Flavor Flav is looking back on the height of his addiction, saying in a recent podcast interview that he spent as much as $2,600 per day on drugs at one point in his life.
On an episode of Spotify’s Off the Record with DJ Akademiks initially shared last week, Flav reflected on how he “maintained” himself during this particular six-year period in his life.
“I kinda kept it hidden,” he said. “A lot of people, you know, didn’t really know. They were trying to figure it out [like], ‘Yo, is he on something?’ and the whole nine. Because I never really let people know exactly what I was doing. I started letting people know what I was doing when I was getting tired of being like that. There’s a point and time in life where you get tired of doing shit. … Mainly when it doesn’t get you no place.”
Flav, who previously spoke about such struggles in his memoir The Icon, then got specific about the financial impact of his addiction.
“There was a time that I was spending $2,400 to $2,600 a day for six years straight. You do the math,” he said, adding that he also “sold a lot” but was his own “best customer.”
Drugs in general, Flav noted, were “easy to get on and hard as hell to get off of.” However, he sees his story as a sign that God wanted him to live so that he could go on to “teach people about the mistakes that I made.”
Earlier into the full interview, available here, Flav spoke with Akademiks in greater detail about “how fucked up” he used to be.
“I’ve been on coke and crack, weed, alcohol, cigarettes—for 18 years straight,” he said, noting that he maintains a sober lifestyle these days.
“I’ve been clean now, off of that shit, for the last 15 years,” he said. “I haven’t done coke and crack man for the last 15 years. Not only that but I’m proud to say that I haven’t drank alcohol in the last two and a half years. I haven’t smoked cigarettes in the last two and a half years. So I’ve been clean and sober. I still smoke my weed.”
On Tuesday (Jan. 31), Flav took to Twitter, writing, “Ya boy is always honest with who he was,,, and my sobriety has been a journey,,, but I’m here takin accountability And tryin to make sure y’all don’t make the same mistakes I did.”
See an excerpt from the aforementioned discussion below.
Last October, Flav shared a celebratory Instagram update commemorating two years of sobriety, telling fans he was “very proud of myself” and taking sobriety “one year at a time.”
