Bow Wow has opened up about the lean addiction that left him “losing my mind” and hospitalized before eventually quitting the drug.
According to Bow Wow, he was at the height of his lean addiction while recording Face Off in 2007, his collab album with Omarion.
“I was sipping lean,” he said during his recent appearance on The Art of Dialogue. “I was sipping so much syrup.”
The Fast and Furious star admitted he “was drinking that s### like crazy and “I was losing my f###### mind. That lean s### had me f##### up. I was just always irritated.”
Bow Wow reveals Lean addiction led to hospitalization and collapsing after getting off stage while on tour with Chris Brown.
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Bow Wow explained that the lean made him fly off the handle, and he would feel a constant itch, one of the side-effects of the drug. His addiction got so bad that he was drinking the substance at all times. At one point, he was consuming so much that Lil Wayne gave him a “baby bottle” full of lean while shooting a video.
However, Bow Wow eventually realized the severity of his lean addiction when he collapsed while on tour with Chris Brown.
“The opening night was in Cincinnati and when I got off stage, I collapsed,” Bow Wow recalled. “I went straight to Cincinnati University Hospital. My stomach was so f##### up that I ended up going back home to Atlanta after the first show.”
Things only worsened once Bow Wow returned home and his body began withdrawing from lean.
“I’m throwing up, I’m shivering in the bed, I’m sweating, I’m going through it…I didn’t know I was having withdrawals. That’s how much lean I was consuming,” he explained.
Bow Wow was too sick to return to the tour and credits his publicist, the late Pattie Webster, with keeping the news a secret. She issued a statement informing the press that the rapper was unable to return due to dehydration.