Lady Gaga Talks Sobriety, Ariana Grande, & The Healing Journey Of Chromatica

Lady Gaga is opening up about the healing process of creating her new album Chromatica — including weighing the very big decision to get sober.

In an interview with Zane Lowe, Gaga previewed some of the themes of her upcoming single Rain on Me, a collab with Ariana Grande.

She explained how some of the lyrics represent the harmful behaviors she was leaning on to cope with her pain:

“And you know what it’s also a metaphor for, is the amount of drinking that I was doing to numb myself. ‘I’d rather be dry,’ I’d rather not be drinking, but I haven’t died yet. ‘I’m still alive, rain on me,’ like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna keep on drinking.'”

Though she hasn’t made the decision to officially quit drinking, it was a consideration as she finished up the album. She went on to say:

“I’ve flirted with the idea of sobriety. I’m not there yet, but I flirted with it throughout the album. It’s something that came up as a result of me trying to work through the pain that I was feeling. But part of my healing process was going, ‘Well, I can either lash the hell out of myself every day for continuing to drink, or I can just be happy that I’m still alive and keep going and feel good enough.’ I am good enough… I’m perfectly imperfect.”

She did manage to quit smoking once the album was finished, which she described as “the most bizarre, beautiful thing that could have happened.” But the Stupid Love singer made clear that she doesn’t let destructive behaviors define her. She said:

“I think I forgive myself. I forgive myself for all the ways I’ve punished myself in private. You know, I’ve been open about the fact that I used to cut. And I’ve been open about the fact that I have had masochistic tendencies that are not healthy. And they’re ways of expressing shame. They’re ways of expressing feeling not good enough, but actually they’re not effective. They just make you feel worse. And you think that you deserve to be hurt. And you think that you don’t deserve good things. You think you don’t deserve happiness.”

Crucially, the 34-year-old has learned better ways of dealing with those negative thought patterns, and she hopes others who suffer from mental health issues can as well.

“Once I made deals with myself, you know, like, ‘You’re not doing that anymore. Now when you want to hurt yourself, if you wanna throw yourself against the wall and scream, you tell someone.’ I wish to not glamorize this at all to anyone that’s listening to this interview or watching this interview. You do not need to hurt yourself or be crazy to be a superstar. You don’t have to hurt yourself to feel better … The harder thing to do is to ask for help and to tell someone.”

What an amazing message.

As far as the Ari collab goes, the Oscar winner told Lowe the Sweetener singer’s friendship also helped to pull her out of a dark place. Acknowledging that the younger artist has also lived through incredible trauma, she said:

“When she came into the studio, I was still crying and she was not. And she was like, ‘You’re going to be OK. Call me; here’s my number. And she was so persistent. She would try over and over again to be friends with me. And I was too ashamed to hang out with her because I didn’t want to project all of this negativity onto something that was healing and so beautiful. And eventually she called me on my s**t. She was like, ‘You’re hiding.’ And I was like, ‘I am hiding, I’m totally hiding.’ And then this friendship blossomed.”

All of this radical honesty is making us look forward to the song — and the album — even more!!

[Image via Adriana M. Barraza/WENN.com & Ariana Grande/Instagram]