In This month’s Opera News, soprano Andrea Gruber details her out-of-control career in the 1990s. “I took those drugs, and things spiraled out of control from there. I may have had a voice at that time, but I had no technique. And when you take enough drugs, you’re completely numb. You can’t breathe properly. I wound up pushing so hard on my throat that my cords would swell, and I had to take cortisone to get the swelling down. So there I was with no technique, and I was stoned out of my gourd, and they were shooting me up with cortisone. One day I’d be in great shape, and things would work, and the next day I couldn’t phone it in. Try having a career when one day you’re phenomenal and the next you’re not hirable — you can’t be put on the stage.”