Eminem is a Drug Addict

Who knew Eminem had so much in common with Dr. Gregory House?

In the June/July issue of Vibe, the rapper tells the world that he's a drug addict, having recently overcome an addiction to pain medication that nearly killed him.

"It's no secret I had a drug problem," Eminem writes in the first-person account. "If I was to give you a number of Vicodin I would actually take in a day? Anywhere between 10 to 20. Valium, Ambien, the numbers got so high I don't even know what I was taking."

Following a 2005 stint in rehab, the artist relapsed and almost died from an overdose after swallowing a handful of unidentified blue pills an acquaintance had provided.

"My doctor told me those mysterious new pills were methadone, which is used to wean heroin addicts off dope," he says. "Had I known it was methadone, I probably wouldn't have taken it. But as bad as I was back then, I can't even say 100 percent for sure. My doctor told me the amount of methadone I'd taken was equivalent to shooting up four bags of heroin. Even when they told me I almost died, it didn't click."

The rapper adds that he can now relate to his mother, who has battled addiction for most of her adult life.

Eminem has been sober for a year. His new album, Relapse will hit stores on May 19.

"I wanted to make an overall statement: I'm back. It was a slow process. You gotta remember I hadn't recorded a song sober in seven years. So it took me awhile to even feel like I could record a song In sober... I don't know the last time I shot a video sober, without drinking or taking anything. It's been years."

In closing, the man whose first single off Relapse is the hit "We Made You," says rapping has replaced using.

"I almost feel like a little kid again with rap. I wanna play around with different flows. If I don’t feel like it's what I'm fully capable of, if there's one weak line, I wanna change it. Rap was my drug. It used to get me high and then it stopped getting me high. Then I had to resort to other things to make me feel that ... now rap's getting me high again."