Rick Ross and Meek Mill have opened up about how they helped each other kick their respective substance abuse habits.
In an interview with Ebro Darden for Apple Music’s Rap Life, the MMG cohorts spoke about their pathways to some form of sobriety and how holding each other accountable helped them reach it.
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“My stomach was bent over for like a year-and-a-half,” Meek explained. “I came home, 2019, I couldn’t smoke weed or really drink liquor like that. Before 2019, I was off the lean and all that. I changed my lifestyle — well, I thought I changed.
“Tried to change over to the liquor every day ’cause I’m being on tour, after-party. That shit kinda ruined my stomach so I had to sit down for a minute, let my shit build up.”
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He continued: “That was another human trial that we go through on the inside and then it’s like, ‘Yo, when you dropping?’ I’m telling my own family, ‘Yo, my stomach fucked up. I weight 170. I’m hit right now!’ But people wasn’t seeing it, though. People will see it or might make a joke about it, but in real life like, yo, my shit fucked up.”
Rick Ross then weighed in and revealed that he and Meek discussed their substance issues at length while they were in studio sessions.
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“That being little bro, it could be something that you walk into the studio, you walk into your homie and you see your homie not all the way on his A game,” he explained. “That’s one of the things that me and Meek most definitely had conversations about — vice versa, though.
“Me drinking lean at a time and now, I’m taking medication two times a day because of this. And then you walk into a session, you see your little bro, ‘Aye man, we gotta tighten up on this shit.’ It’s a lot of different ways we can have issues, or back and forth, but we always got the money.”
Rick Ross has had very public battles with his health, admitting that his March 2018 hospitalization was the result of heavy lean usage.
“It was the codeine,” he told PEOPLE at the time. “That mixed with the things I was drinking, the other drugs I was doing, and on top of not resting. [I don’t think] one particular thing would have killed me. But everything combined?”
The Port of Miami MC also lost 75 pounds back in 2016 in order to improve his health.
As for Meek Mill, he admitted back in 2019 that he used to take an astronomical amount of powerful narcotics at one point in his life.
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“I’ve never disclosed this before,” he said an interview with Charlamagne Tha God. “I’ve taken 10 30’s Percocets a day. You’re walking with death. Real shit. I had to cater to myself. ‘Like ‘N-gga, you poppin’ 10 Percs? You a junkie, n-gga.’ […] I had to make a decision with myself.”
