Eminem became addicted to exercise following drug rehabilitation

Elton John may have been crucial to Eminem’s recovery from drug addiction, but according to a recent piece written by the rapper, excessive jogging played a large role in his sobriety. “I got an addict’s brain,” Eminem told Men’s Journal, “and when it came to running, I think I got a little carried away.”

In an article about his physical health, Eminem explains that following an overdose in 2007 he was “close to 230 pounds”, a weight gain he attributes to the Vicodin and the Valium he’d been taking for years that “leaves a hole in your stomach, so to avoid a stomachache, I was constantly eating – and eating badly.”

“Unless I was blitzed out of my mind, I had trouble sleeping. So I started running,” the rapper said. “It gave me a natural endorphin high, but it also helped me sleep, so it was perfect. It’s easy to understand how people replace addiction with exercise. One addiction for another, but one that’s good for them.”

Eminem, who now prefers exercise DVDs, said that his hobby quickly went from helpful to harmful.

“I became a fucking hamster. Seventeen miles a day on a treadmill. I would get up in the morning, and before I went to the studio, I would run eight-and-a-half miles in about an hour. Then I’d come home and run another eight and a half. I started getting OCD about the calories, making sure I burned 2,000 every day. In the end, I got down to about 149 pounds. I ran to the point where I started to get injured. All the constant pounding from the running began to tear up my hip flexors.”

As well as exercise, Eminem has previously claimed that his friendship with Elton John was important in the process of overcoming the rapper’s drug addiction. After his near-fatal methadone overdose, Eminem rang up John, who had himself attended rehab in 1990.

“When I first wanted to get sober, I called [Elton] and spoke to him about it,” Eminem said back in 2009. “He’s somebody who’s in the business and can identify and relate to the lifestyle and how hectic things can be. He understands ... the pressure and any other reasons that you want to come up with for doing drugs.”