Demi Lovato Reveals She Had Three Strokes and a Heart Attack After Her Near-Fatal 2018 Drug Overdose
Screenshot via YouTube
Demi Lovato is letting it all out. The trailer for her new YouTube docuseries “Dancing with the Devil” dropped yesterday, and it appears that the series will pull back the curtain on the singer’s near-fatal heroine overdose in 2018.
But one particular soundbite sent shockwaves through the internet. In the trailer, Demi reveals that she had three strokes and a heart attack from her overdose.
“My doctors said that I had five-to-ten more minutes,” Lovato candidly tells the camera. Another friend tells the camera that Lovato “should’ve died.”
The entire series looks explosive. The trailer makes it clear that the series won’t shy away from difficult subject matter like drug addiction, abuse, and trauma.
One of the questions a producer offscreen asks her is: “Are you entirely sober now?” The audience is left hanging for the answer as Lovato stares blankly back at the person who asked her the question.
Various people from Demi’s life, including her parents, her sister, and her best friends pop up throughout the trailer.
Her entourage seems to be just as surprised as the rest of us that they’re talking about such private and controversial subjects. “Are we talking about heroine? Are we doing that?” one of her friends asks the camera.
At one point, her stepfather, Eddie De La Garza, admits that his daughter is “good at making you believe she’s okay.” Her sister, Madison De La Garza, echoes something similar: “Demi’s good at hiding what she needs to hide.”
At a recent panel in which she discussed the documentary, Lovato expanded on the extent to which the overdose left a physical toll on her body.
Therapy has saved my life in so many ways, and I wouldn’t be where I am today without it. There’s so much going on in the world right now, so we need to be taking care of ourselves and those around us.
— Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) September 9, 2020
“I was left with brain damage, and I still deal with the effects of that today,” she revealed. “I don’t drive a car, because I have blind spots on my vision.”
“And I also for a long time had a really hard time reading,” she admitted. “It was a big deal when I was able to read out of a book, which was like two months later because my vision was so blurry.”
But after it all, Demi says that she is ultimately grateful for the side effects, because they serve as a reminder of the dangers of her previous lifestyle.
“I dealt with a lot of the repercussions and I feel like they are still there to remind me of what could happen if I ever get into a dark place again. I’m grateful for those reminders, but I’m so grateful that I was someone that didn’t have to do a lot of rehabbing. The rehabbing came on the emotional side.”
It appears that the docuseries won’t solely focus on Lovato’s struggles with addiction and drugs, however.
In the trailer, we see a clip of Lovato excitedly talking about her engagement to Max Ehrich and flashing her ring to the camera. Right after, we’re shown post-breakup Demi, who is disappointedly lowering her ring finger. Seems like the series will be a treasure-trove of information about Demi’s life.
The first two episodes of “Dancing with the Devil” YouTube Originals on March 23.
