Demi Lovato has amassed a great deal of popularity and fame since the beginning of her career. After her successful stint with Disney, she is one of many Disney kid stars that were able to make the transition from wholesome child actor to mainstream pop star. What many may remember is that a few years ago, Demi Lovato was in the fight for her life after overdosing. Back in 2018 on that tragic day, her overdose and near-death experience was all over the news, and was on repeat in the 24-hour news cycle of today’s media. But after her harrowing event was not the latest news anymore, how many people actually took the time out to learn why things got that bad for the pop star? After some time of being somewhat silent on her experience, Demi Lovato finally has opened up about just how bad things were for her, and what led her to that terrifying overdose. In the latest slew of YouTube originals, Demi Lovato finally gives an inside perspective in the docuseries Dancing With the Devil.
The four-part docuseries was just released March 23rd, and is an insightful tale of the side of Demi Lovato that even her biggest fans may not be privy to. “I’ve had so much to say over the past two years of wanting to set the record straight about what it was that happened,” Demi Lovato said in the opening of the series. Right before the overdose, Lovato was already making a documentary. Although that project has been shelved, some of the original footage from that project can be seen in Dancing With the Devil. What she says is that the film she was making was one that did not truly tell the whole story. She stated in the current docuseries that she was only allowing cameras to see “the tip of the iceberg. I wasn’t showing them what I was doing behind closed doors.”
The docuseries is produced by Michael D. Ratner and his company OBB Media — he says that the perception of what the public may think happened with Lovato’s overdose “is probably pretty far from what really did.” He continued saying, “What hasn’t been documented is the details of her life that led to that night. We provide that opportunity for you to have a whole picture here.”
The tragedy was anything but lightweight or easy to overcome after the fact, as the overdose caused Demi Lovato to suffer a heart attack and three strokes. “My doctors said that I had five to 10 more minutes [to live],” Lovato said.
One aspect that Demi Lovato explores deeply in the series is her complicated relationship with her father, and how his absence and own addiction issues have impacted her life and decision making leading up to her overdose. “Growing up my whole life, I longed for that relationship with him, and then I resented him because he was an addict and an alcoholic and was abusive to my mom,” Lovato said. What has been more troubling for her is that her family does not know the exact day her father died of an overdose himself. “By the time he was found, his body was too decomposed to have an open casket. He had been laying there, I think, for about a week and a half before anybody found him. And during that was Father’s Day,” she says. “Every summer now that rolls around, I spend it thinking, ‘Was today the day that my dad died?’”
She also suffers terrible guilt surrounding her mental health advocacy, juxtaposed with the mental health issues her father faced. “Here was my father, who had bipolar [disorder] and schizophrenia and then, on top of that, the disease of addiction, and I hadn’t helped him the way that I would’ve helped other people or the way that I have been preaching about.”
Lovato continues to tell the riveting tale of how many pressures in her life continue to surmount to unmanageable heights, and had begun to consume her. The only reprieve she found was in drug and alcohol abuse. From excessive drinking to heroin use, Lovato is vulnerable in her recant of wild nights and how it all ended up culminating with the 2018 overdose.
