For Seattle rapper Ben Haggerty—better known by his stage name, Macklemore—2013 has been a breakthrough year.
His infectiously silly (but unfortunately profanity-laced) ode to the joys of low-rent living, “Thrift Shop,” has spent six weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart. His debut album, The Heist, deals with subjects rarely addressed in the genre, including his support of gay marriage, his convictions about the evils of consumerism and his struggles with addiction to alcohol and drugs. (For our take on Macklemore’s treatment of these complex themes on The Heist, check out our review here.)
He recently talked at length with Rolling Stone about his skyrocketing success … as well as what it takes for him to stay sober amid the mounting pressures associated with that success. And in a genre that often (if not always) glories in the seemingly unlimited, consequence-free indulgence of drugs and alcohol, I found Macklemore’s honest, gritty (and again, profanity-laced) confessions about his struggle with addiction quite remarkable.
Macklemore told Rolling Stone interviewer Simon Vozick-Levinson that his battle with substance abuse began in high school—even admitting that rap itself played a supporting role in his first experimentation with alcohol: “The first time I drank, I did 12 shots of vodka by myself after school,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is nice,’ and I just kept going—with a wife-beater on, listening to ‘Thug Passion,’ thinking I was the white Tupac.”
Soon drugs crept into the mix, too. “As a freshman [in high school], I dated a superpopular girl who was a junior, and she smoked a bunch of weed. I was high every day, all the time. That’s where my lunch money went.” Soon, he had a real problem on his hands. As he admitted, “There was just no off switch.”
Next came mushrooms, cocaine and prescription drug abuse. And as Macklemore grew ever more popular in the Seattle music scene, his lifestyle became dangerously indulgent. “I started to get more f‑‑‑ed up than ever. All of a sudden, you’re young, you have this newfound attention—I was hooking up with random females, and the drugs started getting stronger. I always said that I would never do coke, and I broke that. I started doing a little bit of OxyContin, which scared the s‑‑‑ out of me.”
Soon, drugs eclipsed the music, with friends and family growing increasingly concerned about his chemical dependency. With his father’s encouragement, he entered a 35-day rehab program in Canada in 2008. And, with the exception of a brief relapse, he’s been clean ever since.
But that battle hasn’t been easy. Macklemore admitted that staying sober is a choice he must make daily. For him, that means seeking out Alcoholics Anonymous meetings—even on tour. At a recent stop at the South by Southwest music and media festival in Austin, Texas, Macklemore opted out of hobnobbing with other celebs and sought out an A.A. meeting instead.
“It’s very important to go into the rooms of A.A., smell the s‑‑‑ty coffee and be reminded that without sobriety, I would have no career,” he said. “Those are my peers. I see myself in them. I walked in and a dude was talking, and immediately I was like, ‘I know exactly what the f‑‑‑ you’re talking about.’ I’m reminded of why I can’t get f‑‑‑ed up. And the only way to feel that is to actually work the program.”
But Macklemore is anything but anonymous these days, a fact of life for him that sometimes adds even more pressure and temptation:
“When you get people coming up to you and their reaction to seeing you in person is crying and uncontrollably shaking, it’s a little weird. At times it’s overwhelming. … The last three months haven’t been good for me—the pressure, the expectation, the lack of sleep, the stress, the travelling. I can’t escape Macklemore. I just want to get the f‑‑‑ out of my own head. And there’s one instantaneous way to do that that’s very instantaneous, which is to get f‑‑‑ed up. … Drugs and alcohol will always be an issue for me. That’s never going to change. I can say that right now, I’m sober. I plan on remaining sober for the rest of the day. And starting over again tomorrow.”
We hear plenty of stories these days about out-of-control celebrities who can’t seem to cope with reality. Macklemore seems to be the opposite of that—someone who understands his inherent weaknesses and who is doing everything he can to make sure his compulsions don’t gain the upper hand amid the pressure cooker of fame and fortune.
Macklemore’s active, intentional commitment to his sobriety really challenges me. I may not be a rapper. And I’m not addicted to drugs or alcohol. But I do relate to the desire to check out from life when the pressure mounts, even if my unhealthy choices are something as seemingly innocuous as eating too much junk food or surfing the Internet too much.
As unlikely as it may seem, then, this thrift shop-loving rapper from the Emerald City has something to teach me about living with commitment and focus, about avoiding entangling temptation: namely, that he needs honest confession and relationships with other struggling souls along the same road to achieve those goals each day.
And so do I.
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