Life After Overdose: Demi Lovato Tells All Following Scary Near-Death Experience In Raw Interview
Jan. 24 2020, Published 8:03 p.m. ET
Demi Lovato is well on the road to recovery and she’s opening up about the lessons she’s learned since her near-death hospitalization on July 24, 2018.
Ahead of the Grammy Awards this weekend, the singer, 27, sat with Zane Lowe for a raw and vulnerable interview where she discussed her upcoming performance, her recent hospitalization and some of her thoughts during and after that low moment.
“I feel really excited and I'm ready,” she said about performing her song “Anyone” this weekend. “I feel like I've been waiting for this moment for so long. Like I just want to go up there and tell my story... So I'm just going to do the best that I can,” she continued. “And it's only telling a fraction of my story, but it's still a little bit, and it's enough to kind of show the world where I've been.”
The song, she said, was recorded four days before the tragic incident, but in hindsight, she hears in her lyrics “a cry for help.”
“You kind of listen back to it and you kind of think, how did nobody listen to this song and think, "Let's help this girl." Because, and I even think that I was recording it in a state of mind where I felt like I was okay, but clearly I wasn't,” she told Lowe. “And I even listened back to it and I'm like, ‘Gosh, I wish I could go back in time and help that version of myself.’”
In fact, it was in the hospital that she realized she wanted to share the song with the world.
“I was singing this song and I didn't even realize that the lyrics were so heavy and emotional until after the fact,” Lovato explained. “And that's what kind of brings us to this moment is, I remember being in the hospital and listening to the song and it was about a week after I had been in the hospital and I was finally like awake, and I just remember hearing back the songs I had just recorded and thinking, ‘If there's ever a moment where I get to come back from this, I want to sing this song.’”
Overall, music, the “Stone Cold” singer shared, “has been a huge coping mechanism” for her. “It's been very therapeutic for me, but there's only so much that music can do before you have to take responsibility and you have to take the initiative to get the help that you need,” she said.
Lovato admits that she “wasn’t conscious” ahead of the hospitalization and didn’t ever think she would end up where she did. While she was down, she’d learn that there were more strangers than friends who would come to her aid and be “really helpful and beneficial” to her journey.
Since her experience, she has cut off environments that aren’t beneficial to her progress, but admits that it is “still a process” as the decision has to be made every time someone comes into her life.
Despite making better decisions, however, she’s aware that there is still room for “error in judgment.” “I think that it's just a part of growing up. As people come into your life, as you meet people, you learn for your entire life, red flags, things to look for,” she said. “Sometimes you get fooled. Sometimes you get into relationships that you think are healthy and then you realize, ‘Wow, that actually wasn't healthy at all.’ I kind of find that that continues to happen and it's just a learning experience at each time.”
Lovato also revealed she is a “part-time meditator,” which she often does ahead of events where she knows she may crash. She’s also taken off the tags and comments on Instagram to assist in her self-preservation and has started going to church.
Her happiest times, she revealed, are when she is around her loved ones.
Eventually, the pop star wants to start her own family, but as of now, is uncertain what that looks like, when it will be or even if she sees it with a man or woman.
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As RadarOnline.com readers know, the singer suffered a near-fatal overdose while at a party in her Hollywood Hills home one day after her trainer, who has since been fired, admitted the singer “wasn’t herself.” She was hospitalized in July 2018, entered rehab, and celebrated one year of sobriety in July 2019.
In preparation for her return to the spotlight, RadarOnline.com exclusively reported she was working on a “complete career overhaul,’ which included going to the gym and doubling up on Jiu Jitsu workouts “to get down to her fighting weight.”
