Lady Gaga has spoken up about the long-term effects of being sexually raped as a teenager, admitting she had a “total psychotic break” years after her claimed rapist left her pregnant.
In an interview for the Apple TV+ on mental health and the long-term impact of trauma, Gaga, now 35, detailed the attack.
“When I was 19, I was working in the industry, and a producer told me, ‘Take your clothes off,’” Gaga recounted. “And I declined. They informed me they were going to destroy all of my music when I left. They didn’t stop there. They didn’t stop asking me questions, and I just froze and — I don’t even remember what happened next.
“And I’m not going to mention his name,” she continued. “I understand the #MeToo movement, and I realize that some people are at ease with it, but I am not. I don’t want to see that individual ever again.”
In a 2014 interview with Howard Stern, Gaga said that she had been raped by a producer 20 years her senior, claiming that it was the inspiration for her 2013 song “Swine.”
“At one point, I was a shell of my former self.” “I didn’t tell anyone for I think seven years,” she remarked in 2015. “I didn’t know how to accept it. I didn’t know how to not blame myself or think it was my fault. It changed who I was completely. It changed my body, it changed thoughts.”
The “Poker Face” singer said in The Me You Can’t See that she was diagnosed with PSTD after going to the hospital for persistent pain years later. In 2016, she made her diagnosis public.
“I was in excruciating agony at first, then became numb. I was ill for weeks, and I realized it was the same misery I had when the guy who raped me threw me off, pregnant, on a corner, at my parents’ home, because I was vomiting and sick. I was locked up in a studio for months because I’d been assaulted.”
“The way that I feel when I feel pain is how I felt after I was raped,” she said. “So many MRIs and scans have been performed on me. Your body remembers, even if they don’t discover anything.”
Everything came to a head for Gaga with a breakdown, which she claimed took years to recover from. “I had a total psychotic break, and for a couple years, I was not the same girl,” she said. She canceled a number of musical dates on her Joanne World tour during that time period, roughly from 2018 to 2019.
She also received an Academy Award, which she mentioned, adding, “Nobody knew.”
Gaga is still struggling with the impulse to self-harm.
“It’s a really very real thing to feel like there’s a black cloud following you wherever you go, telling you that you’re worthless and should die,” she added. “And I used to scream and throw myself against the wall.”
The performer stated: “You know why it’s not good to cut? You know why it’s not good to throw yourself against the wall? You know why it’s not good to self-harm? Because it makes you feel worse. You think you’re going to feel better because you’re showing somebody, ‘Hey, look, I’m in pain.’ It doesn’t help. I always tell people ‘Tell somebody, don’t show somebody.’”
“Even if I have six brilliant months, all it takes is getting triggered once to feel bad,” Gaga concluded. “And when I say I feel bad, I mean I want to cut, think about dying, wondering if I’m ever going to do it. I learned all the ways to pull myself out of it.”
“I don’t tell this story for my own benefit because it’s difficult to tell,” she continued. “I’m very embarrassed about it.” How can I explain to people that I have a lot of money, a lot of power, and I’m unhappy? How do you go about doing that? I’m not here to tell you my tale because I want you to feel sorry for me. I’m ok. However, open your heart to someone else. Because, believe me, I’ve been there, and folks need assistance. So, being able to communicate to you is part of my recovery.”
She released her first album The Fame in 2008, two years after surviving the assault, and has since become a worldwide superstar, with five US No 1 records. She also began acting, most notably in 2018’s A Star Is Born, for which she received an Oscar nomination.
