The rapper recounts her struggles with substance abuse and anxiety in her new memoir ‘Who’s That Girl?’ excerpted exclusively in this week’s PEOPLEEve is opening up about her 2007 DUI arrest.
In her new memoir, Who’s That Girl?, excerpted exclusively in this week’s PEOPLE, the rapper, 45, recounts how the accident happened after a night out celebrating her new single at the time, “Tambourine.”
“It was definitely a crazy time,” Eve tells PEOPLE. “When I really look back and reflect, I really wasn’t anchored. I was just trying to figure it out.”
When Eve left the nightclub that evening, she rammed her Maserati into a center divider in Hollywood. She was arrested and taken to jail, where actor Sean Penn showed up offering to bail her out.
Earlier in the night, Eve had invited Penn, 64 — and everybody else who was at the club with her — to her home for an afterparty. He showed up to her empty home, where her cousin told him Eve had been arrestedWhile Eve was appreciative of Penn’s offer, she couldn’t accept it.
“I think I had sobered up and was like, ‘No this is crazy,’” she says. “By that time, I didn’t want to see anybody but my manager. I was also just so embarrassed, so I was like, ‘I definitely am not walking out with this guy.’ I was so grateful he came, obviously, but I also was just like, ‘Whoa, what have you done now?'”
Eve was sentenced to 56 days of probation, which included mandatory AA meetings and an ankle monitor. She sees the crash now as “a sign.”
“If I hadn’t had those moments, I would never have been able to comb through the reasons why I was drinking so much, why I wanted to numb myself so much,” she says. “I feel like it saved my life.”
Prior to the crash, Eve had previously had a similar wake-up call on the Ruff Ryders/Cash Money tour of 2000. Her struggles with anxiety, combined with her cycle of smoking weed and drinking daily, caused her to have a nervous breakdown in her hotel room.
“I was exhausted,” she says. “I wasn’t taking care of myself mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically. I’d literally reached the end of the rope, and I think my physical body just couldn’t take it anymore. I heard this scream I had never heard from myself before.”After taking a break to refuel, she returned the next year with massive hits “Who’s That Girl” and her Grammy-winning Gwen Stefani collab “Let Me Blow Ya Mind.” She also made her first foray into acting in the 2002 film Barbershop.
Eve says her breakdown on the tour taught her to recognize her limits.
“It helped me to be able to say no without feeling guilty,” she says. “While I still go for things, I definitely feel like if it’s not meant to be, it’s not meant to be.”To keep herself feeling her best now, Eve — who lives in London with her husband, British businessman Maximillion Cooper, 52, his four kids from a previous marriage, and their son Wilde Wolf, 2½ — sees her acupuncturist “religiously.”
“I do not miss an appointment because it just helps my life,” she says. “But I’m also into energy healing. I am into crystals and chakras and incense and all kinds of things. I do believe in prayer as well. I meditate sometimes — not as much as I should. I really need to get that together. Another thing I love to do is walk.”
Who’s That Girl? is out Sept. 17. It’s available for preorder now, wherever books are sold