Celine Dion says she's been battling her rare illness for 17 years and, at one point, was taking nearly lethal doses of Valium to deal with the terrifying symptoms. The Canadian superstar opened up about her life-altering neurological disorder during her emotional sit-down interview with NBC's Hoda Kotb on Tuesday night, saying she should have stopped performing earlier to figure out what was wrong. The 56-year-old singer says she first began noticing symptoms of stiff person syndrome during her Taking Chances World Tour in 2008, as her voice faltered during shows in Germany and her body became more rigid.
"It (felt) like somebody is strangling you," she said. "It's like somebody is pushing your larynx..
. and you cannot go higher or lower." Dion says she and her team kept quiet about it because they weren't sure what was happening with her health.
"We did not know what was going on (with me). I did not take the time..
. I should have stopped; took the time to figure it out," she said. She told Kotb she was prescribed Valium to cope with her symptoms before receiving her stiff person syndrome diagnosis in 2022.
Dion says she began taking progressively higher doses of the drug so she could perform for her fans and built such a high tolerance that she was taking 90 milligrams a day at one point. "90 milligrams of Valium can kill you. You can stop breathing at one point.
The thing is that my body got used to it at 20 (milligrams) and 30 and 40, until it went up. And I needed that..
