Eminem says the 2007 overdose that nearly killed him “kind of sucked”.
Eminem says the 2007 overdose that nearly killed him ‘kind of sucked’
The rapper, 50, made the admission when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday night (05.11.22), and asked his daughter Hailie Jade Mathers, 26, to block her ears while he talked about his addiction struggles and admitted he found drugs “f****** delicious”.
He said: “I realise what an honour it is right now to be here up here tonight, and what a privilege it is to do the music that I love.
“Music basically saved my life… I’ll keep this as painless as possible, I’m f****** stuttering and s***. I’m probably not supposed to actually be here tonight because of a couple of reasons.
“I almost died from an overdose in 2007, which kind of sucked. Hailie, plug your ears. Because drugs were f****** delicious. I thought we had a good thing going on, but I had to go and f*** it all up – goddamn.”
The camera then panned to his daughter, who pursed her lips and shook her head.
Her ‘Lose Yourself’ rapper dad, who was inducted by his long-term collaborator and friend, Dr Dre, at the ceremony in the Microsoft Theater,
Los Angeles, went on: “Hold on, I lost my mother****** spot… did I say, I said drugs were delicious, right?
“And finally, I had to really fight my way through man to try and breakthrough in this music, and I’m so honoured and I’m so grateful that I’m even able to be up here doing hip-hip music, man, because I love it so much.”
Eminem also performed at the 37th annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, opening with a version of his 1999 song ‘My Name Is’ and following it with ‘Rap God’ and ‘Sing for the Moment’.
The rapper was fighting an addiction to prescription medication when he was hospitalised in December 2007 after overdosing on methadone before going to rehab.
He has previously admitted his addictions to Vicodin, Valium, Ambien and methadone started while he was filming the semi-autobiographical 2002 film ‘8 Mile’.
He told Rolling Stone magazine in 2011: “We were doing 16 hours on the set and you had a certain window where you had to sleep. One day somebody gave me an Ambien, and it knocked me the f*** out. I was like, ‘I need this all the time.’”
Eminem admitted by 2005 he was “f***** up” every night on tour, and in September he told the ‘Paul Pod podcast’, hosted by the Grammy winner’s long-term manager Paul Rosenberg, 51: “It took a long time for my brain to start working again.”
The rapper added he was taking “75 to 80 Valium a night” while he detoxed and worked on his album ‘Relapse’.
He said about a new track called ‘Detroit Basketball’ being leaked at the time:
“It was f****** weird, because as my brain was turning back on, I started going over lines like, ‘Wait, that’s not good’.
“If you remember, I don’t know which version leaked, but if you remember, there were like, 20 versions of that s***… I was so scatter-brained that the people around me thought that I might have given myself brain damage. I was in this weird fog for months.
“Like, literally I wasn’t making sense – it had been so long since I’d done vocals without a ton of Valium and Vicodin. I almost had to relearn how to rap.”