Lady Gaga appeared on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM talk show on Tuesday and recalled getting raped when she was 19 years old.
She was hesitant to talk about it at first, but she revealed that “Swine” and her vomit performance of the song while kicking off SXSW this year is about her experience.
Gaga said because of it, she’s been through mental, physical and emotional therapy “to heal over the years,” Daily News reports.
“I was a shell of my former self at one point. I was not myself,” she said, admitting it took her about five years to deal with its effects. “To be fair, I was about 19. I went to Catholic school and then all this crazy stuff happened, and I was going, 'Oh, is this just the way adults are?'... I was very naïve."
She also admitted she used alcohol to self-medicate after denying it to herself for a long time.
Gaga explained the performance, during which her dancers vomited on her, saying she needed to “release” her “rage and fury and passion.”
“I want this chick to throw up on me in front of the world so that I can tell them, you know what? You could never, ever degrade as much as I could degrade myself, and look how beautiful it is when I do,’” she said.
image via Nancy Rivera/ACE/INFphoto.com