Demi Lovato’s highly anticipated docuseries, Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil, premiered on Tuesday, March 16 at the SXSW Film Festival. Here she gave fans and viewers an in-depth look at her life’s experiences, specifically before, during, and after her controversial overdose in 2018.
Here are some of the biggest bombshells from her YouTube documentary directed by Michael Ratner:
She has a lifelong battle with her eating disorder
The 28-year-old celeb spoke about her battle with bulimia. She said, “My self-esteem was really damaged from those beauty pageants.” She even claimed she made a promise with herself that if she lost, “I won’t eat again.”
Her personal assistant and the one who called 911 during her overdose, Jordan Jackson, said, “There were times I had to spend the night because she ate a cookie. There were times I felt like she was miserable.”
She never had a real cake on her birthday for years but on her 28th birthday, her new management team celebrated with real cakes for her.
“Any time that you suppress a part of yourself, it’s going to overflow at some point. That’s ultimately what happened to me in a lot of areas in my life, and it’s what led to my overdose for sure,” she said.
Demi’s 2018 relapse
The singer celebrated six years of sobriety onstage during a concert with DJ Khaled on March 2018 when she experienced relapse and had “drugs and alcohol” after a photo shoot.
She recalled, “I don’t even know why I’m sober anymore. I am so miserable. I’m not happy. I have all this stuff that I’m dealing with. I picked up a bottle of red wine that night and it wasn’t 30 minutes before I called someone who I knew had drugs on them. I’m surprised I didn’t OD that night.”
She continued, “I just so happened to run into my old drug dealer from six years before and, like, the odds of that happening were crazy and he had a duffel bag and I just went to town. I went on a shopping spree. That night I did drugs that I’d never done before. I had never done meth before, I tried meth. I mixed it with molly, with coke, weed, alcohol, oxycontin. And that alone should’ve killed me.”
She became addicted to heroin
Demi revealed that two weeks after her relapse she was “introduced to heroin and crack cocaine. I started using recreationally and obviously you can’t do that with heroin before you become addicted to it.”
She realized that she became “physically dependent” to heroin during her trip to Bali which inspired her to write “Sober” in 2018. On that same year she had her Tell Me You Love Me World Tour and throughout her tour she was able to manage her addiction. However, “she was heavily using” the substance again when she got back to Los Angeles. None of her family or friends knew about it.
Demi was sexually abused
The singer also talked about being sexually assaulted when she was just 15 and during the night she had overdose. She said that she became high with heroin laced with fentanyl and her drug dealer took advantage of her and violated her.
She said, “When they found me, I was naked, blue. I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me. I was literally discarded and abandoned.”
In addition, she was raped at 15. She revealed, “When I was a teenager, I was in a very similar situation. I lost my virginity in rape. I called that person back a month later and tried to make it right by being in control. All it did was make me feel worse.”
She’s not completely sober
Demi admitted that she’s not completely sober and drinks and smokes weed moderately but cut out hard drugs. She said, “I’ve learned that shutting a door on things makes me want to open the door even more. I’ve learned that it doesn’t work for me to say ‘I’m never gonna do this again.'”
She shared, “Telling myself I can never have a drink or smoke marijuana is setting myself up for failure because I am such a black-and-white thinker.”
Do you want to know more? Tune in to Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil which premieres on YouTube on March 23. Meanwhile, her new album, Dancing with the Devil… The Art of Starting Over, is scheduled for release on April 2.
