Eminem on the last straw after his 2007 overdose: “I had this video they brought me because I missed Hailie’s first guitar recital. The amount of guilt that I felt… I cried when I saw it. I asked myself, ‘Do you want to miss everything?’ If you can’t do it for yourself… at least do it for them.”

"I got into this vicious cycle of, 'I'm depressed so I need more pills' and then your tolerance gets so high you end up overdosing."

“I woke up in the hospital and I didn’t how what the fuck happened. It seemed like I fell asleep, and I woke up with tubes in me and shit. 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. 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.

"I remember when I first got sober and all the shit was out of my system, I remember just being, like, really happy and everything was fucking new to me again," he said.