Back in 2007, Eminem was hospitalized after overdosing on methadone in the midst of an addiction to prescription pills. (He’s now proudly sober.) He talked about that time in his life recently, revealing just how bad of a state he was in.
On Paul Pod, the podcast of Eminem’s longtime manager Paul Rosenberg, Em said of where he was at post-hospitalization, “It took a long time for my brain to start working again.”
Rosenberg then explained, “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. 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?”
Em also noted he was “concerned” that he would have permanent brain damage.
Last year, Em said post-OD, he had to re-learn how to rap, saying of a leaked lyric about Chris Brown’s assault on Rihanna, “A lot of times, especially with the Relapse record, when I first started learning how to rap again, because of the drug situation that I went through and having to relearn a lot of things, that was one of those things that it was like, well, if it rhymes, say it. I think that being able to look back — I mean, that’s not even an excuse — but I’m just saying there was a phase I was going through with that Relapse record.”