I like Eminem’s brand of pop-rap, but ever since the guy emerged from his three year self-imposed hiatus there’s been something off about him. He seems to be really angry and resentful, and there was that whole feud with Mariah Carey and her new husband that he refused to let go. Eminem is sober now after a long battle with prescription drug addiction that seems to have been propelled by the death of his best friend, the rapper Proof, in 2006. He spoke to XXL magazine earlier this year about his struggle, and said that he was taking up to 20 Valium, Ambien and Vicodin a day.

In a new interview with Complex Magazine, Eminem is asked if he sees any parallels between his own prescription drug addiction and Michael Jackson’s. He says that he sees the parallels “100 percent” and adds that he had a lot of enablers around him that helped him get whatever he wanted. Eminem has been sober for 18 months now, and he’s lost the weight he gained overeating during his addiction:

So you feel better?
Eminem: [Laughs.] Hell yeah, I feel better. I feel like a human being again. There was one point in time where I felt like…[Sighs.] I don’t know—I felt like plastic.
In what way?
Eminem: I think I looked plastic. My face, fat plastic. [Laughs.] I was eating, but the Vicodin made me hungry because it eats up your stomach lining, so you want to fill your stomach back up, but then it stops you up so you can’t shit, you just—

Jesus.
Eminem: That’s why I was gaining so much weight, I was just so f’ing bloated. It’s a trip when people take sobriety for granted. Feeling trapped in my addiction and then getting sober—you appreciate it so much more, because I didn’t know if I would ever know what it’s like to feel normal again, ever.
Are there moments when you feel like you’re being tested?
Eminem: Not with drugs or alcohol or anything like that. I just steer clear of it.

So you’re stone-sober these days?
Eminem: Yeah, it’ll be 18 months on the 20th [of October]. I realized I can’t touch anything, and that’s why I’m clean right now and why I’m going to stay clean. My brain just doesn’t know when to shut off. When I do something I have to do it all the way—that goes for music, with a high-hat, a snare drum, a rhyme, everything. I have to push it to the extreme. That’s how I realized I have addictive behavior. Somebody told me this once, that the thing that makes me bad is the same thing that makes me good at other things.

When the details of Michael Jackson’s death came to light, did you see any parallels?
Eminem: Oh, 100 percent. When you read things about Michael Jackson it’s hard to decipher what the f*ck is true, but there’s the story of how he woke up at whatever time and he needed something to go back to sleep because he had this or that and it didn’t work. That’s exactly what used to happen to me: I would take a couple of pills and I would be up an hour later and I’d want more. Then I’d take more and that would be enough to maybe get me back to sleep for two more hours. Then I’d be wide awake again. So I definitely can relate, and it’s a shame if he didn’t have anybody there to just say, “Michael, you’re an addict, you need help.” It’s one of the pitfalls of fame. I could just say, “Yo, I need this and this and this,” and they’re going to give me whatever I want because—

—because you’re Eminem.
Eminem: Exactly, it’s f*cked up. The worst thing that could have happened to me as an addict was having money.

[From Complex via MTV]

Eminem goes on to explain that he became addicted to running after he got sober and was running as much as 19 miles a day. He saw an episode of Obsessed on MTV featuring a guy who went to the gym three times a day and that helped him cut down his exercise. “There was a point in time when I had to burn 1,000 calories; if I didn’t burn 1,000 calories my day wasn’t complete. But now it’s like I can burn 275 calories and jump off the treadmill, or I can burn 550, and I’m OK with it.”

As for new technology and the Internet, Eminem says he has no clue and barely gets online. “I don’t even know how to turn a computer on and it’s probably better that way.” He says his favorite video game is old school arcade style Donkey Kong. Eminem is much more up to date with the media. He loves the HBO shows The Wire and Entourage and says Superbad is his favorite movie. He claims to have watched it 200 times.

Eminem is now working on his next album, Relapse 2, which he claims will be a more solid album and less pop-oriented. “Making Relapse, I was still working the drugs out of my system, so there was a lot of…just jokey sh*t. It was a lot of punchline-y, funny, shock value—kind of going back to The Slim Shady LP. And that was cool, but I’ve kind of flipped the page. Now I’m going for songs instead of one-liners. I don’t want to make sh*t that you hear once and then the joke’s over; I want to make records that you could play a hundred times, a thousand times.”

He also says he’s not dating anyone right now and that “I just came out of a long relationship, so I’m just kind of coasting right now.” The guy may not have worked out all of his demons, but he seems to have conquered the major ones. It’s probably for the best that he avoids relationships for a while. Judging from his music, women are more of an issue for him than anything else.