The world saw a star being born, but Lady Gaga saw herself dying. In a candid frank interview, the singer and actress has revealed that her most celebrated cinematic performance was filmed under the influence of drugs as her mental health spiralled towards a catastrophic break.
“I did A Star Is Born on lithium,” Gaga told Rolling Stone, about turning to the powerful mood stabiliser in a desperate measure to hold herself together. While audiences witnessed the raw rise of her character Ally, Gaga, 37, said she was medicating to stave off a collapse.
The professional triumph of 2017 - filming the blockbuster alongside Bradley Cooper while promoting her Joanne album - masked her descent.
The lithium, a drug often that’s also used to treat bipolar disorder, was a precarious tether to stability. But the pressure was relentless, and the subsequent Joanne World Tour became the breaking point. The end came not from a doctor's diagnosis, but from her loved one.
“There was one day that my sister said to me, ‘I don't see my sister anymore,'" Gaga recalled. ‘I cancelled the tour. There was one day I went to the hospital for psychiatric care. I needed to take a break. I couldn’t do anything… I completely crashed. It was really scary,... there was a time where I didn’t think I could get better.”
The Bad Romance singer traces the roots of this crisis to a culture of compulsive agreement to everything.” After years and years of saying yes to jobs, interviews, events… slowly but surely the word yes became too automatic and my inner voice shutdown, which I have learned now is very unhealthy,” she explained.
“I was not empowered to say no.” This environment, she asserts, was toxic and physically manifesting. “There were also symptoms, symptoms of dissociation and PTSD, and I did not have a team that included mental health support,” she added.
“This later morphed into physical chronic pain, fibromyalgia, panic attacks, acute trauma responses, and debilitating mental spirals that have included the suicidal ideation and masochistic behaviour.” Her message now is one of urgent warning against the same neglect.
“I needed help earlier. I needed mental health care. I needed someone to see not through me or see the star that I’d become but rather see the darkness inside that I was struggling with,” she said. Her survival is something she regards with stark clarity: “I feel really lucky to be alive.
“I know that might sound dramatic, but we know how this can go.” Now, grounded by her relationship with fiancé Michael Polansky, she is on the mend.
Being in love with someone that cares about the real me made a very big difference,” Gaga explained. “How do you learn how to be yourself with someone when you don’t know how to be yourself with anyone?”
