The drugs that put French Montana in hospital for two weeks: “I was out of control”
French Montana experienced one of the most significant moments of his career in 2017 with ‘Unforgettable’, a collaboration with Rae Sremmurd’s Swae Lee that took the world by storm. The song reached number three and two on the Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart, respectively, and achieved platinum status in 2022. While things were positive for Montana from a career perspective, he was facing battles in his personal life.
In 2019, the Bronx rapper (born Karim Kharbouch) spent two weeks in a hospital’s intensive care unit. At the time, Montana was taking excessive prescription pills. He was using Adderall to stay up and Percocet for pain relief, going from a hobby to a full-blown addiction.
Reports claimed he was hospitalised for cardiac issues and stomach pains. He admitted it was “a combination of a lot of things: being fatigued, dehydrated, losing myself chasing money, chasing the wrong things. Too much drinking, too many pills.”
The experience forced him to change his life around and go completely sober, with the rapper not realising he was in such a bad place. “It was just overdoing something for too long,” he told XXL. “And, to the point where, now sober is becoming my new high. People seen I was out of control, not me. ’Cause, you know, it’s almost like working out. You don’t see you getting big ’cause you see yourself every day. It’s the same thing with you being out of control.”
Montana applied the ethic he was putting into his work to his mind and body. He temporarily removed himself from the internet and music and returned stronger, doing a complete 180 from drugs and alcohol.
“That’s why I took a break. I said, ‘Look, as I hard I was going on my grind, I’m ’bout to go on myself,” he explained. “And put everybody I was putting in the front on the back burner and put myself in that seat. And I just, you know, I just did French 2.0.
“And this is how I changed it. Stepped back, took two steps back, didn’t drop no music, detox from social media. Everybody is drugged up, everything got control of my life but me. It was a mixture of things. And I think that was like the hardest thing I ever did in my life, to snatch myself back.”
He added, “So, for me to stop everything and just step back, that was like one of my biggest accomplishments. Top two, it’s after taking my mother back to Africa. So that was the day, it was November 21st, 2019, last year. And since that day, I never had a drink. I just made a year.”
Shortly after leaving the hospital, his self-titled album, Montana, was released on Diddy’s Bad Boy Records on December 6th, 2019. Since then, the 40-year-old has released another album, They Got Amnesia, in 2021, and a couple of mixtapes, Coke Boys 6 and Mac & Cheese 5, in 2023 and 2024.
As well as music, he launched an addiction health service, NAQI Healthcare, which provides a medically supervised in-home detox program to help those going through similar struggles.