‘I can’t always control what my brain does’ – Lady Gaga says she is on anti-psychotic medication

Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, revealed this during a chat with Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1 on Tuesday, 11 August.

Gaga, 34, further revealed that she can’t always control what her brain does, but she has found olanzapine helpful. Olanzapine is a drug used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

She told Zane Lowe: I wrote a song on Chromatica called 911, and it’s about an anti-psychotic that I take and it’s because I can’t always control things that my brain does and I have to take medication to stop the process that occurs. I know I have mental issues and I know that they can sometimes render me non-functional as a human.

This is not the first time that Lady Gaga will be speaking about her mental health. She has previously opened up about being raped at 19, revealing that she went on medication for PTSD. 

Opening up at Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life In Focus Tour in Florida in January, she said:

“I had a psychotic break, I’ll explain what happened. Here’s my brain, here’s the center. And then, I was triggered really bad in a court deposition, and this part of the brain where you stay centered and you don’t dissociate, right? It went like this, she said, before slamming her hand down. It slammed down. And my whole body started tingling, I started screaming.”

Asked by Oprah where she was at, she replied, “I was in the hospital.”

“It’s very difficult to describe what it feels like other than that at first, you are completely tingling from head to toe, and then you go numb, but what is essentially happening is the brain goes. That’s enough, I don’t want to think about this anymore, I don’t want to feel this anymore,’ boom.”

She also revealed that she was evaluated by a psychiatrist, much to her initial annoyance.

“Can you get me a real doctor?” Gaga recalled asking.  “‘He was like, ‘Hey, so nice to meet you.’ And he sat down and I was like, ‘I need medicine, I don’t feel well. I can’t feel… help me.’ And then he just said, ‘I need you to explain to me what happened today.’ And I was so annoyed.

“But I’m telling you this story because even I, who run Born This Way foundation with my mother, was irritated that they brought a psychiatrist in to help me. That’s how gone I was.”