It's been a few years since Demi Lovato was hospitalized in June 2018 for a reported overdose. The singer has been candid about her past struggles with abuse, body image, and drug addiction, but now she's finally speaking about what led to the event that almost claimed her life.
"I have to preface it with the fact that I got sober at 19, so I got sober at an age where I wasn't even legally allowed to drink," Lovato said on The Ellen Show, after debuting her new song called "I Love Me". I got the help that I needed at the time and I took on the approach of a one size fits all solution, which is sobriety, just sobriety. And so my whole team took that approach and we did it. And we ran with it, and it worked for a long time."
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"I realized that over time as the things with the eating disorder were getting bad, I mean, over the years it got progressively worse and worse with people checking what my orders at Starbucks were on my bank statements. Just little things like that led me to being really, really unhappy," the singer explained. "My bulimia got really bad and I asked for help and I didn't receive the help that I needed. And so I was stuck in this unhappy position. Here I am sober and I'm thinking to myself, "I'm six years sober, but I'm miserable. I'm even more miserable than I was when I was drinking. Why am I sober?'"
Lovato goes on to explain that she reached out to the people on her team, who were supposed to be there for her, about the struggles she was facing at the time.
"They responded with like, 'You’re being very selfish. This would ruin things for not just you but for us as well'," she said. "And when I heard that, my core issues are abandonment from my birth father as a child. He was an addict, an alcoholic; like we had to leave him," Lovato said. "And I have vivid memories of him leaving so when they left, they totally played on that fear, and I felt completely abandoned so I drank."
"That night I went to a party and there was other stuff there and it was only three months before I ended up in the hospital with an OD," she said.
But, Lovato isn't dwelling on the past.
"Ultimately, I made the decisions that got me to where I am today. It was my actions that put me in the position that I'm in. And I think it's important that I sit here on this stage and tell you at home or you in the audience or you right here that if you do go through this, you yourself can get through it. You can get to the other side and it may be bumpy, but you are a 10 out of 10, like don't forget it. And as long as you take the responsibility you can move past it and learn to love yourself the way you deserve to be loved."