Eminem took to Instagram on Saturday to celebrate his sobriety, sharing a photo of himself holding up a 10-year AA medallion he received for his achievement.
“Celebrated my 10 years yesterday,” he wrote. The token features the traditional Alcoholics Anonymous triangle of “unity,” “service,” and “recovery,” along with an X in the center, the Roman numeral for 10.
The “Lose Yourself” rapper, whose real name is Marshall Mathers, has been vocal about the events that led him to getting sober, particularly the time he accidentally overdosed in 2007.
“I overdosed on pills, and I went into the hospital. I was close to 230 pounds. I’m not sure how I got so big, but I have ideas. The coating on the Vicodin and the Valium I’d been taking for years leaves a hole in your stomach, so to avoid a stomachache, I was constantly eating — and eating badly,” Eminem told Men’s Journal in 2015.
“When I got out of rehab, I needed to lose weight, but I also needed to figure out a way to function sober. Unless I was blitzed out of my mind, I had trouble sleeping. So I started running. It gave me a natural endorphin high, but it also helped me sleep, so it was perfect,” the 45-year-old rapper said at the time.
“It’s easy to understand how people replace addiction with exercise. One addiction for another but one that’s good for them,” he continued.
In December, Eminem opened up to Shade 45, a SiriusXM radio station he produced, about one of the tracks in his new album, Revival.
“If you listen to ‘Castle’ all the way to the end, you hear me taking pills and falling,” Eminem said. “That was, you know, the recreation of me falling in the bathroom, and then waking up in the hospital, not knowing what the f**k was going on. I had tubes in me, and I was angry, and I couldn’t talk.”
The Grammy award-winning artist also added that the album’s final track, “Arose,” ends with the sound of pills being flushed down the toilet, a sign of his decision to get sober.
