He is also an example of how dangerous prescription drugs can be. But Eminem managed to get his life together and has successfully made his way through addiction recovery. At the height of his career, while he was producing award-winning albums, he was battling alcohol and drug addiction. In 2007, Eminem suffered a methadone overdose, but he got sober the following year. In the piece, Em explained that drugs really only became a part of his life after the release of his 1999 album, The Slim Shady LP.
Exercising His Way to Recovery
According to the singer, his kids inspired him and gave him enough strength to overcome the situation and successfully head toward recovery. While Eminem succeeded in recovering from his addiction, his treatment involved self-detox, which experts do not recommend. According to him, the singer struggles with addiction to Ambien, Valium, and Vicodin. In 2011, Eminem publicly opened up about his struggles with addiction while giving an interview to The New York Times. According to the singer, he started using this pill to sleep peacefully between the shooting scenes but became dependent on them.
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- “The coating on the Vicodin and the Valium I’d been taking for years leaves a hole in your stomach, so to avoid a stomachache, I was constantly eating — and eating badly,” he told Men’s Journal in 2015.
- “And you wake up the next day and you have a terrible headache.”
- “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.
- The fear of experiencing psychological and physical pains related to withdrawals can scare many people from joining a rehab.
She attended her first meeting on Feb. 3, 1999, the same day she revealed her struggle to her filmmaker husband Christopher Guest. “I knew she had them in her suitcase in our guest room closet,” she told the publication, crying at the memory. “I had a 10-year run, stealing, conniving,” she told People. “And I’m allowed to be on them at some dosage because I have a prescription and then I’m also augmenting that.” “For the last eight weeks maybe, I don’t really know…I’m on them all day,” he said on his Armchair Expert podcast. The Parenthood alum was sober for 16 years before relapsing in 2020 by taking Vicodin after a motorcycle accident.
Soon enough, he got serious about his recovery and started working with a rehab counselor while going through a highly uncomfortable detox program. The successful addiction recovery journey from Eminem’s life proves this point. However, this bluntness has helped the singer raise awareness in people about the dangers of abusing drugs.
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In April 2020, Eminem took to Instagram to share that he had celebrated 12 years of sobriety. Eventually, Eminem lost 90 lbs and, per Billboard, he weighs 140 lbs today. So, to shed the pounds, he took up running — and as it turned out, he had replaced one addiction with another.
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. “Drinking caused weight gain,” he told Today in September 2022, “but it also weighed down my mental state.” He got sober in 2021 and saw numerous positive benefits just one year later, including losing 32 pounds in seven months by cutting out alcohol and fast food. “My sort of addictions jump. They jump around. When I was younger, I definitely think I had a sex addiction of some kind, yes, that everything could be fixed by sex,” she said, before sharing about the time she realized she’d developed a troubling drinking problem. In 2018, she recalled battling her addictions to sex and alcohol. “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.
The two-time FIFA Women’s World Cup champ has been open about her misuse of Adderall while battling injuries during her college soccer career. I was replacing those bottles in the bar all the time.” “I knew how to get wasted enough to where I took myself out of the life equation, took myself out of the present, didn’t have to connect in a way that made me feel things.” Years later, he reflected on his journey with addiction and the lengths he went to hide the his struggle.
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His addiction to alcohol and pain pills began soon after graduating from high school and didn’t abate when his career began to take off. “Ryan has been battling from alcohol addiction for many years and unfortunately it has become a destructive pattern for him,” his rep told E! She told The Guardian, “Nothing seemed to reach or satisfy me. I remember waking up one morning in those dark days thinking, ‘Maybe it’s time for heroin, because nothing else is working.'” The Backstreet Boys member tried drugs for the first time before filming the music video for 2000’s “The Call,” telling Good Morning America years later that he “was off the walls” during the shoot.
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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.” “And it was something that I realized just did not serve me in my life.” “He was incredulous that he’d never noticed,” Curtis said, adding that she’s been sober ever since.
- Initially, he used Valium for social anxiety, but over time, his dependence escalated to a dangerous cocktail of prescription medications.
- Eminem got serious, worked with a rehab counselor and went through a difficult and painful detoxification.
- “When I started to get it back, it was exciting.
