A former drug dealer, 50 Cent is sufficiently knowledgeable about the adverse effects of sober rappers drug abuse. “I had an experience with alcohol that made me paranoid because of it and I stayed away from it,” 50 told Piers Morgan. In an interview with G-Unit, Tony Yayo confirmed that 50 Cent abstains from drugs and alcohol. Multi-talented Pharrell Williams chooses to abstain from drug use. “Everybody else can do what they want, but that stuff isn’t for me. I’ve been drunk nine times in my life, and I ate some weed brownies once,” he told Paper Magazine. Pharrell once ate six weed brownies and passed out in a bathroom, as he recalled in a 2013 interview with Nardwuar.

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This is a list of rappers who are sober and recovering from former addictions. I was starting to make music with Ryan Lewis and I wrote a song called “Otherside.” I hadn’t had any music really connect until we put out the “VS. It was a record about the disease of addiction. There is power in sharing your stories openly and honestly. It allows other people to share openly and honestly. Eminem has been sober since April of 2008.

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But he’s also learning to take accountability for his actions. He’s been practicing the Serenity Prayer, which he learned in rehab. In his mind, making an album like Quaranta — a cathartic release of everything he was going through before getting help with his drug and alcohol problems — is a chance for him to start over. While drugs and music can be close bedfellows, we’d all much rather have our favorite artists alive and healthy than partying like a rockstar and headed toward an early grave.

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“Well… I got a bowling problem,” he continued, evidenced in the 30 plus balls that he was pictured laying in front of. While hip-hop has its many celebratory moments from lyrics to accolades, in recent years, the genre has been hit with the negative consequences of drug culture, which has claimed the lives of many young rappers. From Mac Miller’s fatal overdose to Juice WRLD’s drug-induced seizure, the link between death and addiction has been a recurring topic in rap. I know that addiction is a treatable https://ecosoberhouse.com/article/warning-signs-of-drug-use-and-addiction/ disease, but I’m never going to be cured, and I’m completely fine with that. The world that recovery has led me to is beyond anything I ever could have imagined. I would never have had a career in music had I not been able to go to treatment.

Because of that, there is an air of secrecy that comes with the program. But at this point, we’re in a very different time. Young people are dying without ever knowing that there was actually a place you could get help — in halls and basements in churches, in buildings all over the world, where you can go and get relief, for free. You know, in the business of selling depression or something like that, and I probably had a lot of that in my music. It’s to the point now I just want to make music to make people feel good.

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After becoming sober, Eminem reemerged with Recovery, his incredibly successful seventh album chronicling his journey to sobriety. It was a deeply personal album that separated him from his Slim Shady alter ego. It made for his most mature and thoughtful album. On the hit single “Not Afraid,” Eminem raps, “It was my decision to get clean, I did it for me.” The hip hop icon celebrated his 15th year of sobriety earlier this year.

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• “I tried pretty much every drug there was to try,” he explained to “Complex.” Lecrae left that lifestyle behind and now refrains from drugs and alcohol.
• “Well… I got a bowling problem,” he continued, evidenced in the 30 plus balls that he was pictured laying in front of.
• He’s been practicing the Serenity Prayer, which he learned in rehab.
• Many times, the glamorization of substance use is in their rhymes, peppering hooks with one-liners that speak to those internal struggles.
• Although it was a tough ride, and he tried to escape three times in the process, Cudi eventually beat his addiction.
• When I talk about it, I get a spiritual reprieve.

“I’m in a financial place where I can enable it myself, and I don’t ever want to be that guy,” he affirmed. It’s not because he’s focused on being a gazillionaire or spending his money on headgear that looks like it’s hiding a bong, but because way back when he had a bad experience with pot brownies that turned him off for life. Young Dro’s rehab story is particularly sad because of how the effects of his drug use hit close to home.

I tapped out of my recovery community, and then I relapsed in July. I quickly watched my life fall apart within the first year of using drugs and alcohol, but it wasn’t until years later that I hit a rock bottom and ended up a place where I could get some help. I ended up on a bus downtown, then in a McDonald’s, where I threw up in a trash can and had to run from the cops. From the very start, I had the allergy where one wasn’t enough, and once I started, I couldn’t stop.

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Read Danny Brown’s interview in the Spring 2024 issue of XXL Magazine, on newsstands now. There’s also a look at how social networking has a chokehold on rappers’ feelings, how hip-hop in 2024 is experiencing more wins than losses, and the ways in which kid rappers are thriving thanks to social media. Not many rappers have been in rehab twice, but Famous Dex has.

• It allows other people to share openly and honestly.
• The rapper, 46, shared his milestone on social media Saturday, posting a photo of the medallion he received for being 11 years sober.
• Royce Da 5’9”, Eminem’s fellow Bad Meets Evil partner and former Slaughterhouse signee, went through his own struggles with alcoholism.
• In that same piece, Em is quoted as saying, “I had to regain motor skills, I had to regain talking skills.” His drug use affected him so severely that he had to relearn how to talk and how to rap.
• In an interview with Billboard, fans were generally overjoyed to hear Chief Sosa admit he “don’t sip the lean no more,” considering the sloppiness of his last two mixtapes.
• Artists including Kid Cudi, Big K.R.I.T., Joe Budden, and Macklemore have discussed the dangers of addiction, sharing their own experiences.

Eminem

On “Otherside,” Macklemore raps about Lil Wayne being a major influence of his personal codeine addiction. Minus one relapse he’s had with codeine, Macklemore has been clean since August of 2008. Christian-rapper Lecrae refrains from smoking and drinking, yet that has not always been the case. “I was infatuated with gang life.” Lecrae told Complex magazine. “I tried pretty much every drug there was to try, except for heroin and crack. I was out there.” Although he lives a sober lifestyle today, he doesn’t consider drinking as a sin. “I ain’t got nothing against you if you wanna throw one back,” as he told Sway on Sway In The Morning.