Jeezy had no idea he was depressed for “eight years straight.”
The 46-year-old rapper has put pen to paper to share his battle with his mental health in the memoir Adversity for Sale, and he’s opened up about how growing up in poverty in Georgia meant he wasn’t adept at understanding his trauma.
“I learned that vulnerability is power. 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, 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,” he said on the “Tamron Hall Show.”
Jeezy struggled to get out of bed and was “leaning into his vices” and explained how the violence he witnessed in his local community affected him.
“And that’s what street life does to you. When you lose 200, 300, 400 people like gone forever, you just, you get numb. And I wasn’t able to get in touch with my emotions and I was wondering why,” he said.
The father of four admits it was his children who made him take better care of his mental health.
“Thank God for my kids, but there was a time I was just cold. That’s when I was Young Jeezy,” he said.
Jeezy’s memoir comes amid his marital split from Jeannie Mai Jenkins. The trap icon filed for divorce in September.
