Ye ole Cafe

[iNsom]

Insomnia, I am so sorry to hear you were bullied. It is absolutely incredible how many of us were bullied at school - if you took a straw poll here, I bet we would find a huge number of people who were. Luckily these days, most schools have a reasonably robust bullying policy but I know plenty of examples where that just hasn't counted for much when things got rough.  Being the victim of bullies can haunt us for life - big hugs to you, IS, here's hoping you have managed to leave it behind you. It took me decades to do so, decades.

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I appreciate the kind words Rose and yes, I bet if we did do a poll we'd find that a lot of us here on IOP were bullied when we were younger, I don't think this is a coincidence though...

I believe the anxiety I suffer is a direct result of 2 things:
1)      Being bullied when I was at school
2)      Smoking a little too much w.33.d during my years at college and university
Number 2 was, obviously, my fault, but number 1…well some of us may be in the same boat there.

Anyway yes I’m over it now, it’s been 17 years, heck I even forgive the guy who bullied me, he probably didn’t know any better.  Thank you for the hug

I hope you all don’t mind but I’d like to blabber (its related in a way)
I want to tell you all who my Idol is and why…
It’s Eminem.  I know that may be a bit clique but please, hear me out.

Firstly I am a fan of rap music, not because of the ‘gangsta’ side or the ‘get money, f**k bi**hes’ side either; I’m a fan of it because I enjoy poetry.  I grew up listening to Eminem (Im 30 BTW)
Eminem has the full package, he can rhyme 4, 5, 6 syllables over and over while also throwing ‘inside rhymes’ into the mix.  He can flow perfectly and…well you get the point…enough about that…let me get to the other reason he is my idol…
If you don’t already know this about Eminem then you may find it quite motivational and/ or inspirational.
I’m going to write this off of memory so it may not be 100% accurate but it will be very close.

As you all probably know he is the most successful rapper of all time (going by sales) in fact he’s currently the 17th best-selling musician of all time, type ‘best-selling musicians of all time’ into Wikipedia and you’ll be shocked at who he is ahead of.

Now, this is my point:
Eminem was bullied at school so badly to the point he almost died.
His mother used to feed him drugs when he was a child, drugs such as Valium so he would ‘shut up’ – victim of Munchausen’s syndrome.
His dad walked out on him when he was a baby.
His step father sexually abused him as a child and his mother did nothing to stop it.
He went through one of the worst childhoods imaginable but still rose to incredible fame, but his problems didn’t stop there.

Along with the fame came his drug addiction (probably kick-started by his mother) which spiralled out of control and eventually in 2005 he landed himself in rehab, at this point he was taking up to 60 pills a day, an absolute cocktail of anti-anxiety medication to pain killers to sleeping drugs.  At one point he overdosed and his organs were shutting down but luckily he got medical help just in time. 

In rehab he came off of it all, he said there was a period of time while he was withdrawing that he didn’t sleep for about 14 days solid.  He lost most of his motor functions and was almost unable to speak.
Once finally off the drugs he turned to exercise and well to cut to the end he is now 100% sober.
Oh yeah- his all-time best friend (Proof) was fatality shot while he was withdrawing from drugs, also I'm not entirely sure when but his father figure (his uncle) committed suicide.

But after all of this…he came back.

He came back and released a record breaking song ‘Rap God’ where he ‘spits’ 1560 words in one song, at one point he ‘spits’ 97 words in 15 seconds.  Imagine that?  He had to learn how to speak properly after his addiction/ recovery and he comes back to break a ‘speech related’ record.

He has since released a catalogue of immense rap music and cyphers.

Ok, so to conclude, what I'm saying is, he was in one of the darkest places a human can find themselves but he still got himself clean and proved to us all its possible.
I know Eminem’s story isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ recovery programme but I hope at least some of you can take a positive note away from this.

My life has been nothing like Eminem’s, but still I’d like to think I understand the addiction part of it (as small as mine may be) – he also suffered from chronic insomnia.

Sorry if I bored you but I hope I didn’t, I hope you enjoyed the read.

Oh, by the way, see my avatar, that is Eminem, it’s his ‘Relapse’ album cover, it’s his face is made up from different shapes and colours of pills.....
Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn into some ‘Eminem preaching loser’ that’s it, that’s all I wanted to say…I just wanted to let you know who my Idol is and why.

Anyway, to get back to Café style, happy Thursday everyone!  I hope you all have a great day!
Kind Regards
I_S