Kanye West Opens Up About Beating Alcoholism: "I Beat The Devil"

Saturday, Kanye West and the Sunday Service choir made an appearance at Awaken 2020 in Tempe, Arizona. During his set at the evangelical rally, Kanye paired the performance with a few words for the crowd gathered before him.

While West has been consistently vocal about his transition from a secular lifestyle to one devoted to his faith, he switched it up just a bit when he opened up some more about his struggle with alcoholism. Alluding to his failure to realize that he was an alcoholic in the past, he blamed alcohol for his behavior during the infamous Taylor Swift/VMAs incident.

“I never thought about the effect alcohol could have had on my life. I was drinking on the red carpet, and then running on stage a few minutes later,” he said. “And everyone around said, ‘Nah, he ain’t really no alcoholic.’ And then you get to the point where you’re drinking Grey Goose and orange juice for breakfast, thinking, ‘Nah, I ain’t really no alcoholic.'”

He admitted that his battle with alcohol was a veiled one until he caught a habit one day while at this office.

“There was some vodka in the refrigerator at my office, and sometimes I would just go ahead and take a drink from it in the middle of the day, and I was walking toward that kitchenette area, and I stopped myself and I said, ‘Devil you’re not gonna finna beat me today,'” he recalled. “And it’s something that we take on, day by day. Every day that I don’t pick up that drink, I beat the devil.”