The music superstar, whose best-known hits include My Heart Will Go On, Think Twice and It’s All Coming Back To Me Now, revealed her diagnosis in December 2022 as she cancelled her Courage World Tour. Stiff person syndrome is a rare neurological disorder that causes progressive muscular stiffness, which can cause spasms that can be “abdominal, can be in the spine, can be in the ribs”, Dion said. Dion told Today host Hoda Kotb on NBC that prior to her diagnosis, she was taking diazepam, a drug commonly known as Valium, to help relax her “whole body” in order to perform on stage – but that she was not aware of the consequences.
“I did not know, honestly, that it could kill me,” she said in her first broadcast interview since her diagnosis. “I would take, for example before a performance, 20 milligrams of Valium, and then just walking from my dressing room to backstage, it was gone already.” Dion said as her body became accustomed to the medication, she would feel her symptoms again after 20 minutes and thus began to raise her dosage.
“You get used to it, it doesn’t work,” she told NBC. The singer revealed she was taking up to 90 milligrams a day, an amount that can “kill you”, she said. With the help of doctors, Dion weaned herself off the medications, “especially the bad ones”, during the pandemic.
“I stopped everything because it stopped working,” she said. On reflection, Dion said she should have taken the time to “figure it out” ins.
