‘You got to stop one day’: Miami rapper Fat Nick opens up on drug abuse and mental illness
Miami HeraldNov 10, 2021
This process became a daily routine for about five years: taking multiple pills and always going back for refills. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Then his close friend
“If you don’t stop, what are you going to do, die?” Nick, 27, said. “Because that’s the reality of it. You can’t be on drugs your whole life.”
Nick released his fourth mixtape “Gorgeous Glizzy Gordo” on
Following the release of his latest project, Nick says he’s on a path toward his third year of sobriety in January — and hopes others will take preventative measures to reduce the likelihood of fatal overdoses.
Along with XXXTentacion,
“I definitely feel like this
With nearly a million Spotify listeners and about 780,000 followers on Instagram,
“Obviously don’t do it, but if you’re going to do it, be safe with it, you shouldn’t mix, you should be around good people, you should do this,” he said. “It might not sound like something people want to hear, but it’s what kids need to hear.”
“I don’t know if it fueled the fire of addiction, but it definitely made it more easily available,” Shakewell said.
Shakewell, who said his father is a recovered Vicodin addict, took Percocets for the first time on his 15th birthday. The average adult takes 1 capsule every six hours for moderately severe pain, according to
“I think it was in my blood waiting for me, you know?” he said. “And once I just tried it, just to see what it was about, I got turned on to it.”
Shakewell said Nick’s decision to get clean did not deter their friendship, and he is making his own strides to stop using opioids and other hard drugs recreationally as well. He described his drug use as a band aid to cover up his anxiety, suicidal thoughts and trauma. Although he has admitted to slipping up, Shakewell said he hasn’t used opiates for more than a year and a half.
“I don’t think anyone really starts using drugs to get rid of the problems,” he said. “You started because it’s something to do or it’s fun, but then you realize that it’s an easy, quick escape to all your problems.”
Fatal consequences of misusing opioids
Dr.
“I think opioids are actually a more insidiously dangerous substance than the others,”
Psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression are correlated to substance abuse,
“Clearly, somebody who’s depressed is at greater risk for suicidal behavior when they have medications that can end their lives,” he said.
About 80 to 90% of drug users do not develop a drug addiction,
“They have to look beyond the drug itself and kind of look at the whole person and see what’s going on in that person’s life,” he said.
“The likelihood of dying from a single opioid, also, is relatively low,” he said.
For example, A$AP Yams, the founder of
Drug culture in hip-hop
During the origins of hip-hop in the early 1970s, marijuana was sold during concerts or park jams in the
The concern, Canton raised, was the prevalence of opioids like Percocets that are laced with fentanyl. The powerful synthetic opioid, similar to morphine used to treat severe pain, is 50 to 100 times more potent. Digital Underground founding member Shock G, also known as Humpty Hump, died from an accidental overdose of fentanyl, ethanol and methamphetamine in April.
“These numbers are getting out of control,” Canton said. “Maybe one day once we get a big-name person, they might start considering, ‘OK, you know what, we got to do something different.’”
As the big brother within his friend group, he said he has never used opioids recreationally and hopes other rappers will take steps to get clean as Nick did.
“I’ve just seen firsthand what it’s done to people, so, yeah, I don’t want to fall down that rabbit hole,” he said.
Nonetheless, Nick called it hypocritical for him to lecture kids to avoid drugs — admitting that he dismissed adults who told him not to as a teen. However, with the prevalence of drug overdose deaths within his inner circle, he knew that quitting early on his own terms outweighed the cons of popping pills and downing drank every day.
“You’re either on drugs for a long time, or you’re gonna die, you get me?” he said. “You have to stop one day, so why wouldn’t I stop now?”
©2021 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.