EMINEM IN DRUG REHAB!
Troubled rapper Eminem checked into a Michigan rehab center for drug treatment on Aug. 16.
Eminem entered Brighton Hospital, about 30 miles west of Detroit, the same day his record company announced he was canceling the European leg of his current Anger Management Tour, citing "exhaustion, complicated by other medical issues."
"Eminem is in the hospital under doctors' care. He is being treated for dependency on sleep medication," his label, Interscope Records, said Aug. 18 in a statement to Star. While the statement did not name the drug, reports identified it as Ambien, a widely-used prescription sleep aid.
The 32-year-old rapper (real name: Marshall B. Mathers III) checked into the hospital, about 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 16, sources tell Star. He came in with two burly bodyguards, who never left his side.
"He looked really rough. He was all drugged-out, weak and tired out," the source says. "He looked like hell."
Family insiders tell Star the pressure of his tour, legal actions against him — including a suit filed a week earlier by an aunt and uncle over his alleged attempt to evict them from a home he bought for them — and his renewed relationship with ex-wife Kim Mathers contributed to his current troubles.
The rapper had been scheduled to perform 10 shows in Europe beginning Sept. 1 in Hamburg, Germany, and ending Sept. 17 in Dublin, Ireland.
Eminem has long been linked to drug culture. He sports a tattoo touting the sometimes-abused prescription painkiller Vicodin on his left arm. He has also appeared to take drugs such as Ecstasy on stage and encouraged his audience to do the same, although he has said the drugs were actually dried-up pieces of chewing gum. Author Anthony Bozza, in a 2003 biography, told of observing Eminem on Ecstasy.
