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Eminem celebrates 10 years of sobriety

Eminem has always been vocal about his decision to get clean. “Getting clean made me grow up. I feel like all the years that I was using, I wasn’t growing as a person,” he told Elton John in a December chat for Interview magazine. Mathers has previously referred to John, who is decades sober himself, as “like my sponsor.”

The rapper told Rolling Stone in 2011 that the more his star began to rise, the more his drug use did, too, and that it became problematic around the time he filmed 2002’s “8 Mile.”

He credited the daunting 16-hour work days with sparking an Ambien addiction, which quickly opened the gates to other prescription drugs.

“I was taking so many pills that I wasn’t even taking them to get high anymore. I was taking them to feel normal,” he said. “I want to say in a day I would consume anywhere from 40 to 60 Valium. And Vicodin…maybe 20, 30?”

Still, as he explained in the 2012 documentary “How to Make Money Selling Drugs,” he remained unconvinced that his drug use was anything serious.

“People tried to tell me that I had a problem. I would say, ‘Get that f–king person outta here.’ I’m not out there shooting heroin. I’m not out there f–king putting coke up my nose. I’m not smoking crack,” he said.

Eminem overdosed on methadone in December 2007 and landed near-death in the hospital, but it wasn’t until a post-hospitalization relapse that he finally decided to get sober.

“Had I got to the hospital about two hours later, I would have died. My organs were shutting down. My liver, kidneys, everything,” he said. “They were going to have to put me on dialysis. They didn’t think I was going to make it. My bottom was going to be death.”

“Within a month I had relapsed … and I was just walking around my house thinking every single day, I’m going to f-king die. I’m looking at my kids, and I need to be here for this.”

Eminem chronicled his relapse in the 2009 album “Relapse.” He released his latest album, “Revival,” in December.

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