It was so surprised by the news and the forwarded image that someone put on social media that I was convinced it was a lie when it was talking about Eminem being 11 years sober and with Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous. I did some digging, which did not take long since every news agency dedicated at least a blurb to this and found out that he isn't just 11 years sober, but he actually just celebrated his 12th year sober.
That was the image that I saw with someone saying that Eminem is 12 years sober today! Since the AA coin is actually blocking his face, the person holding it could be anyone but apparently it came from his own, verified Twitter, so it is legit. I was stunned to hear about this because his music is all about substance abuse and honestly, that was a big part of what got him famous in the first place because his songs were all about weed, acid, and prescription pills like Vicodin. Surely you remember a song called Purple Pills
Back in the early 2000's when he was winning basically all of the music awards he would clown around on stage and kind of poke fun at addiction by dropping pills all over the stage "accidentally." I actually kind of wondered if this was all a gimmick to sell more albums and bring more attention to him for publicity sake but as it turns out he ended up having a really bad problem with addiction. His addiction was to prescription pills.
I think the did a good job of hiding it but Eminem was actually experiencing bad addiction and said that he could feel his life slipping away from him when he describes a nagging pain in his arm that was "just weird, man" because it wouldn't go away and no sort of injury had actually happened. He failed multiple times in rehab and this is where the name of the album called Relapse came from. It is also where the name of a follow-up album called Recovery comes because this was a time that he went back to rehab and actually did recover.
Like a lot of people, I had already fell off the Eminem bandwagon by then although my reason for doing so was a bit different in that I lived in a foreign country where Western culture, including the music from USA, was kind of not in the forefront unless you went out there and looked for it, so a lot of that slipped past me.
Apparently, an album called Encore was where Eminem was experiencing his worst side effects from addiction and by many (most) people it is considered to be his worst album. This is particularly noteworthy when you look and see that although it did sell very well compared to basically anyone else on the planet, it sold less than half as many copies as his previous 2 albums individually and this is where he finally got some help. It would be another 5 years before he would release an album and at this point he had been to rehab once, failed, and then went back and succeeded. He had been sober for a while at this point and his music was hailed as being a triumphant comeback. I don't know if this is really true or not because I can't name a single song off of either of these albums because I don't think I have actually purchased an album at all in 15 years.
I don't know if any of you find this interesting or not, or maybe the whole world knew about this already and I am just late to the party, so to speak, but I found it really surprising because of the persona that Eminem has in his music. I sometimes feel as though I may be a mild alcoholic and I relapse many times a week so I am extremely proud that someone with the level of influence and money that this guy has would be able to conquer addiction like this. I find it kind of inspirational.