‘I Thought I Was Going to Die,’ Says Lady Gaga
Pop singer Lady Gaga has revealed that she was once so addicted to cocaine that she thought it would kill her.
The singer told how she would lock herself in her room snorting "bags and bags" of the drug to get inspiration for her music. She also confessed that she got dangerously high on LSD as she strove for her now sky high pop career.
But the 23-year-old Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, claims that the one thing that saved her was her dead aunt’s ghost.
"I thought I was gonna die," she says in a new biography. "I wanted to be the artists I loved, like Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol - and I thought the only way to do it was to live the lifestyle.
"But then I realized my father's sister Joanne, who'd died at 19, had instilled her spirit in me. She was a painter and a poet - and I had a spiritual vision I had to finish her business."
The admittedly bisexual singer also revealed how, before she was a star, she stripped on stage during a song to get a bored audience to notice her and how the reaction created her crazy Lady Gaga image.
Gaga got so fed up at everyone talking through her song that she ripped off her skirt and shirt and sat at the piano in only a bra, pants, fishnet stockings and her shoes. Everybody stared at her, and started to listen to her sing.
"That's when I made a real decision about the kind of pop artist I wanted to be," she says.
This act soon became her trademark.
Still striving to become a star, despite her daring actions, she found her stage name when record producer Rob Fusari told her she reminded him of Freddie Mercury. A misspelled letter from Rob said “Lady Gaga” instead of “Radio GaGa,” and she became the wild performer that the world knows today.
But the star - who won two Grammys last Sunday - nearly became a drugs statistic as she still tried to make it big as a singer.
"My cocaine soundtrack was always the Cure. I would lock myself in my room and listen to Never Enough on repeat while I did bags and bags of cocaine," she said.
"It was about being an artist. I wasn't a lazy addict. I would make demo tapes and send them around. At the time I didn't think there was anything wrong with me, until my friends said, 'Are you doing this alone?' Um, yes. Me and my mirror."
"I'm a disaster with men," she says, also admitting that she was teased for being a lesbian at her strict Catholic school. "But I still believe I'm super-sexy."
Even after all the fame and fans – or “Little Monsters”, as she calls them - her closest companion remains her dead aunt. She dedicated her Fame Ball tour to her.
"I never met her - but she's been one of the most important figures in my life."