NEED TO KNOW
Eminem got candid about a life-changing experience.
In 2007, the “Mockingbird” rapper experienced a near-fatal overdose — and he opened up about it in his new documentary, STANS, which hit theaters on Thursday, Aug. 7.
“I got into this viscous cycle of, ‘I’m depressed so I need more pills’ and then your tolerance gets so high you end up overdosing,” Eminem, 52, says in the film.
He continued: “I woke up in the hospital and I didn’t how what the f— happened. It seemed like I fell asleep, and I woke up with tubes in me and s—. I wanted to get up. I couldn’t move. After the overdose, I came home going, ‘Yo, bro, I need something.'”
The “Without Me” rapper recalled feeling like he was going to “die if I don’t do something” — but the final straw was missing a special moment with his daughter, Hailie Jade McClintock.
“I had this video that they brought me because I missed Hailie’s first guitar recital,” he says of his daughter, who’s now 29.
He continues, “The amount of guilt that I felt, I cried when I saw it because I was like, ‘Oh my God, I missed that.'”
After missing the recital, Eminem asked himself, “Do you want to miss everything? If you can’t do it for yourself… then at least do it for them.”
Eminem — who’s been sober since April 2008 — made his 2009 album Relapse during the early days of recovery.
In April 2024, Eminem marked 16 years of sobriety on Instagram. At the time, he posted a photo of his hand holding a new chip commemorating the achievement.
During an interview on Paul Rosenberg’s Paul Pod podcast in 2022, Eminem opened up about the near-fatal overdose and said it was a wake-up call that inspired him to get sober after taking up to 20 pills a day.
Kevin Mazur/Getty
“I remember when I first got sober and all the s— was out of my system, I remember just being, like, really happy and everything was f—ing new to me again,” he said.
STANS, which was named after his 2000 hit song, focuses on the “complicated relationship between one of the world’s most private artists and his massive public persona,” a synopsis reads.
It continues, “Through stylized recreations, rare archival footage, intimate interviews, and an exclusive original interview with Eminem himself, it offers a raw, loud, and revealing journey across his career — and the passionate audience that has grown with him.”
A “highly curated cast of real-life stans” with “deep personal connections to Eminem” and his music are featured in the film, which was directed by Steven Leckart.
STANS will be in AMC Theatres from Thursday, Aug. 7 to Sunday, Aug. 10. The documentary will be available to stream internationally on Paramount+ later this year.
