Singer Lady Gaga, whose given name is Stefani Germanotta, has opened up about taking anti-psychotic medication because she struggles with her ‘mental issues’ as a result of being raped as a teenager.
Lady Gaga made the revelations about her mental health during a chat with with Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1 radio station about her album ‘Chromatica’ on Tuesday, August 11.
She told Lowe that one of her songs “911” discusses her medication, olanzapine, a drug primarily used to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
The “Shallow” Oscar winner said;
I wrote a song on Chromatica called 911, and it’s about an anti-psychotic that I take and it’s because I can’t always control things that my brain does and I have to take medication to stop the process that occurs. I know I have mental issues and I know that they can sometimes render me non-functional as a human.
The singer stressed;
How can I use my humanity to focus on something that I believe to be infinitely more important than what I’ve been through? Which is what the medical community has done.
It made me think about the helpers of the world and how their mental states are and how they don’t necessarily have the help that they need. When this is all over whatever that means and things get better whatever that means, who will be there to support them.
Lady Gaga had previously opened up about her mental state revealing that she started using medications after being repeatedly raped at the age of 19, leaving her with PTSD.
The “Born This Way” singer reportedly suffers from fibromyalgia — a condition marked by widespread pain and cognitive problems — as a result.
Opening up at ‘Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life In Focus Tour’ in Florida in January, the star revealed that her symptoms became so severe at one point that she experienced a “psychotic break” that landed her in the emergency room.
She narrated the incident saying;
I had a psychotic break, I’ll explain what happened. Here’s my brain, here’s the center. And then, I was triggered really bad in a court deposition, and this part of the brain where you stay centered and you don’t dissociate, right? It went like this, she said, before slamming her hand down. It slammed down. And my whole body started tingling, I started screaming.
Oprah Winfrey asked where she was at that moment, she replied, ‘I was in the hospital’, stressing;
It’s very difficult to describe what it feels like other than that at first, you are completely tingling from head to toe, and then you go numb, but what is essentially happening is the brain goes. That’s enough, I don’t want to think about this anymore, I don’t want to feel this anymore,’ boom,’ she said, slamming her hand down again.
Lady Gaga said it was one of the worst things that has ever happened to her, explaining further;
I didn’t understand what was going on, because my whole body went numb; I fully dissociated. I was screaming, and then he [her psychiatrist] calmed me down and gave me medication for when that happens.
The star concluded that she want to do more to help others amid the coronavirus pandemic, saying;
I don’t lack self awareness and I do understand I’m not the only human on the planet that suffers and I think I have it pretty f****** good and I’m grateful for what I have.
