Lady Gaga's puffing is in the past.
While discussing her deeply personal album "Chromatica," which is set to be released next week, the singer opened up about the effects recording had on her — even getting her to quit smoking.
"I smoked the whole way through making this record," she told Zane Lowe on his Apple Music show. "And when we were done, I stopped. It was the most bizarre, beautiful thing that could have happened, that this music actually healed me. You don't understand how I feel, what I've been through. And I was in this endless state of 'I'm being attacked.'"
Not only did she quit smoking, but Gaga also considered giving booze the boot, she said.
"I don't take any pain medication, because it's not healthy for me," she's said, "but I've flirted with the idea of sobriety. I'm not there yet, but I flirted with it throughout the album."
The 11-time Grammy winner said the song "911," which is about an "antipsychotic" drug she takes, made her think about her vices.
"It's something that came up as a result of me trying to work through the pain that I was feeling," she said. "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."
She soon realized, "I am good enough. It's not perfect, but wabi-sabi. I'm perfectly imperfect."
Throughout the process of making the album, Gaga found some catharsis and a way of dealing with traumas — some of which were self-inflicted.
"I think I forgive myself," she added. "I forgive myself for all the ways I've punished myself in private. 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."