without being on something. So I would say to anybody ‘It does get better.’
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction then the first step to recovery can be to seek help, NHS choices has lots of free advice about addiction.
