Eminem Leans on Old Habits for ‘The Death of Slim Shady’: Album Review

„And when I say we had the motherlode. Our pants were frickin’ stuffed with pills. I don’t know how many we had.” In an appearance on the new episode of Paul Rosenberg’s Paul Pod podcast Thursday, Eminem, 49, and Rosenberg, his longtime manager, recalled the rapper’s recovery from the overdose, which the pair agreed he almost did not survive. It took a near-death experience for Eminem to finally realize that he needed help with his drug addiction that, at one point, had him taking 75 to 80 Valium a night.

Eminem talks addiction, says ‘The bigger the crowd, the bigger my habit got’

As with many people, early external chaos can become internalized. In his adult life, he’s been addicted to a pharmacy of drugs, and he’s struggled with depression and anger. Such internal chaos tends to initiate vicious cycles of dysfunction. Predictably, Eminem’s later life has been littered with conflict and controversy. Raised as an only child by an impoverished mother, within a broken household (paternal abandonment), his early life was a tumultuous experience. Nomadic home life, the suicide of a close uncle and failing grades propelled Eminem toward becoming a disconnected, embittered high school drop-out.

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„I have always been transparent about my journey with addiction,” she wrote on Instagram two weeks later. The Fight Club star spent years struggling with alcohol before Cooper helped him get sober. „I got sober because of this guy,” he told the audience at the 2020 National Board of Review Annual Awards after Cooper presented him with a trophy. „It was only until I saw myself https://rehabliving.net/how-honest-can-demi-lovato-be-the-new-york-times/ after that I was like, ‘All right, I need to fix myself,'” he recalled in June 2021 when  he said he was more than one month sober at the time. „It was like a few pictures of me on a boat and I’m all, like, bloated out, and I call it pills-and-booze face….My face was just like 10 times more than it is now. And I just didn’t like myself very much, so then I made a change.”

Eminem’s latest album becomes his 11th number one

Back in 2022, Eminem opened up about his past addiction and eventual recovery in an essay published by XXL. According to the „Lose Yourself” rapper, he started taking pills following the release of 1999’s The Slim Shady LP. Five years later, things took a turn for the worse after Em dropped another No. 1 album, 2002’s The Eminem Show, and had begun working on what would become 2004’s Encore. “I don’t know at what point exactly it started to be a problem. I just remember liking it more and more,” Eminem says of his addiction to prescription medications in a clip from the documentary How to Make Money Selling Drugs.

Crediting Arnett as „the reason” he went sober, Cooper added, „He took that risk of having a hard conversation with me that put me on a path of deciding to change my life.” She eventually sought help and noted that „it took some time to get on my own two feet.” Since making the lifestyle change, Holland noticed he „could sleep better” and „handle problems better.” „And then you would just reach that moment where you’re like ‘Wow, I shouldn’t have had that last beer,'” the actor continued. „And you wake up the next day and you have a terrible headache.”

„Unless I was dead, I better show up,” she quipped, adding that she was given „a chance to redirect the course of my life before I destroyed everything.” While accepting the 2018 Woman of the Year Award by the Peggy Albrecht Friendly House, a residential program for women recovering from substance and alcohol abuse, Moore spoke about the „self-destructive path” that nearly derailed her career. „My personal experience with it is that everything is better,” she continued. „And it just felt so extreme to have to say, ‘But none?’ But none. If you’re allergic to something or have an anaphylactic reaction to something, you don’t argue with it. So I stopped arguing with it.”

1. It appears to have been written from the rapper’s perspective if he had died at this time, referencing all of the important things in his family’s life that he would have missed.
2. „I have always been transparent about my journey with addiction,” she wrote on Instagram two weeks later.
3. „I don’t know how many times we did it, but it was so easy to go back and forth to do it,” he said.
4. The two began a relationship that would become legendary in the world of hip-hop.

Eminem opened up about his accidental overdose to The New York Times in 2011, and said his addiction was at one point so bad that he was taking up to 20 pills a day. He has since replaced „addiction https://rehabliving.net/ with exercise,” he told Men’s Journal in 2015. „That was the first time I ever realized I had a problem with drugs and alcohol⁠,” Cooper recalled during a 2022 appearance on the Smartless podcast.

