Eminem's Manager Feared Rapper Had 'Brain Damage' After Overdose

Eminem is opening up about his past struggles with drug addiction.

Speaking during an appearance on Paul Rosenberg's podcast, the rapper got candid about his near-fatal overdose 15 years ago, saying that it "took a long time for my brain to start working again."

"You literally were coming off of an overdose, and they had to sort of stabilize you with a few medications," said Rosenberg, who previously managed Eminem and was with him at the height of the musician's addiction, according to Complex. "And some of them took you a minute to adjust to — let's just leave it at that. So, you're learning how to rap again almost literally, right? Because it's the first time, probably, you were creating without having substances in your body in … however many years, right?"

Eminem then recalled the concerns Rosenberg had about the long-term effects of the overdose.

"Didn't you ask the doctors when I first started rapping again, didn't you say, 'I just wanna make sure he doesn't have brain damage?'" the Grammy-winning musician asked.

"Yeah. I thought you might have some permanent problems," Rosenberg responded. "Yeah. I was concerned, for sure."

Eminem has been open about his addiction, regularly celebrating his sobriety on social media. He also spoke about his drug rehabilitation journey in an interview with MTV in 2010, revealing that he had to relearn how to rap and drive a car.

"I had to learn to write and rap again, and I had to do it sober and 100 percent clean," he said. "That didn't feel good at first … I mean it in the literal sense. I actually had to learn how to say my lyrics again; how to phrase them, make them flow, how to use force so they sounded like I meant them."

Getting sober, Eminem said, made him feel like a "kid again."

"Everything was new. Not to sound corny, I felt like I was born again. I had to learn my writing skills," he said. "I was relearning how to rap. I didn't know if my MC skills were intact. But everything was fun and suddenly I started feeling happy. I hadn't felt happy for a long time."

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