This article was originally published on PEOPLE.
West, 39, had been taken to the hospital by the Los Angeles Fire Department after police had responded to a 911 call placed by his doctor.
But according to a source close to the rapper, there were signs of trouble as early as Halloween. “He wasn’t making a lot of sense when he talked, and he was texting a lot of strange stuff to people,” says the source. “Not dangerous, but he just didn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Part of loving Kanye is that he sometimes is talking on a different level from you, and you just listen,” the source continues. “But this was a lot more alarming.”
According to the source, West would text and call around the clock. “When Kanye gets like this, he doesn’t sleep. So you’d wake up to like 20 texts. The more tired he got from not sleeping, the less sense he was making. He wasn’t in a good head space.”
It had clearly been a difficult patch for West. Two months before his breakdown, wife Kim Kardashian West had suffered a traumatic experience in which she was robbed at gunpoint and had millions of dollars worth of jewelry stolen from her in Paris. In November, the source says, he was dealing with the anniversary of his mother’s death.
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“The pressure had gotten to him and he didn’t handle it well,” says the source. “He made himself exhausted. But [the exhaustion] was a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.”
As the couple navigates this tough time, the source says that the rapper remains devoted to his family. “Kanye loves Kim very much, and he adores the kids,” says the source. “He would take a bullet for them. They’re his whole world. If [the family] can get through this, they’ll be so much stronger. I want them to be happy, and I think they will be happier together than they would be apart.”