Fergie has never made it a secret that she was once a pretty hardcore drug user. I’ve seen and read interviews where she’s discussed her drug usage, and she’s always made it sound like her teenage years (and perhaps her twenties) were a blur of heroin, crystal meth, cocaine, ecstasy and whatever else she could get her hands on. Though I don’t care for Fergie in general, I always gave her respect for her honesty.

Anyway, Fergie gave an interview to Times of London where she discusses even more details about her past. Fergie claims she had a “lost year” where she got caught up in the Hispanic “Cholo” gang. Fergie says about the time: “Oh yeah. It was very alluring, very romantic. Well, I romanticized it. I thought it was artistic. I still think gangsters are cute.” Um… Fergie? You’re still romanticizing it. Us Weekly has more excerpts from the interview:

Fergie opens up about her harrowing struggle with drug addiction in a new interview with the Times of London.

“It started with ecstasy. I loved ecstasy. Loved it, loved it. It was great at first, then it just went….” the Black Eyed Peas frontwoman, 34, says.

When high, she suffered from spells of paranoia and she blacked out the windows in her apartment, convinced she was under FBI surveillance. She also had delusions and once had an eight-hour conversation with a laundry hamper. Another time, a drug dealer held a gun up to her head as she tried to buy marijuana in a bad neighborhood in L.A.

Of crystal meth, which became her drug of choice, she says, “It ruins you.”

Fergie — who will star alongside Penelope Cruz in musical Nine this fall — blames some of her past troubles on being a child star.

“What happens when you’re a child professional is that you have to be, well, professional. You’re taught not to have tantrums, to always people-please,” says Fergie, who appeared in Disney’s Kids Incorporated from 1984 to 1990.

She admits, “That’s part of how I got into [drugs] later.”

Fergie says her “publicists get really mad with [her] for talking about” her struggles.
“But I don’t care,” she adds. “For me, it’s something I went through. It’s an epidemic, and it’s important to talk about it because it’s a very, very hard thing to stop.”

Fergie admits she’s still judged for her past even though she hasn’t used drugs in 10 years.

“I’m trying to get a thicker skin. I like to be aware of people’s perceptions of me, but when you put it as a priority, as a means to judging your worth, that’s when it can be dangerous,” she says.

“There’s no rule book on how to do this,” she continues.

[From Us Weekly]

While I doubt Fergie does hard drugs anymore, I think she probably still smokes pot and I’m positive she still drinks. A lot. A few months ago the rumor was that Fergie’s drinking and partying was doing serious damage to her marriage with Josh Duhamel. Josh strikes me as a really nice (albeit vanilla) guy, which Fergie claims she wants in a man. In the Times of London interview, Fergie sums up what she learned about herself during that wild time: “I started becoming attracted to qualities that didn’t involve guns and drugs and gangs. I changed my behavior through therapy and started becoming attracted to things like integrity and loyalty. Who would be a good father? Who would be a good husband?” Aw. That’s kind of sweet. Hopefully she and Josh make each other happy.

Here’s Fergie in Hollywood on August 11th. Images thanks to WENN.com .