Keith Urban Shares Words of Advice for Demi Lovato After Overdose

Demi Lovato was hospitalized after a reported overdose last Tuesday, and the singer hasreceived an outpouring of support from fans and fellow celebrities alike.

Country singer Keith Urban shared some advice for the 25-year-old, speaking on the Australian morning show Today Extra.

While noting that he doesn’t know Lovato personally, Urban said he would tell the singer, “Just [to have] good people around her and a willingness to want to live a different way if that’s what she wants to do. It’s all up to her.”

Urban has been open about his own struggles with addiction, telling Rolling Stone in a 2016 interview that while fans might look at his life and think he had an easy road, his journey has been anything but.

“They know me now as being married to Nic. They’ve seen me on TV. And they just sort of think, ‘He’s the luckiest guy in the world,’” he said, referencing wife Nicole Kidman and his stint as a judge on American Idol. He added, “There’s just so much s— underneath all that that you didn’t see.”

The father of two revealed that he first started using cocaine after moving to Nashville when his music career didn’t initially pan out the way he thought it would. After a girl he was dating broke up with him, things continued to spiral.

“It was a turning point. After that, s— started to really go awry,” he said. “I stepped up my drinking. I started doing more drugs. Yeah, man. The whole back end of the ’90s were just awful.”

“I’d go to sleep, wake up a couple of hours later, go at it again, drinking to take the edge off. I remember thinking, ‘I’m probably not going to make it until tomorrow.’ And then I thought, ‘F— it. I really don’t care. It’ll be a relief to not have to. I’ll take an Ambien and at some point, I’ll pass,’” Urban recalled. “I was taking everything. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, good, this is the end of it, yahoo.’ I was quite happy about it.”

The “Coming Home” singer credits Kidman for saving him, with the actress staging an intervention in 2006 which resulted in Urban completing three months of inpatient work. The trip to rehab was his third, but it stuck, and he has been sober since.

“I caused the implosion of my fresh marriage,” he said. “It survived, but it’s a miracle it did. I was spiritually awoken with her. I use the expression ‘I was born into her,’ and that’s how I feel. And for the first time in my life, I could shake off the shackles of addiction.”

Lovato has remained hospitalized since her overdose, and a source told CNN that the singer plans to seek treatment after her release, which will reportedly be “soon.”

A rep for Lovato previously released a statement saying the star was “awake and with her family.”

Photo Credit: Getty / Jason LaVeris