Adele is known for her tear-jerking lyrics — and apparently it’s not just an image to sell records.
The pop icon revealed she struggled with depression early on in her life and had a particularly rough bout with it after giving birth to her son Angelo four years ago.
“I have a very dark side. I’m very available to depression. I can slip in and out of it quite easily,” Adele said in a new cover story for Vanity Fair. “It started when my granddad died, when I was about 10, and while I never had a suicidal thought, I have been in therapy, lots.”
The “Rolling in the Deep” singer says she’s doing well now and hasn’t experienced that same level of sorrow since persevering through postpartum depression.
But the 28-year-old singer remembers how challenging the time after giving birth was for her, even though she never felt resentment toward her newborn like some mothers do.
“I was obsessed with my child. I felt very inadequate; I felt like I’d made the worst decision of my life,” she told the magazine. “It can come in many different forms. Eventually I just said, ‘I’m going to give myself an afternoon a week, just to do whatever … I want without my baby.'”
“A friend of mine said, ‘Really? Don’t you feel bad?'” she recalled. “I said, ‘I do, but not as bad as I’d feel if I didn’t do it.'”
The powerhouse vocalist, who is in the midst of her sprawling, critically acclaimed “Adele Live 2016” tour, also told the magazine that she’s never been tempted to try drugs since a family acquaintance died from heroin use when she was younger.
And while the singer admits she used to hit the bottle quite a bit while writing her music, she doesn’t anticipate she’ll go back to leaning on that crutch.
“I can see from an outsider’s perspective that I will never write songs as good as the ones that are on (her last album) ’21,’ but I’m not as indulgent as I was then, and I don’t have time to fall apart like I did then. I was completely off my face writing that album, and a drunk tongue is an honest one,” she told the magazine.
“But since I’ve had my baby, I’m not as carefree as I used to be,” she continued. “I’m scared of a lot of things now because I don’t want to die; I want to be around for my kid.”
Adele’s issue of Vanity Fair hits newsstands on Nov. 8.