Selena Gomez Talked About Having A Psychotic Break And Having To Re-Learn Certain Words After Going On A Meds Detox

November 3, 2022 / Posted by:

Selena Gomez covers the December issue of Rolling Stone to promote her new AppleTV+ documentary, Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me. The doc, directed by Alex Keshishian (he made 1991’s Madonna: Truth or Dare) explores Selena’s mental health struggles. In the Rolling Stone interview, 30-year-old Selena talks about her 2018 psychotic episode and bipolar disorder diagnosis. Selena says that, after her breakdown, doctors put her on a bunch of drugs, and “there was no part of me that was there anymore.” Eventually, she found a psychiatrist who took her off all but two medications, but detox hit her hard. Selena says she had to learn how to remember certain words, and would often forget where she was. Scary! The only memory Selena should want to get rid of is Justin Bieber. Eternal Sunshine that guy right on outta there!

As we know, Selena’s dealt with many health scares over the past decade. She had to get a kidney transplant due to complications from lupus in 2017. Then there’s her mental health. In 2020, she went public with her bipolar diagnosis. She’s also been open about her depression and anxiety (which wasn’t helped by/didn’t help her lupus). Selena tells Rolling Stone that she’s been to four treatment centers. She says things got “really dark” in her early 20s when she began suffering dramatic highs and lows. During her manic phases, Selena became convinced that she needed to buy everyone she knew a car because “I have a gift and I wanted to share it with people.” When she was depressed, she wouldn’t be able to get out of bed. Selena admits she spent years contemplating suicide and truly believed “the world would be better if I wasn’t there.” 

Selena first got the idea to make a documentary after watching Madonna: Truth or Dare. Coincidentally, that movie had been directed by her manager’s brother, Alex Keshishian. Selena asked Alex if he’d make a doc about her 2016 tour Revival. He said he would, but she’d need to give him “full access to everything” like Madonna had. She said she would, and she did. But when things got rough with Selena’s mental health, Alex could sense she was uncomfortable. Eventually, Selena left the tour halfway through, and the movie was shelved.

In 2018, Selena began hearing voices, which eventually drowned out the real world and triggered a psychotic episode. She spent several months in a treatment facility “suspended in paranoia,” and remembers very little of this time. Her friends have told her she was unrecognizable, and her mom, Mandy Teefey, learned about the breakdown from TMZ. Selena tells the interviewer that one of the scariest things about psychosis is that nobody can predict when it’ll end. It could be days, weeks, or never. Eventually, Selena found herself slowly “walking out of psychosis.” Doctors diagnosed her with bipolar disorder and plied her with meds that zonked her out:

She got better, sort of. “It was just that I was gone,” she says, explaining the effect the drugs had on her. “There was no part of me that was there anymore.” After she left the facility, she found a psychiatrist who realized she was on a lot of medications she shouldn’t have been on and pulled her off all but two. Slowly, she felt herself starting to come back. “He really guided me,” says Gomez. “But I had to detox, essentially, from the medications I was on. I had to learn how to remember certain words. I would forget where I was when we were talking. It took a lot of hard work for me to (a) accept that I was bipolar, but (b) learn how to deal with it because it wasn’t going to go away.”

Selena notes that staying on those two drugs for her bipolar disorder means she likely won’t be able to carry her own children. But she’s convinced that “however I’m meant to have them, I will.” After her breakdown, Selena tried to ground herself through philanthropy (she’s said she eventually wants to quit showbiz, have kids, and focus on charity) and learning more about social justice issues. She started the Rare Impact Fund, which aims to raise $100 million for mental-health education.

In 2019, she traveled to Kenya on behalf of the WE Foundation and invited Alex Keshishian to film it. He kept filming her when she returned to America, during the pandemic, when her lupus came out of remission, and when she faced more mental health struggles. Alex says he wasn’t always comfortable filming, but Selena insisted he kept going:

The documentary is so raw that Gomez almost didn’t sign off on its release. “I’m just so nervous,” she says of that prospect, pulling her bare feet up onto the chair. “Because I have the platform I have, it’s kind of like I’m sacrificing myself a little bit for a greater purpose. I don’t want that to sound dramatic, but I almost wasn’t going to put this out. God’s honest truth, a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure I could do it.”

Rolling Stone says the documentary isn’t “a puff piece or vanity project.” They describe scenes where Selena doesn’t get out of bed, lashes out at her friends, completely disassociates, and loses it in the middle of a press tour. Selena adds that while it’s tempting to look at her thirties as a fresh start, she knows that’s not how mental illness works:

“I don’t have another reinvention story,” she tells me. “I’m 30, and I’m going to go through moments in my life.” If there is a silver lining, it’s this: “I remind myself that I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the psychotic break, if it wasn’t for my lupus, if it wasn’t for my diagnosis. I think I would just probably be another annoying entity that just wants to wear nice clothes all the time. I’m depressed thinking about who I would be.”

Here are more pics from Selena’s Rolling Stone shoot:

And some behind-the-scenes video, as well as the trailer for her documentary:

I will probably watch Selena’s documentary cuz I pay for AppleTV+, but have only ever used it to watch Severance. Gotta get my money’s worth! But I swear, if Selena doesn’t pay homage to Truth or Dare by giving a water bottle BJ, I’m unsubscribing!

Pic: Rolling Stone

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