While often laying out his darkest demons in song, it’s not often that Eminem steps away from the beat and speaks candidly about his addictions on camera. But he did just that for a new documentary called How to Make Money Selling Drugs, a thorough new documentary that explores the drug trade and its various tentacles through a modern lens.
“I don’t know at what point exactly it started to be a problem. I just remember liking it more and more,” Eminem says of his addiction to prescription medications in a clip from the film. The incendiary rapper found himself deep in the throes of addiction to pills including Vicodin, Valium, and Xanax, despite denials that he had a problem.
“You’re taking things that people are giving you, that you don’t even know what the fuck they are. They’re shaped like something that you take, so you take it. Xanax, Valium, tomato tomahto,” he says somberly when discussing the interchangeable nature of his addiction. “It’s the same thing. It’s all in the same family, so fuck it.”
When Eminem found himself in a hospital on the verge of death, he knew he’d reached a place no person ever wants to be. “Had I got to the hospital about two hours later, I would have died,” he says. “My organs were shutting down. My liver, kidneys, everything. . . . They didn’t think I was going to make it. My bottom was going to be death.”
The addiction still had an iron grip, nonetheless. “I just couldn’t believe that anybody could ever be naturally happy, naturally function or just enjoying life in general without being on something.”
He would later relapse, but eventually kick the addiction. The poignant experience is recounted on film, just one of the avenues taken in director Matthew Cooke’s documentary. The film, which was co-produced by Entourage’s Adrian Grenier and also features interviews with 50 Cent, Woody Harrelson, Freeway Rick Ross, and The Wire’s David Simon, is in theaters now.
Meanwhile, check out a new track featuring Eminem called “Symphony in H,” and keep an eye out for a collaborative project between Em and Big Sean later this year.
