Demi Lovato reveals surviving the 27 Club sometimes brings on a sense of “survivor’s guilt.”
For those who are not familiar, the 27 Club refers to a group of musicians and actors who, unfortunately, passed away at the age of 27 – include Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Anton Yelchin and more.
Oxford Languages defines survivor’s guilt as “a condition of persistent mental and emotional stress experienced by someone who has survived an incident in which others died.”
Demi was a month short of her 27th birthday at the time of her near-fatal overdose – she also revealed how close a call it was: “I had three strokes. I had a heart attack. My doctors said that I had five to 10 more minutes [to live].”
Fortunately, she was able to pull through – but not without lasting effects that she suffers from until today, which includes brain damage that still affects her vision.
Demi is turning 29 this year and has repeatedly expressed how grateful she is for her second lease at life. However, in a new interview video, she revealed there have been times when she grapples with hurtful comments online that triggers her feelings for survivor’s guilt.
“Sometimes I still deal with like survivor’s guilt. There’s a lot of musicians that just don’t make it and I was very close to being one of them,” Demi said. “So at certain times after my overdose, where I have said something wrong or gotten attacked or whatever, and people come after me and say, ‘Oh, well I wish it would have been you instead of so and so,’ like that really affects me.”
“It got into my head so much so that I kind of started believing it for a while, and I think that’s why I ended up, you know, slipping, which I talk about,” she continued.
She now tries to see it from a different perspective – and is not afraid to ask for help when she needs it.
“And I think it’s embracing what I went through as a giant lesson for me. I will continue to live every day at my fullest potential because aside from some of the musicians and entertainers that haven’t made it, I think about my friends that haven’t made it,” she went on.
“Say I’m having a bad day today, I’m like, ‘You know, I’m having a really bad day today, and so and so is not here to have a bad day,’ so I’m going to either try to flip this bad day around or just like embrace it for what it is as a bad day,” Demi said. “Then use people for support. You know, call up my therapist. You know, it’s taught me a lot. I had to change my way of thinking, from survivor’s guilt to this was a lesson, and live your life to the fullest now.”
