In 2004, Eminem released Encore, a follow-up to his wildly offensive masterpieces The Slim Shady and Marshall Mathers LPs and 2002’s The Eminem Show, which sold 27 million copies worldwide. As he dropped each album, the rapper had been acclaimed by critics and fans and – the ultimate triumph – condemned by moralising politicians. But something was different with Encore. While his previous albums had the Lynne Cheney seal of disapproval, reaction to Encore was lukewarm at best from both friendly and hostile media. And behind the scenes, Mathers was suffering. Addicted to powerful benzodiazepines, sedatives and opiates, he was struck a further blow by the death of his mentor Proof, who had offered him guidance and advice since childhood, when the two had lived on the same Detroit block. In an extract from his new book, Not Afraid: The Evolution Of Eminem, journalist and biographer Anthony Bozza recounts how Eminem dealt with writer’s block, addiction and bereavement at one of his lowest moments.

Marshall Mathers has always been a wordsmith. Starting in eighth grade, he would sit, nightly, with the dictionary, looking for words that appealed to him. He wasn’t searching for meanings, just the words themselves. He would write them down, then as if building a family tree, he would list words that came to mind or that he sought out for the rhyme. From there, he built his couplets and verses and learned to tell stories. The root of Eminem’s lyricism is an acrobatic appreciation for the construction of words. Being cut off from something that had been second nature to him for most of his life was akin to losing a limb. “I felt like shit,” he says. “There had never been a time when I wasn’t writing. When I don’t write all the time, like if a couple of weeks go by and I’m not writing, I feel shitty. I have to write constantly, at least making rhymes as little exercises, in order for me to feel like I’m doing something.”

The narcotic cocktail of benzodiazepines (Valium), sedatives (Ambien), and opiates (Vicodin) wasn’t helping Mathers much either. Taken individually, each one has a number of incapacitating side effects, ranging from paranoid and suicidal ideation to impaired memory and judgement, dizziness, slowed breathing, irregular heartbeat, drowsiness, nausea, lethargy, impaired mental and physical performance, fear, anxiety, moodiness, skin rash, hearing impairment, and muscle pain. Taken in tandem, the downsides are compounded, as is the possibility of overdose and accidental death. Eminem’s drug diet was a ticking time bomb. “Part of what forms over time is a Jekyll and Hyde situation where a person develops an addict personality that puts the healthy part of them in the background,” says says Dr Tina Galordi, a clinical psychologist who has been working with addiction and trauma for 20 years. “They begin to identify with the addict personality and it’s beyond just using – it’s how they begin to think. There is a desire to never feel uncomfortable, which they’ll achieve by manipulation, lying to get away with things, whatever it takes to avoid feeling uncomfortable.”

'Some days I would just lay in bed and take pills and cry'

“The pills I was taking, they had my mood really fucked up,” Eminem says. “It was making me depressed and, you know, it just became a vicious cycle of depression.” Feeling creatively bereft and physically numb, he didn’t see any way forward for himself as an artist. He had yet to acknowledge that the drugs were an issue. In fact, they had played a significant part in both his creative process and his lyrics. Eminem wrote a good deal of The Marshall Mathers LP in Amsterdam, where marijuana was legal and top-notch ecstasy was easy to score. When they got together in the studio, he and Dr Dre would sometimes pop molly before embarking on a marathon recording session. But those drugs are very different from what Eminem had exchanged them for. Depleted serotonin is one thing, and it certainly causes both short- and long-term depression, but that is child’s play compared to opiate and benzodiazepine withdrawal.

“As if my drug problem wasn’t already bad enough, you know, the Proof thing happened and then it was like, 'Son of a bitch, what I am going to do now?'” he says. He takes a long pause to collect himself. “I went through a lot when Proof died. It was just... really just fucked up, you know? It was the worst thing that could have happened. It was a really fucked up time in my life. And that happening gave me a real excuse. I just thought, ‘Well, I have got a legitimate excuse to use drugs now.’ Some days I would just lay in bed and take pills and cry.”

Not Afraid: The Evolution Of Eminem by Anthony Bozza is out now.

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