Singer Lady Gaga says she began to cherish her loneliness when she was 20, but admits it eventually led her to drug addiction. “I began to cherish my loneliness. I have, sort of, since I was around 20 years old,” contactmusic.com quoted Gaga as saying. The singer, who recently split with “Vampire Diaries” actor Taylor Kinney, said she was depressed in her youth but that pushed her into the music industry. “I was very depressed when I was 19. I decided to pursue music, so I dropped out of school and I told my parents I didn’t want any money from them. I got three jobs and I just hit the ground running,” she said. “I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me,” she added. However, Gaga’s life of solace in New York did lead her to start using drugs heavily and even though the drug is associated with partying, she started taking it on her own. “When I was doing cocaine, it was like the drug was my friend. I never did it with other people. It’s such a terrible way to fill that void, because it just adds to that void, because it’s not real,” she said. Eventually she decided to give up the drug.