Vic Mensa Talks Mental Health Journey, Drops ‘Anxiety’ Freestyle

On Thursday (Mar.20) Vic Mensa hopped online to share his journey with mental health and how he combats depression.

In a clip posted to his Instagram, the Chicago rapper gets more vulnerable than ever. The video starts with the rapper, seated in his car, revealing that he’d just left his second Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. While the rapper has been sober the past for years, during the meeting Mensa said he finally discovered, “his addictions blossomed out of a lifetime of depression.”

The rapper went down the laundry list of prescription drugs he was given for his depression including, Zoloft, Prozac, Wellbutrin, Effexor, and Lexapro. He’s also participated in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), which supposedly helps “zap the depression away.” However, “none of that sh*t worked,” he said.

“Meditation is like my medication,” Vic Mensa Says

“I been doing ketamine infusions. I been smoking Ayahuasca for 10 years, I done smoked the toad venom, trying to beat my brain,” he laughed. Vic Mensa says after struggling to find the right medical alternative, he turned toward “self-destructive” behavior in his early years. However, mediation has been a great help to the rapper. “Meditation is like my medication,” he says.

In another post he made the same day, Mensa dropped off his own version of Doechii’s “Anxiety” freestyle. In the video, Mensa lies on the couch, with a therapist, as he bears it all. “Voice in my head, like Siri/ Bipolar in my jeans, like Amiri,” he raps. “My mind so cold, Siberia/I gotta fight like Tyson Fury, let me cook like Guy Fieri/ It’s a mental prison, need commissary.”

He continues: “A relationship with my depression, why did I get married? No Tyler Perry/ Hear Ye, Hear Ye read all about it/ The quietest one got the thoughts the loudest/ Fear for the day my flaws get outed.”