Jeezy has revealed that he previously suffered from depression and didn’t even realize it as his mental disorder went undiagnosed for nearly a decade.
The trap pioneer pulled up to the Tamron Hall Show on Monday (October 16) to promote his Adversity For Sale memoir, and opened up about his mental health struggles.
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“I learned that vulnerability is power,” he said. “I thought something was wrong with me, thinking I come from poverty, this is just how it is. I didn’t understand trauma and all these different things so when I started to get the words for it, I started to understand and grab tools, [and] I started to become better.
“I started my journey and that’s why I’m expressing it and putting it in the book because I didn’t know I was depressed for like eight years of my life straight.”
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Jeezy continued to explain that he felt “numb” at times due to losing so many people close to him.
“You wake up and you just want to go back to sleep forever, you know?” he added. “And I was leaning into my vices. And that’s what street life does to you. You know what I’m saying? When you lose 200, 300, 400 people like gone forever, you just get numb.
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“And I wasn’t able to get in touch with my emotions and I was wondering why. Thank God for my kids, but there was a time I was just cold. That’s when I was Young Jeezy.”
Watch the interview below:
The Snowman previously opened up about his battle with depression during an interview with PEOPLE in August, recalling the “brief” moment he almost took his own life.
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The Atlanta rapper explained that as a teen he attended the Youth Challenge program in Fort Stewart, Georgia following years of dealing drugs and stealing cars.
The nine-month program taught him “structure” and helped him become “focused,” he said, but as it drew to a close, dark thoughts began to creep in.
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“I remember standing there and saying to myself, ‘Man, if you go back home and you don’t figure this out. Because I don’t want to end up like my friends,’” he remembered. “My friends became junkies and they were getting killed and all these things.
“So it was all this stuff in my head. It was for a brief moment, I would say at least about 10 minutes, I actually contemplated jumping in the water. I had never had suicidal thoughts, but I [thought], ‘Well, shit, if I just jump in the water, I ain’t gotta deal with this. I ain’t gotta go back home. I gotta do none of these things.’”
However, Jeezy said he didn’t go through with it because something inside him told him: “‘No, bro. You gonna have to man up. You gonna have to go back home. You got to figure this out.’” When he left the youth program, he believed he was “ready for anything.”
Meanwhile, the 46-year-old filed for divorce from his wife Jeannie Mai last month after two and a half years of marriage, which he claims is “irretrievably broken.”
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The former couple are reportedly still living under the same roof at their home in Georgia for the sake of their one-year-old daughter, Monaco.
