Bow Wow is opening up about his battle with addiction.
In a new interview, the 36-year-old rapper looked back at how his addiction to lean, which reached its peak in 2007, ultimately landed him in the hospital.
If you are unaware, lean is is a combination of promethazine and codeine cough syrup mixed with soda.
Keep reading to find out more…“I was on lean. I was sipping so much syrup. I was drinking that s–t like crazy,” Bow Wow shared on The Art of Dialogue podcast while reflecting on collaborating with Omarion on their Face Off album.
“I was losing my f–king mind. That lean s–t had me f–ked up,” Bow Wow added, revealing that one side effect was that he was “just always irritated.”
Bow Wow said that his addiction that just continued getting worse until he ended up in the hospital after collapsing on stage while performing with Chris Brown in Cincinnati.
“I went straight to Cincinnati University Hospital. My stomach was so f–ked up that I ended up going back home to Atlanta after the first show,” Bow Wow recalled. When he got home, “the s–t gets worse.”
“I’m throwing up, I’m shivering in the bed, I’m sweating, I’m going through it,” Bow Wow added, noting that he found out that he was “having withdrawals” from the lean.
He said that the hospitalization and health issues that followed were a major wake-up call for him.
“My stomach was so f–ked up,” Bow Wow explained. “I felt like someone just had a knife [in me]… I never felt this type of pain in my life.”
Bow Wow then went on to praise his late publicist Patti Webster for helping him keep his addiction out of the spotlight. At the time, she sent out a PR statement saying that he collapsed due to dehydration.
“[There] wasn’t no dehydration. I was f–ked up off lean,” Bow Wow admitted. “We didn’t want the world to know.”
Bow Wow concluded his interview by saying that he’s kicked his addiction to hard drugs and has since learned his “boundaries.”
A few years ago, Bow Wow opened up about his battle with depression.
Photos: Getty Images Posted to: Bow Wow