Eminem Talks Pain Pill Addiction In ‘How To Make Money Selling Drugs”: Watch A Clip

Eminem recalls how his addiction to pain medication nearly drove him to death in a documentary that hit select theaters over the weekend. Directed by Matthew Cooke, How To Make Money Selling Drugs features the Detroit rapper among drug dealers, prison employees and lobbyists, and depicts how the US war on drugs evolved into a dangerously lucrative business unto itself.

In a new clip, Eminem speaks of how hungry he was for prescription pills: “You’re taking things that people are giving you that, you don’t even know what the fuck they are. They look like a pill, and they’re shaped like something that you take, so you take it. Xanax, Valium, tomato, to-mah-to.” Leading up to that point, the interview grows tense as Eminem explains how friends tried to confront him, then shows how angry he would become, right up until he checked himself into a hospital.

Eminem’s face flares up as it would in the past, when his lyrics veered recklessly into misogynistic threats targeting pop stars, his girlfriend Kim and his mother, as alter-ego Slim Shady. Then he calms down and reverts back to his present state, to the Eminem of 2010’s Recovery, sober and sane.

“I just couldn’t believe that anybody could ever be naturally happy or naturally function or … enjoying life in general without being on something,” he says. “So I would say to anybody, that it does get better, you know? It just does.”

Watch the clip up top.

[via VIBE]