Bow Wow Opens Up On His Lean Addiction

Bow Wow Reveals He Was Hospitalized Due To His Lean Addiction 

Bow Wow recently appeared on The Art of Dialogue podcast and opened up about going through withdrawal after heavily using lean, also known as sizzurp — a combination of promethazine and codeine-based cough syrup with soft drinks — around the time he was collaborating with Omarion in 2007 for their Face Off album.

“I was on lean. I was sipping so much syrup,” he said on the show. “I was drinking that s— like crazy. If you go back and watch The Road to Platinum series on BET, you’ll see so many white styrofoam cups. I was losing my f—ing mind. That lean s— had me f—ed up. I was just always irritated.”

Bow Wow — born Shad Gregory Moss — explained that his addiction got so out of control that he was drinking “all day long.”

“No matter where we were at, we’re sipping,” he said. Although he said he doesn’t have an “addictive personality,” the “Shortie Like Mine” rapper’s dependency on the substance ultimately put him in the hospital.

 

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“We were on our tour, I was co-headlining with Chris Brown and the opening night was in Cincinnati. And when I got off stage, I collapsed,” Bow Wow recalled. “I went straight to Cincinnati University Hospital. My stomach was so f—ed up that I ended up going back home to Atlanta after the first show.”

“I’m sitting in the hospital not knowing what the f— going on, and when I get back home and the s— gets worse. I’m throwing up, I’m shivering in the bed, I’m sweating, I’m going through it,” he continued. “I didn’t know I was having withdrawals. That’s how much lean I was consuming.”

Bow Wow said his late publicist saved his image at the time, releasing a statement in hopes of keeping his lean addiction under wraps as he recovered and got his health back on track.

During the podcast, the rapper admitted that the health scare was a turning point for him. “My stomach was so f—ed up. It felt like someone just had a knife,” he said, motioning as if he was getting stabbed. “I never felt this type of pain ever in my life.”

Bow Wow then stressed that he no longer does hard drugs, noting that he sticks to “tequila and weed.” “I know my boundaries,” he said.