Vic Mensa has truly emerged as a social advocate with a voice. Just recently, he’s doled out pro-LGBQT lyrics on “Free Love,” publicly slammed Justin Timberlake for “benefiting from black culture,” and cancelled a scheduled appearance at a club for posting an anti-Black Lives Matter tweet.

But his newfound empowerment didn’t come without a major change. The rapper recently told the Phoenix New Times that speaking up coincided with his sobriety.

Vic Mensa, Sia, Kim K. and more make cameos in Kanye’s “Wolves” clip

He said:

“Getting sober. That’s always been of paramount importance to me, social issues and all, but when I was more wrapped up in drugs it was harder to articulate.”

“I was in a point of time since probably 2013 where I jumped from drug to drug as, like, a creative crutch. It was really like a handicap, but I got to a point where I just felt like I needed drugs to write, to be creative, and thought it was psychedelic drugs. I did too much mushrooms, to the point where I couldn’t even do it anymore, I would just have a bad trip. So this was sometime after that. But I was in the studio with some of my friends and we did acid and we started buggin’ out, somehow things just took a really negative turn. I just felt really low and at the bottom of it, and I was on the ground trying to sink into the floor. Then I went outside and I went to my car. It was near Halloween and I had this toy pistol in my trunk, it was part of my costume. And I’m just glad it wasn’t a real pistol. I was just thinking about bridges and all that suicidal shit. It scarred me for a while. I was definitely dealing with that bad trip for at least a year.”

Watch Vic Mensa perform at #JusticeForFlint.