Kid Cudi‘s cocaine addiction almost had fatal consequences.
The “Mr. Rager” rapper, who released his memoir on Tuesday (August 12), appears on the August 13 episode of CBS Mornings, where he discusses nearly dying during a cocaine overdose. The near-death experience is also recounted in Cudi: The Memoir.
“That was my life for a while, you know? I was running to the grave and I had a death wish,” Cudi told CBS anchor Anthony Mason about his prior drug addiction.
The Cleveland native called himself “dark and suicidal” while adjusting to fame. The memoir begins with Cudi recalling the overdose, which occurred in his New York apartment, while his career was “just starting.”
“I mean, the success was there, but happiness… I don’t think I felt happy,” he continued.
Cudi added, “I hard time dealing with the fame, and the reason why I was doing cocaine was so I didn’t blow my brains out.”
In an excerpt of the memoir via GQ, Cudi wrote that during the near-fatal overdose, he was “doing more coke than I ever had in my life.”
“I tried to get up off the bed, but my legs wouldn’t work, so I collapsed to the floor and started to crawl,” he wrote. “Eventually, I gave in and just laid on the ground. My heart was racing. It felt like it was going to burst any minute.”
At the time, Cudi was working on his sophomore album, Man on the Moon II, with the project’s tone reflecting his “dark mindset.”
“I felt like I had demons latched on to me. I needed to soundtrack the moodiness I was feeling,” he continued.
Sicne growing out of that drug-fueled phase, Cudi has embraced a lighter tone in his newer music, like his upcoming eleventh solo project, Free, which releases on August 22.
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