Lana Del Rey: ‘I was sent to boarding school age 14 to get sober’

Singer opens up about her alcohol problem in controversial GQ naked cover issue

Lana Del Rey has revealed she suffered from an alcohol addiction when she was younger, and was sent to boarding school by her parents to get sober.

The ‘Video Games’ singer made the stark revelation in an interview with GQ, in the issue the singer came under-fire for earlier this week for appearing naked on its front cover.

While dispelling rumours of her past put to her by the interviewer, Del Rey revealed that her parents sent her to Kent school, a strict boarding school in Connecticut, at the age of 14 to help kick her drinking habit.

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She said: “I was a big drinker at the time. I would drink every day. I would drink alone. I thought the whole concept was so fucking cool. A great deal of what I wrote on ‘Born To Die’ is about these wilderness years.

“My parents were worried, I was worried. I knew it was a problem when I liked it more than I liked doing anything else. I was like, ‘I’m fucked. I am totally fucked’.”

She continued:

Like, at first it’s fine and you think you have a dark side – it’s exciting – and then you realise the dark side wins every time if you decide to indulge in it. It’s also a completely different way of living when you know that…a different species of person. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me.

Lana Del Rey drew heavy criticism last week for posing naked on the cover of GQ magazine. The singer was named as the magazine’s woman of the year on Tuesday (September 4) and is pictured alongside Tinie Tempah, Robbie Williams, Mad Men actor John Slattery and James Corden on the magazine’s cover. However, all the men are dressed in suits, while Del Rey isn’t wearing anything at all.

The cover has attracted criticism from across Twitter and from online magazine Jezebel, which called the cover “internalized sexism”. Del Rey has also been criticised for the photographs that accompany the feature, with one showing a man with his hand around her neck.

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