The heretofore "normal" Jackson says in an interview that she's conquered a two-year bout of depression with a rather unconventional treatment: coffee enemas.
The piping-hot brew, Jackson tells Newsweek, helped wash away the "sad cells" in her body.
What was to blame for her melancholy mood? "My childhood, my teenage years, my adulthood," Jackson says, recounting one unusually traumatic incident, in which a white teacher made her feel bad for messing up a math problem.
Jackson says she'd break down in the studio during The Velvet Rope sessions and cry so hard she'd have to quit for the day. The album took six months to complete--twice as long as her previous recordings.
"I was very, very sad. Very down," Jackson says. "Couldn't get up sometimes. There were times when I felt very hopeless and helpless, and I felt like walls were kind of closing in on me."
Enter the coffee cure. "With the enema you can bring out the sad cells or--whatever it is--even stronger." At one point, Jackson says she needed an enema two days in a row to cleanse some particularly pesky sad cells.
After being juiced with joe, Jackson was able to get her life back in order. She's rekindled her relationship with estranged sister La Toya after five years. And although she hasn't seen Michael in two years "due to business," she looks forward to visiting Neverland and seeing her nephew for the first time.
Although she claims to be feeling better, we'd bet her handlers are percolating overtime now that the album is in chart freefall. Last week, Rope plunged out of the Top 10 after only four weeks. So far, the album is losing to Mariah Carey's Butterfly in the battle of R&B divas, and sales are way down compared to 1993's janet. Things are so bad that Jackson has fired her management team and publicist.
Besides, La Toya's back in her life. Better keep brewing, boys.