Eminem is opening up about his 2007 drug overdose and how the incident affected his recovery.
According to the rapper’s Manager Paul Rosenberg, after the overdose, it was speculated that the rapper may have suffered brain damage that would dramatically change his life, and probably he wouldn’t be the same ever again.
In 2007, Eminem had a near-fatal overdose. Many feared the worse While in the public’s eye, he appeared to steadily improve and regain control of his life, the rapper is now disclosing that his recovery was far from simple, he said while speaking with his long-time manager Paul on his Podcast Paul Pod.
“It took a long time for my brain to start working again,” the “8 Mile” rapper began.
His manager interjected, “you literally were coming off of an overdose, and they had to sort of stabilize you with a few medications. And some of them took you a minute to adjust to — let’s just leave it at that.”
He added, “so, you’re learning how to rap again almost literally, right? Because it’s the first time, probably, you were creating without having substances in your body in… however many years, right?”
The Detroit rapper, whose real name is Marshall Mathers, also recollected the moments following the overdose when his manager expressed concern for him to doctors.
The pair also discussed his first song after the overdose, “Give me the Ball/ Detroit Basketball,” which was leaked in 2010 where the song never even sounded like Em.
Rosenberg, however, said that the rapper’s recovery was steady, and after months he was starting to be his old self. At least on the musical front as Eminem shared mentally that other things were going as he adjusted to not being in a drugged-up state where his skin itched as he realized that he was still in withdrawal almost six months after the overdose.
“I was taking 75-80 Valium a night,” Eminem said.
That was not the end for him dealing with drug abuse, as Rosenberg noted that Mathers again had to go to rehab after he released his album post the drug overdose. When he returned, he had “an album with a bunch of f***ing accents on it.”
“I didn’t really notice it [the accents] and was just so excited that you were making music and having a good time with it,” Rosenberg said. “At the end, I went to play some music for some people and they were like, ‘yeah, he’s rapping really well again but what’s up with the accents?'”
Eminem speak on Relapse 2 album
“I remember when I first got sober and all the s**t was out of my system I remember being really happy. Everything was like f***ing new to me again,” Eminem added. “It [Relapse] was the first album and the first time that I had had fun recording in a long time.”
During his 2010 appearance on Recovery with Dre in Hawaii, Eminem recalled his old music as the guide to finding himself again.
“It was literally like a fing awakening and it happened in like fing five minutes, 10 minutes listening to some of my older s*** and going, ‘I need it to feel like this again,'” he said.