- Grief-stricken and guilt-ridden over their recent estrangement, Eminem began combining methadone with sleeping pills – a deadly mix that nearly ended his life.
“I think that anyone that has a beer everyday has probably got a little bit of a problem.” “I was definitely addicted to alcohol, not shying away from that at all,” Holland recalled on the On Purpose with Jay Shetty podcast. “There was times where I would stop doing it but then there were times where I’d go heavy on it.”
The Downward Spiral: What Drugs Did Eminem Use?
Consequently, the rapper preferred to self-detox and work privately with a rehab counselor instead of seeking formal treatment. However, he did not like the experience as people around him constantly asked him for autographs which distracted him from focusing on his recovery. According to sources, Eminem tried joining a rehab to overcome his addiction-related struggles.
In 2018, the Halloween star got very candid about her 10-year addiction to opiates, which began in the late ’80s after a minor plastic surgery “for my hereditary puffy eyes.” The reslt was a prescription that changed her life. The Valley star shared his decades-long battle with drugs in March 2025 after going to rehab. Beyond the health scare, he was compelled to fight back against his addiction after missing the birthday party of his and ex Kim Scott’s daughter Hailie Jade, now 29.
Eminem’s ability to lose himself in his addiction prompted a major change.
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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. “It was easier for me to say that I’m doing it for her because, at that time, I didn’t feel like I was sort of worth much,” he recalled of the early days of their relationship. Although the Parenthood alum knows that “one of the things that you’re not supposed to do is get sober for somebody else,” his relationship with now-wife Melanie Lynskey was a major reason that led him to swearing off alcohol. As he later explained on Today, he grew up in the ’60s and ’70s when “there was a completely different attitude” towards the drug. The Parent Trap actor battled a cocaine addiction throughout the ’80s that sent him to rehab in 1990. “To the youth- Stop with these dumb ass drugs,” he began his series of tweets.
A month later, Lovato was hospitalized for a near-fatal overdose. “Mama, I’m so sorry I’m not sober anymore / And Daddy please forgive me for the drinks spilled on the floor / To the ones who never left me what was eminem addicted to / We’ve been down this road before I’m so sorry, I’m not sober anymore,” she sang. After publicly celebrating six years of sobriety on tour in 2018, the singer stunned fans later that same year with the release of the confessional single “Sober,” which revealed that she had relapsed. “Feeling thankful for the freedom that comes with breaking addictions and dependency on substance,” he added. The A Star Is Born actor struggled with a cocaine addiction during the early aughts before friend Will Arnett stepped in and confronted him out about his behavior.
“I’ve been dealing with this on and off since I was 23 and now I’m 45,” he continued. “I felt bad as a father,” the rapper added. Explaining how the innocuous remark “touched” a nerve, Offset continued, “When I went in my room, I damn near cried.” “And then one day he came in studio like, ‘Why yours is different color than mine?’ It killed me.” In October 2025, the Migos member shared he was four years sober from codeine—an opioid used to make the soda-based drink sizzurp—after a “wake-up call” from his teenage son Jordan.
“My doctor told (me that) the amount of methadone (I’d) taken was equivalent to shooting up four bags of heroin,” he said. A friend had given him the drug, which is used to wean heroin addicts off of the drug, and he would not have taken it had he known it was methadone. In an interview with Vibe (via The Hindu), Eminem revealed that, at one point, he overdosed on methadone. Ultimately, Eminem got clean and sober, and he detailed this sobriety in the album “Recovery.” Read on to discover how Eminem achieved and maintained his sobriety. In 2013, MTV discussed how the rapper, born Marshall Mathers, explored the depths of his addiction in the film “How To Make Money Selling Drugs.” “When I took my first Vicodin, it was like this feeling of ‘Ahh.’ Like everything was not only mellow, but I didn’t feel any pain,” he said in the film, according to the outlet.
Inside Eminem’s History With Drugs
For some, his intense lyrics are fun and comical but can be relatable to many people currently in similar situations. However, despite all the struggle, he managed to put his life together and recover. While the world knows about his successful music career, not many may be aware that he is an addict currently in recovery. Born as Marshall Bruce Mathers III, Eminem is a rapper, songwriter, music producer, actor, and record executive born on 17 October 1972 in Missouri. Jonathan is a recovery coach for Willow Springs Recovery in Texas.
