Kid Cudi Says His Mental Health Was ‘Darker Than Ever’ Before He Went to Rehab

Scott Mescudi, also known as Kid Cudi, talked about his experiences with anxiety, depression, and substance use at a fundraising dinner for New York–Presbyterian Hospital’s Youth Anxiety Center earlier this week. The rapper, 38, talked about how events during his childhood led to yearslong mental health struggles and explained how he finally got help.

“My father passed when I was 11, and things started to slowly get bad after that,” Mescudi said. He added that, as the youngest of four siblings, he often felt like an only child and rarely confided in his mother. “I was alone a lot, not really talking to my mom about what I was feeling. How do you come up to Mom, who’s dealing with four kids and your dad died and she’s taking care of everybody on her own?” Mescudi said. “My mom did a great job; there was just a lot for her to handle.”

Mescudi said that because he never opened up about his feelings, he got “really good [at] masking the madness over the years, being the youngest of four, staying in my place, being quiet, entertaining myself. It was almost like I was an only child, so to speak, at the time.”

Mescudi said he partied as a teen, but his substance use got worse after his music started getting more and more recognition. “It wasn’t scary until later on in my life, as I was Kid Cudi,” he said. Eventually his drug use became so overwhelming that he started considering suicide. “I was suicidal. I was darker than I ever had been in my life,” Mescudi said. “I’m thinking about, ‘How could I do this without my family finding out, without my friends finding out?’ Like I’m actually plotting my death.”

But this served as a turning point in Mescudi’s life, prompting him to seek help before acting on his plans. “That was what really scared me straight to the point where I said I needed to go get help…I want to live for my daughter, for my family, for my friends, for my fans. I want to live, I want this for myself. So, I made the choice for the first time in my life to go get help for what I didn’t understand.”

Mescudi entered rehab at age 32, after bringing up the idea to his manager, who was immediately supportive. There were a few bumps in the road—he said he tried to leave rehab three times while recovering—but eventually found ways to cope with his emotions without relying on substances. “It was a really good staff,” Mescudi said. “They made me feel really comfortable, and I didn’t feel crazy.”

In addition to helping Mescudi change his relationship with substances, rehab helped him set healthy boundaries around work. “Since rehab, I’ve been pacing myself with work. For example, I don’t drop an album every year anymore; I do it every other year,” he said. “That was one of the things that drove me mad up until 2016, because I was dropping an album every year and that took its toll on me.”