How a bottle of lean almost killed Curren$y
Curren$y’s rap career owes a lot to Lil Wayne, who signed him to Young Money Entertainment during the 2000s. But, despite boosting his career, Wayne also very nearly caused his demise.
During a conversation on the Drink Champs podcast in 2016, Curren$y referred to Wayne as “a lean professional,” before recounting a dark story from their touring days together. What he meant by that phrase is that Wayne was a frequent user of lean, otherwise known as purple drank.
This became a big problem for Curren$y when, one day while they were on tour together, they pulled up somewhere to play some basketball. When they were done, Curren$y jumped back on board the bus and spotted some cans. He thought they were “harmless purple Hawaiian Punch,” so grabbed one and necked it down. He was wrong about it being harmless.
The cans had been spiked with lean by Wayne, little to Curren$y’s knowledge. He drank a large dose down, and he was only alerted to how bad a situation this was when Wayne came aboard, too.
“He came on the bus and was like, ‘Oh Lord…’” Curren$y recounted. “‘Spitta, you probably about to die…’”
Lean can be a very dangerous concoction. As well as being seriously addictive, it can be fatal when misused. It’s especially dangerous when taken alongside alcohol.
Curren$y, despite unwittingly taking too much of the stuff, didn’t panic once he’d been made aware of what he’d done. He stayed relaxed about the whole thing, and he even ended up watching the film Hostel. He eventually fell asleep on the bus, and he awoke hours later in another city. He was okay.
Curren$y had gotten lucky. Despite its place as a cultural reference point in a lot of rap music, it’s a really serious drug that can tear people apart and is really hard to kick. This could have gone another way entirely.
Wayne once spoke openly to MTV about how hard his lean addiction could be, noting that withdrawing from the drug “feels like death in your stomach.” He has struggled with it for many years, even being sent to hospital because of it several times. Curren$y was lucky to avoid such a fate.