Lady Gaga is opening up about her mental health.
The 39-year-old Mayhem singer got candid about what happened just a few years ago during a cover story with Rolling Stone, out now.
During the conversation, she reflected on her mindset during the filming of 2018′s A Star Is Born with Bradley Cooper.
Keep reading to find out more…
“I did A Star Is Born on lithium,” she admitted. Filming for the movie took place between April through June 2017.
Lithium is used for a number of conditions, including mania (feeling highly excited and overactive), hypomania (like mania, but less severe), bipolar disorder, where your mood changes between feeling very high (mania) and very low (depression), schizophrenia and some types of depression, per Health Direct.
Later, on her Joanne World Tour, Gaga had what she described as a psychotic break.
That tour began in August 2017 and stopped in February 2018, with the last 10 shows being cancelled. At the time, she’d said she was struggling with chronic pain.
“There was one day that my sister said to me, ‘I don’t see my sister anymore,’” she reflected to Rolling Stone.
“And I canceled 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.… I feel really lucky to be alive. I know that might sound dramatic, but we know how this can go.”
She credited fiancé Michael Polansky as one of the reasons she’s been brought back to good health.
“Being in love with someone that cares about the real me made a very big difference…how do you learn how to be yourself with someone when you don’t know how to be yourself with anyone?”
Gaga added she now feels she’s “a healthy, whole person.”
She reflected on 2025′s Mayhem as well, saying: “It was months and months and months of rediscovering everything that I’d lost. And I honestly think that’s why it’s called Mayhem. Because what it took to get it back was crazy.”
“I’m not an adrenaline junkie anymore…I used to love that feeling,” she added of the first few performances on the Mayhem Ball Tour.
“I see all the fans, and I’m in this big dress, and the music is so loud and it’s very dramatic … and for 90 seconds, I have to talk myself out of a panic attack.”
“I’m panicking a little bit during ‘Bloody Mary,’” she noted of the intro section.
“The rehearsal of self saves me. Every cell in my body goes, ‘You know what to do.’”
For more, head to RollingStone.com.
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