Bow Wow is getting candid about his past addiction struggles and how his addiction landed him in the hospital.
Sitting down for a recent conversation on The Art of Dialogue podcast, Bow Wow — born Shad Gregory Moss — revealed that he’d been addicted to lean, which is a combination of promethazine and codeine cough syrup mixed with soda. His addiction reached its peak in 2007 while he was collaborating with Omarion for their Face Off album.
“I was on lean. I was sipping so much syrup. I was drinking that s**t like crazy,” he confessed.
“I was losing my f**ing mind. That lean s**t had me f**ked up,” Bow Wow recalled, adding that one side effect was that he was “just always irritated.”
The addiction got progressively worse until he wound up in the hospital after collapsing on stage while performing with Chris Brown in Cincinnati.
“I went straight to Cincinnati University Hospital. My stomach was so f**ked up that I ended up going back home to Atlanta after the first show,” he said. When he got home, “the s**t gets worse.”
“I’m throwing up, I’m shivering in the bed, I’m sweating, I’m going through it,” he recalled. As it turns out, it was a result of “having withdrawals” from the lean.
For the “Outta My System” rapper, the hospitalization and subsequent health battle was a stark and shocking wake-up call.
“My stomach was so f**ked up,” he said. “I felt like someone just had a knife [in me]… I never felt this type of pain in my life.”
Bow Wow went on to praise his late publicist, Patti Webster, for helping him keep his issues out of the public eye. He explained that she sent out a press release explaining his collapse was a result of dehydration.
“[There] wasn’t no dehydration; I was f**ked up off lean,” he said. “We didn’t want the world to know.”
In the years since, Bow Wow says he’s managed to kick his addiction to hard drugs and has learned his “boundaries.”
This isn’t the first time Bow Wow has gotten candid about his addiction. Back in 2018, The Growing Up Hip Hop: Atlanta star took to Twitter to urge his young followers to stop taking drugs by describing his own experience with lean.
“To the youth — stop with these dumb a** drugs,” Bow Wow wrote. “I’m going to let something out. When me and Omarion worked on Face Off album, I was high off lean everyday! When y’all saw me on BET going off on Torae I was high off lean. My attitude, everything changed. My fans started to turn on me, my family too.”
“Kick that s**t!” he stressed. “Be a good son or daughter. Be the best you. Ima start being more vocal. We gotta save the youth from going out early. Parents watch your kids. Explain to them. We want y’all to live man. I almost died f**king with syrup. To this day I’m affected, my stomach will never be the same and it hasn’t been. DRUG FREE IS THE WAY TO BE! Smarten up tighten up out here. We can’t lose no more of you. Not one! I love all y’all. The young artist all the kids around the world… don’t follow a trend. Break the cycle. PEACE.”
