Lil Nas X Says He’s Doing Better After Rehab And A Bipolar Diagnosis
Lil Nas X has finally given an update we had been hoping for. In a video posted this week, the Old Town Road hitmaker told fans he has spent the past few months in treatment and come out the other side with a diagnosis and a clearer head. “I’m doing much better. I’m feeling better,” he said.
A diagnosis he had suspected for years
The musician said he now has a therapist and a psychiatrist, and that they helped him put a name to what he had been living with. The diagnosis was bipolar disorder. He admitted he had quietly suspected it for a while and resisted facing it.
“I feel like I had known for the past few years, but I didn’t want to admit to it because I didn’t want to have to take medication,” he said. Then, in the kind of line only he could land, he added, “I’m already black and gay! Damn, God! I’m like living life on extreme hard mode.”
The joke had something real under it. This is the man who pole-danced to hell in the Montero video and sent the religious right clutching their pearls, yet carrying that much boldness as a young, openly gay Black artist comes with a weight most of us never see.
The road that led here
The update follows a brutal stretch. He was hospitalised after a late-night street incident in Los Angeles in August 2025, then arrested and charged over an altercation with police, to which he pleaded not guilty. In April 2026, his assault charges were dismissed under a mental health diversion, on the condition that he completes a two-year treatment program. He has spent the months since focused on recovery.
He saved some good news for us, too. New music is on the way, and he sounded genuinely lighter about it. “There’s less fear in my heart,” he said, thanking fans for “holding me down.”
It is a candid update from one of pop’s most fearlessly out stars, and a reminder that the hardest work rarely fits a headline. We are rooting for him. If any of this lands close to home, support is there.
In Australia, QLife (1800 184 527) offers free LGBTQIA+ peer support, and Lifeline (13 11 14) is available around the clock.
