Rapper Eminem’s latest album chronicles the pain pill addiction that nearly killed him.

Controversial rapper Eminem (real name: Marshall Mathers) has just released Relapse, his fifth studio album and his first album since he kicked his near-fatal Rx addiction of five years. The 36-year-old MC has recently opened up to the public about his vicious battle with drugs, saying that at the height of his addiction, he took more than 20 painkillers a day, weighed over 200 pounds, and did various performances and public appearances that he has no current recollection of. In tell-all interviews with the New York Times, VIBE magazine and others, Mathers is candid and honest as he gives the painful details of his struggle; however, nowhere is the rapper more raw than on the actual album itself, which has Eminem’s face drawn out in prescription pills on the cover.

Eminem on the Pain of Addiction:

I'm just a hooligan

Who's used to usin’ hallucinogens

Causin’ illusions again

Brain contusions again

Cutting and bruisin’ the skin

Raise the scissors and pins

Jesus when does it end?

— “3 A.M.”

On the Mind of an Addict:

I seem to gravitate to the bottle of NyQuil then I salivate.

Start off with the NyQuil like 'I think I'll just have a taste,’

Couple of sips of that then I gradually graduate,

To a harder prescription drug called Valium like, ‘yeah that's great.’

I go to take just one and I end up like having eight.

— “Déjà vu”

On the Challenges of Recovery:

Maybe just a nice cold brew, what's a beer?

That's the devil in my ear I been sober a f***in' year.

And that f***er still talks to me, he's all I can f***in’ hear.

—“Déjà vu”

Mathers, whose best friend, the rapper Proof, was murdered in 2006, goes beyond music to criticize how the rap industry and Hollywood in general downplay serious personal issues such as drug dependence and clinical depression. In skits on the album such as “Dr. West” and “Steve Berman,” Eminem encounters physicians and label executives who brush off his addiction and clearly care more about his music than his physical and mental states. “In the hip hop community especially, you’re looked at as weak if you have a drug problem,” Mathers writes in an essay published in the June issue of VIBE. But now Mathers says he understands that addiction is a disease. Although the rapper has in the past penned many songs vilifying his mother for her drug abuse, he now says he has much more compassion for his mom, and hopes to educate his friends, peers and fans on the true nature of addiction.

While many of the events chronicled on Relapse – such as Mathers’ 2007 methadone overdose – are undoubtedly tragic, the album is actually one of hope and strength. Mathers has been clean since April 2008 and is doing things now that he’s never done before in his career, such as filming music videos while completely sober. And the same man who proclaims that he must “come to grips the fact that [he] may be done with rap” in “Beautiful” – a track that appears on Relapse but was written while Mathers was still using drugs – has rediscovered the fire inside that once made him a nine-time Grammy winner and VIBE magazine’s “Best Rapper Alive.” During his one year of sobriety, he has written enough material for three albums and will be releasing Relapse 2 later this year. Mathers says that he couldn’t work or make music while he was on drugs, and that led him deeper into depression and addiction. “Since I’ve been clean, I’ve accomplished in six to seven months what I couldn’t accomplish in four years on drugs,” the artist says in VIBE.

Relapse sold over 600,000 copies in its first week, a record for 2009, and is slated to go platinum within three weeks of its release date.