After releasing her debut album Snow Angel recently, Reneé Rapp is opening up about the traumatic experience that inspired the title track.
During a recent episode of Jay Shetty's On Purpose podcast which dropped on Monday, Reneé spoke candidly about being drugged several years ago after a night out with friends.
The Sex Lives of College Girls star revealed she had just gone through a serious breakup and decided to go out with a new group of friends. Before she knew it, she was waking up in a bathroom stall in a hotel bar.
"I had blood on my pants and I was just so caught off guard," Reneé told Jay. "I was completely alone in a bathroom stall and I looked down at my phone and it was 5 a.m. I was like, 'What happened?' I had missed two texts from two people I was with from 10:30 p.m. the night before."
Reneé said the group of friends she was with, which included someone she was dating at the time, assumed she just went home early.
"I was drugged, and I had just been missing for seven hours," Reneé said. "I stopped being friends with those people and stopped doing as much partying as I was doing."
"I told my parents, told some of my friends. I explained it in a very matter-of-fact way, and they were all very concerned and I didn't even understand what was happening."
It took several months for Reneé to fully grasp what had happened to her, because for a while she said she tried to ignore the reality of the situation. She eventually decided the most therapeutic way to heal would be to write a song about it.
"I had been saying... 'I really want to write a song about this.' I recounted the situation so many times, and after the 10th time of telling a group of people that, you know, that you were drugged, and have no idea what happened...[and they just seem shocked or uncomfortable] then you kind of stop wanting to write that song."
Reneé refers to that whole year of her life as "inherent resilience."
"I still don't know how I feel about it," Reneé said of the traumatic experience. "I just know that I feel weird...and very resilient."
To learn more about Reneé and her story, be sure to check out her full episode of On Purpose with Jay Shetty below.
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You can also find Reneé kicking off her Snow Hard Feelings Tour starting Sept. 15. Her debut album is currently streaming on all music platforms.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-888-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.