Singer-actor Demi Lovato bares everything about her life in a YouTube docu-series titled ‘Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil’, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival on Tuesday. She spoke about what actually happened during and after her 2018 drug overdose.
The series has been directed by Michael Ratner. Let’s take a look at what all she spoke.
Her eating disorder
In the project, Lovato, 28, speaks about dealing with bulimia and how that was more to do with her career. “My self-esteem was really damaged from those beauty pageants,” she says, revealing she had made a pact with herself that if she didn’t win, “I won’t eat again”, reports people.com.
The docuseries introduces key people in the pop star’s life, including Jordan Jackson, her personal assistant, who made the 911 call the morning after her overdose.
“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 says.
Her friends were in the dark about her descent into hard drugs initially
‘Dancing with the Devil’ showcases the moment Lovato celebrates six years of sobriety on stage with Kehlani and DJ Khaled during her last tour.
Not too long later, she decided to drink again. “I picked up a bottle of red wine that night and it wasn’t even 30 minutes before I called someone that had drugs on them,” she says in the series.
“I’m surprised that I didn’t OD that night. I ended up at a party and ran into my old drug dealer from six years before,” she adds. “That night I did drugs I had never done before. That night, she reveals, she mixed meth, molly, weed, alcohol, and oxycontin. That alone should’ve killed me,” she says.
And just two weeks after, Lovato was introduced to heroin and crack cocaine.
Lovato also admits that she kept her drug use “very hidden” from everyone.
“I was really good at hiding that I was addicted to crack and heroin,” she says. Demi’s assistant thought she was dead when she found her after the overdose
After celebrating a friend’s birthday, Lovato said she was going to go to sleep around 5:30 a.m., but “the reality was that I called one of my dealers over.” The next morning, her assistant Jackson opened the door and found that “she was not waking up or responding.”
Demi was “legally blind” when she woke up in the hospital
Lovato’s younger sister Madison De La Garza recounts the moment she visited her sister and grabbed her hand, saying “I’m here and I love you.” In that moment, Lovato didn’t recognize her younger sibling.
Lovato later says she was “legally blind,” and, for the first time in the documentary, tears up as she remembers the first time she was forced to get her sober in order to see her sister.
Sexually assaulted the night of her overdose — and when she was 15
The star says her drug dealer “took advantage” of her and “violated” her after getting her high with heroin laced with fentanyl. “When they found me, I was naked, blue. I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me,” she says. “I was literally discarded and abandoned.”
That night brought her back to when she lost her virginity in a rape at age 15.
“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 said.
She is not completely sober.
“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 says.
Lovato reveals she still drinks and smokes weed in moderation but insists she has completely cut out hard drugs.
The show premieres on March 23 on YouTube.