Demi Lovato’s upcoming YouTube docuseries, Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil, just dropped its first trailer – and she’s revealing some pretty loaded stuff surrounding her near-fatal 2018 overdose.
“I had so much to say over the past two years, wanting to set the record straight about what it was that happened,” Demi says in the trailer. “Any time that you suppress a part of yourself, it’s gonna overflow.”
She then got candid about how dire her situation was at the time.
“I had crossed a line that I had never crossed before … I snapped,” she adds. “I had three strokes. I had a heart attack. My doctors said that I had five to 10 more minutes [to live].”
Thankfully, Demi was able to pull through – and has even made an inspiring musical comeback. However, it was not without lasting effects that she still suffers today.
During the virtual Television Critics Association press tour, Demi told reporters about some major health issues the continue to affect her.
“I don’t drive a car because I have blind spots in my vision,” Demi revealed. “For a long time, [I] had a really hard time reading. Reading was a big deal when I was able to read out of a book, which was two months later because my vision was so blurry, I dealt with a lot of the repercussions and I think they are kind of still there to remind me of what could happen if I ever get into a dark place again.”
While it does impact the way she lives her life, she chooses to be “grateful for those reminders,” which were part of what led to her personal awakening.
“But I’m so grateful that I’m someone who didn’t have to do a lot of rehabbing,” she added. “The rehabbing came in the emotional side and the therapeutic side internally. I did a lot of work after that, just not physical.”
After being the subject of many headlines following her near-fatal overdose in July 2018, and Demi said she felt the need to “set the record straight.”
“I wanted to reveal it all for my fans and say, hey, this is who I am and this is where I’m at today. And this is the journey that got me here,” she said. “If it helps you, then I hope that it can because that was ultimately my purpose in putting this out was to be able to help people who have been on the same path as I have.”
She also candidly reflected on her journey to recovery.
“I wouldn’t change a thing because everything had to happen in order for me to learn the lessons that I learned,” Demi shared. “It was a painful journey. I look back and sometimes I get sad that I had to endure to overcome what I have, but I don’t regret anything. And I’m so proud of the person I am today and I’m so proud that people get to see it in this documentary. And I couldn’t be more grateful to have someone by my side [director Michael D. Ratner] to help me do this.”
As for her learnings over the past two years, she’s come to a realization that “it’s so much more than just mental health.”
“My life is now about spiritual growth and how I can help everyone, even people who don’t have mental illnesses, how we can help elevate everyone’s vibrations so that we can live on a more positive planet,” Lovato said. “That’s how I navigate through my day is how are my choices today going to affect those around me in a positive way and how am I going to better myself today?”
Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil premieres March 23 on YouTube and will touch on her overdose and journey to recovery, her whirlwind engagement to Max Ehrich and their subsequent split, as well as her current sobriety, and even her recent decision to chop off her hair.
