Doja Cat aired years of private struggles in an unfiltered TikTok confessional on Monday.
The 30-year-old Grammy winner, born Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, posted three videos to the platform in which she acknowledged past cocaine use, drinking problems, self-hatred rooted in childhood, and the toll of undiagnosed mental illness amplified by social media. The “Say So” singer framed the disclosure as overdue, telling viewers she needed to unburden herself after keeping up appearances for most of her life.
“I have struggled with cocaine — could’ve been like eight years ago,” she said in the first video. “But I’m well past that. Thank God.”
The Los Angeles-based artist tied much of her difficulty to conditions she did not understand until recently. She described how undiagnosed mental illness combined with social media created destructive patterns she believes remain widely misunderstood.
“I think that it’s important that we take that into account when we see things on the internet … about ourselves that are negative,” she explained.
In a second TikTok video, Doja Cat shifted to alcohol, offering a pointed warning drawn from personal experience.
“The best example for my experience is using the internet as a means of validation to the negative thoughts in my head, which were then brought on by drinking alcohol,” she revealed.
She drew a sharp distinction between substances. “I’ve never had a real problem with drugs, except for weed, but alcohol is something that I definitely have had a problem with,” she said. “I was never an alcoholic but I definitely had problems. So if I can teach anybody anything, I will tell you that it’s not good to pair these two things together.”
The pop star appended a light note to that upload, writing in on-screen text: “sorry about all the pauses throughout the vid my cat was being an innocent menace to society.”
The third video addressed accusations from some fans that she hates being a Black woman. Doja Cat, who is biracial, traced those feelings to early childhood.
“I think I hated myself since I was — could have been like 8 years old. And that was when I moved to my predominantly white neighborhood,” she shared.
She wrapped the series with blunt finality. “I just felt like this TikTok was necessary and I need to get this s–t off of my chest. Today felt like the right day.”
The disclosures follow a March TikTok in which Doja Cat announced she had been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. In that earlier video, she described a lifetime of performance and suppression.
“I’ve learned from a very young age to pretend that I like stuff, to pretend that I’m happy, to pretend that I don’t like stuff that I do, to appear like everything is okay,” she said at the time. “I’ll get it done. And it caught up with me, and I think it always does for people. I’m now struggling with BPD.”
She noted then that she had been in therapy “for years now” to manage what she called her “agonizing condition.”
The Monday videos mark her most extensive public accounting of how those untreated conditions intersected with substance use and online behavior during her rise to fame.