Former Black Eyed Peas singer Fergie revealed that at one point, her crystal meth addiction was so severe that she hallucinated every day.
“I was [suffering from] chemically-induced psychosis and dementia. I was hallucinating on a daily basis,” she said in an interview with British publication iNews. “It took a year after getting off that drug for the chemicals in my brain to settle so that I stopped seeing things. I’d just be sitting there, seeing a random bee or bunny.”
She hit her bottom in the early 2000s, before she joined the Black Eyed Peas in 2003. During her worst moments, she was paranoid, hallucinating that the CIA, FBI and SWAT teams were after her. Once, she ran into a church seeking solace.
“They tried to kick me out, because I was moving down the aisles in this crazy way, as I thought there was an infrared camera in the church trying to check for my body. I bolted past the altar into a hallway and two people were chasing me,” she recounted. “I remember thinking: ‘If I walk outside, and the SWAT team’s out there, I was right all along. But if they’re not out there, then it’s the drugs making me see things and I’m going to end up in an institution. And if it really is the drugs, I don’t want to live my life like this any more, anyway.’ I walked out of the church; obviously there was no SWAT team, it was just me in a parking lot. It was a freeing moment.”
But she is thankful that this day happened, which she considers to be her bottom.
“The drugs thing, it was a hell of a lot of fun… until it wasn’t. But you know what, I thank the day it happened to me. Because that’s my strength, my faith, my hope for something better,” she said. “It’s so incredible, I know. I think I must have guardian angels.”
These days, Fergie is quite busy. She is the mother of a four-year-old son named Axl and she just released her new album, Double Dutchess.