Rapper Jeezy said his clinical depression went undiagnosed for nearly a decade. “I learned that vulnerability is power,” he told Tamron Hall on Monday.
“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.”
Jeezy told Tamron he also suffered from anxiety disorders, but no one talked about anxiety in the hood.
He documented his mental health journey in his new book, Adversity For Sale.
“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.”
The former cocaine dealer said he felt “numb” because he was losing so many people close to him.
“You wake up and you want to go back to sleep forever, you know?” he said. “And I was leaning into my vices. I was leaning and that’s what street life does to you. You know what I’m saying? It’s like once you lose two, three, four hundred people like gone forever, you just get numb.
“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.”
Jeezy recently filed for divorce from TV host Jeannie Mai after 2 years of marriage. They share a toddler daughter, Monaco.
Watch the video below.
