Eminem appears on the cover of the new issue of GQ magazine, which has named him a “God of Rock,” alongside Lil Wayne, Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.  Inside the magazine, he speaks frankly about his addiction and recovery.  “Sometimes [sobriety] sucks and I wish I was wired like a regular person and could go have a f***in’ drink,” he tells the magazine.  “But that’s the biggest thing about addiction: when you realize that you cannot f**k around with nothing ever again.  I never understood when people would say it’s a disease…but I finally realized it really is.”

Explaining why he’s an addict, Em tells the magazine, “I’m very much a creature of habit.  If I’m used to waking up in the morning and having [a Red Bull], I could do it every morning for the next ten years straight until I find something else to move on to.  So if I’m used to taking a Vicodin when I wake up in the morning because I’m hungover from ­drinking or taking pills … The bigger the crowd, the bigger my habit got.”

At his worst, around the time of the album Encore, Em says he was taking between sixty to ninety pills a day, including Ambien, which he says “ate a hole through my brain” causing him to forget large chunks of that period.  What finally caused him to get clean, he says, was an overdose.  “I had a feeling in my arm that was weird, man,” he tells GQ. “Like, it really freaked me out.  So I went to some people I trust and said, ‘Look, I know I need help.  I’m ready now.’  I got a room in the same hospital where I overdosed, and I detoxed.”

Em’s latest hit “Lighters,” which he recorded as Bad vs. Evil with his Detroit homie Royce da 5’9“, partly celebrates his triumph over his addiction and his return to the top of the charts with the album Recovery.  Royce tells ABC News Radio, “He came back from an all-time low.  The kind of low that he was at, people don’t even realize.  He almost killed himself.”  Commenting on the success of “Lighters,” Royce, who dealt with his own issues, including a stint in jail, adds, “Us speaking on overcoming adversity, leaping over obstacles…something positive, I think it was a great move for us to make that kind of record.”

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio