Getty Image / Jeff Schear
21-year-old rapper Juice WRLD died at a Chicago airport last weekend, collapsing from a seizure. According to mainstream media reports, the seizure was was ‘opioid-induced’ and caused by an overdose of Percocet.
It’s been suggested that the rapper took the lethal dose of pills in order to hide them from police who were searching his private jet at the airport and allegedly found guns + 70-pounds of marijuana, according to the Daily Mail.
TMZ is sharing news from a Daily Mail interview with the ex-girlfriend of Juice WRLD, real name Jarad Higgins. The woman, Alexia Smith, says the two dated for nearly a year and during that time it was normal for the rapper to mix Percocet, and opioid-based pain pill, with the street drug ‘lean’ aka sizzurrp aka Purple Drank.
The whole interview is pretty grim and it details how he allegedly slipped into a lifestyle of drugs after exploding onto the Hip-Hop scene over the past few years:
But the start of their relationship was a whirlwind romance with Smith flying out to Higgins in Los Angeles where he was taking meetings with various music labels that wanted to sign him.
Within days of arriving in LA, Smith claims she saw the drug-heavy world Higgins was being brought into, saying ‘someone from a label gave him morphine and cocaine’ on the third day she was visiting.
Smith said: ‘He didn’t do the coke but the point was, in the beginning, labels were fighting over him so bad they would have given him anything.’Soon drugs became at the ready for the rising star.
Smith said Higgins struggled with his mental health and was depressed, explaining that’s why he turned to drugs – mainly Percocet and lean – a mixture of codeine cough syrup and soda.
Eventually Higgins tried to hide his Percocet use from Smith, as she urged him to get clean, but said at most, she believed he took up to three of the painkillers at a dose of 30mg at a time. ‘[That’s] already a lot but the problem was he was drinking lean on top of it,’ she said. (via)
That sounds like textbook addiction. Trying to hide your substance abuse habit from someone is the telltale sign that something’s wrong. I had a friend who came over to our house (after college), crushed beers for hours but hid the empties in a closet because he was afraid we’d see how much he was drinking despite the fact that we were also drinking. Weeks later he was in treatment for being an alcoholic. Hiding something also causes that person’s anxiety to spike even further.
According to the interview, it sounds like the rapper Future had an effect on this behavior as well:
Rapper Future was a big influence in Higgins’ lean consumption, even telling the superstar musician last year his music inspired him to try the addictive drink when he was still a teen.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Future said he was shocked and was ‘really bothered’ by the confession, adding: ‘I was like ”Oh s**t. What the f**k have I done?” How many other sixth-graders did I influence to drink lean?’
She went on to share images from his secret Instagram account and detail erratic changes in behavior throughout the course of their relationship.
You can read the full account here on the Daily Mail.