The reason why Eminem ran 17 miles every day: “I became a fucking hamster”
It’s no secret that Eminem has battled with drug addiction. The Detroit rapper has been open about his problems with prescription drugs, including Vicodin, Ambien, Valium and methadone, in the 2000s, leading to a musical hiatus between 2004’s Encore and 2009’s Relapse.
Em went into rehab in 2005 for his addiction, before relapsing. He then suffered a near-fatal overdose in 2007, which forced him to eventually become sober in 2008. As a way to deal with the temptations from drugs, he turned to running.
Exercise, particularly running, is widely praised as a beneficial tool for addicts. While running, the brain releases endorphins that serve as feel-good chemicals. This causes the runner to experience feelings of happiness, often leading to the feeling that is famously known as “runner’s high”.
Slim Shady turned to running for both his mind and weight. “When I got out of rehab, I needed to lose weight, but I also needed to figure out a way to function sober,” he told Men’s Journal. “Unless I was blitzed out of my mind, I had trouble sleeping. So I started running. It gave me a natural endorphin high, but it also helped me sleep, so it was perfect.”
Em quickly realised why exercise is so commonly recommended to those with addictions, using the neuropsychological disorder for something that’s positive. “It’s easy to understand how people replace addiction with exercise,” he said. “One addiction for another, but one that’s good for them.”
Instead of just dabbling in the sport, Eminem went all in. While many people frequently do five or ten kilometres, Em would run 17 miles every single day. The distance would be made up of two runs; one in the morning and the same again in the evening. He got so into it that he was focused on losing a particular amount of weight each day.
“I became a fucking hamster. 17 miles a day on a treadmill,” he explained. “I would get up in the morning, and before I went to the studio, I would run eight and a half miles in about an hour. Then I’d come home and run another eight and a half. I started getting OCD about the calories, making sure I burned 2,000 every day. In the end, I got down to about 149 lbs.”
While running is generally good for the body, Eminem took things to the extreme, to the point where he was causing harm to himself. “I ran to the point where I started to get injured,” he said. “All the constant pounding from the running began to tear up my hip flexors.” Em later used popular fitness trainer Shaun T as inspiration, finding entertainment in his videos and benefitting from him shouting through the television screen.
He began following his “Insanity” programme, which is a 60-day body transformation system. Em eventually gave up running altogether due to the intensity of both exercises combined; now 53 years old, it’s unclear whether the rapper is still putting in as many miles as he once was.