„It gave me a natural endorphin high, but it also helped me sleep, so it was perfect,” Eminem told the magazine. „It’s easy to understand how people replace addiction with exercise.” A near-death experience from an accidental methadone overdose back in 2007 ultimately led Eminem to get sober for good. Eminem soon relapsed, but eventually did manage to kick the addiction. His harrowing revelations form just one small piece of director Matthew Cooke’s wide-ranging documentary on the drug trade and its participants. The film, which was co-produced by Entourage‘s Adrian Grenier and also features interviews with 50 Cent, Woody Harrelson, Freeway Rick Ross, and The Wire‘s David Simon, opened in theaters this week.

Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers, was addicted to prescription medication and nearly died of an accidental methadone overdose in 2007. Rosenberg confirmed that at the time he was concerned about whether Eminem would have „permanent problems” as he recovered. The pair cited an unreleased song called „Detroit Basketball” that leaked at the time as an example of the kind of work Eminem produced immediately after his recovery that created some cause for concern. „I remember when I first got sober and all the s— was out of my system, I remember just being, like, really happy and everything was f—g new to me again,” he said about making the album. „It was the first album and the first time that I had fun recording in a long time.” „I got to the point where I knew it was something I couldn’t do on my own,” Gilbert said.

„I literally couldn’t walk for two days when that happened and eventually my drug use f–kin’ skyrocketed,” Eminem recalled. „I had f–kin’ 10 drug dealers at one time that I’m getting my s–t from. Seventy-five to 80 Valiums a night, which is a lot. I don’t know how the f–k I’m still here.” But, despite his overwhelmingly successful career, Eminem — like many artists before him — fell into the trappings of drug addiction. In 2013, he told MTV his addiction was probably at its worst some eight years prior, in 2005. That’s when he says he started mixing pills — eventually landing himself in the hospital.

Upon receiving his first Emmy Award last week for his appearance at the Super Bowl halftime show, he became just a Tony Award win away from the prestigious EGOT status. „There might be [enough songs] but they’re terrible songs,” he added, clarifying there is no second Relapse project. „If they didn’t even make the album on Relapse and I feel how I feel about Relapse, then that should tell you something.” „I mean, there’s probably enough to make another Relapse 2,” Eminem said.

After the sudden death of Mac Miller, the rapper—born Shad Moss—took to Twitter to let his fans know that he’d once struggled with a cough syrup addiction. „To the youth- Stop with these dumb ass drugs,” he began his series of tweets. „We cant lose no more of you. Not one! I love all yall. The young artist all the kids around the world.. dont follow a trend. Break the cycle. PEACE.” Eminem asked, “Didn’t you ask the doctors when I started recording new shit, when I first started rapping again, and sent it to you, didn’t you say, ‘I just wanted to make sure he didn’t have brain damage?

The rapper has stayed busy since putting out Relapse, and has released a steady stream of albums since, including Recovery in 2010 and his most recent, Music to Be Murdered By, in 2020. Eminem recalled recording in Florida as he was still in withdrawal after his overdose and said he was taking „75-80 valium a night” while he began work on Relapse. In late 2011, he was hospitalized with pancreatitis and was told that if he didn’t stop drinking, he wouldn’t see his next birthday.

In September 2023, the Cruel Intentions alum shared on Instagram that this was „the longest I’ve gone since I was a teen without some kind of nicotine or marijuana in my system (among other things).” She added, „It’s so funny. When we reveal ourselves and our truths and the things we’ve worked so hard for, it’s so liberating and vulnerable all at the same time.” She attended her first meeting on Feb. 3, 1999, the same day she revealed her struggle to her filmmaker husband Christopher Guest. „He was incredulous that he’d never noticed,” Curtis said, adding that she’s been sober ever since. Moore, who sought treatment in 2012, thanked two unnamed people she „barely knew” for delivering something of an ultimatum to her to turn her life around.

Born in 1972 under the name Marshall Bruce Mathers, young Eminem didn’t have much contact with his father, who had moved away when Eminem was very young. He also suffered from bullying in school, and when he was only nine years old, he was beaten so badly by one of the boys at school that he ended up spending a week in a coma. Controversial rapper Eminem is one of the most respected forces in music, even if he frequently raises eyebrows. He first rose to fame in the mid-nineties, and though his career has experienced a number of ups and downs, he’s always managed to come out on top. When he got out of rehab, Eminem, whose birth name is Marshall Mathers, needed to satisfy what he called „an addict’s brain.” He couldn’t sleep when he was off the drugs. Eminem weighed close to 230 pounds at the height of his addiction to drugs in 2007, and in a new interview, Em told Men’s Journal he has a good idea of how he got there.