Lady Gaga says she was addicted to marijuana for years

NEW YORK, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- U.S. pop star Lady Gaga admitted on radio's "Elvis Duran and the Z100 Morning Show" she was addicted to marijuana for years.

"I just want young kids to know that you actually can become addicted to it," she said on Monday's edition of the popular radio program.

"I have been addicted to it and it's ultimately related to anxiety-coping and it's a form of self medication and I was smoking up to 15-20 marijuana cigarettes a day with no tobacco," she recalled. "I was living on a totally other psychedelic plain, numbing myself completely and, looking back, I do see now that some of it had to do with my hip pain. I didn't know where the pain was coming from, so I was just in a lot of pain and really depressed all the time and not really sure why."

The 27-year-old singer said she got to a point where she knew she "had to stop" because she was jeopardizing her health.

"You can fight. I do put that pressure on myself; I have to be high to be creative. I need that, that's an error in my life that happened for over 10 years," she said. "Can I be brilliant without it? I know that I can be and I have to be because I want to live, and I want my fans to want to live. I don't want them to torture themselves in the way I have. I want to show people that I will last past 27 and I will last longer, and so will you. I want to change this code in the atmosphere that in order to be remembered, I must die young. In order to be remembered as a legend, I must be dead first. This is unhealthy. The way that we [celebrities] are treated by the media, this is unhealthy. Not just me, I am just one of many people that are treated poorly by the media."