Macklemore reveals fame caused him to relapse

GossipCop, Tuesday, July 28, 2015, 9:35am (PDT)

By Minyvonne Burke

• Macklemore opens up about his struggles with addiction in a new interview, revealing that he relapsed last year with sleeping pills and marijuana. The rapper explains in Complex that he was feeling the pressure of fame and needed to “escape.”

  “I held it together for a while. But, eventually, I stopped going to my 12-step meetings. I was burnt out. I was super-stressed. We weren’t sleeping – doing a show every day, zigzagging all over the country,” says Macklemore, adding, “In terms of the media I was getting put into a box that I never saw myself. The pressure and the fame – everything. All the clichés, man, like not being able to walk around, having no privacy, and from this TV appearance to this TV appearance, and the criticism, and the lack of connection, and the lack of meetings – all of that put into one pie was just… I just wanted to escape.”

  Macklemore says he “sobered a bit” last year when his fiance Tricia Davis caught him hiding sleeping pills in his shoes. That’s when he turned to impulse-shopping and marijuana. “I sat in a car, a hot boxed car and got high,” recall the singer, noting, “Everyone knew, but they didn’t necessarily know.”

  One person who definitely knew something was wrong was Macklemore’s producer Ryan Lewis. Macklemore says during his relapse he didn’t want to make any music with Lewis, even though they were a year-and-a-half into working on their second album together. The two are not finishing up the record, and it should be out later this year.

  Despite his setback, Macklemore happily reports that he’s now sober and thanks his now-pregnant fiancee for helping him. He says, “Since I heard that Tricia was pregnant, I was like, ‘I need to grow up right now.’”

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