Demi Lovato’s mother has broken her silence about her pop star daughter’s overdose and subsequent hospitalization earlier this summer.
“It’s still a really difficult thing to talk about,” Dianna de la Garza said Tuesday on Newsmax TV. “I literally start to shake a little bit when I start to remember what happened that day.”
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She said she remembers getting bombarded with texts from friends and families wishing Lovato well and expressing concern for her, but it wasn’t until she received a call from Lovato’s assistant that she learned what had happened.
“So, I was in shock. I didn’t know what to say. It was just something that I never, ever expected to hear, as a parent, about any of my kids,” de la Garza said.
When she asked if Lovato was OK, the assistant told her that she was conscious but not speaking. “I knew at that point that we were in trouble,” she added.
De la Garza then broke the news to Lovato’s sister, Dallas, who drove the two of them to Cedars-Sinai Hospital.
“We got there as quickly as we could,” de la Garza said. “Dallas and Madison and I jumped out of the car at the emergency room and ran into the emergency room to be by her side. She just didn’t look good — at all. She was in bad shape. But I said to her, ‘Demi, I’m here. I love you.’ And at that point she said back to me, ‘I love you, too.’”
The “Skyscraper” songstress’s mother said she credits her faith with helping her cope in the aftermath, adding that things appeared to be so dire that she wasn’t sure if her daughter would make it.
“From that point on, I never allowed myself to ever think that things weren’t going to be OK,” she continued. “I prayed, of course, all the way to the hospital, and my faith is strong. I think that was one of things that got me through the next couple of days when she was in critical condition. We just didn’t know for two days if she was going to make it or not.”
She partially credits Lovato’s survival to the support she received from her fans, as well as the good work from her doctors.
“I just feel like the reason she’s alive today is because of the millions of prayers that went up that day when everybody found out what was happening,” she said. “I don’t think she would be here if it hadn’t been for those prayers and the good doctors and Cedars-Sinai. They were the best. I couldn’t have asked for a better team of people to save her life.”
Today, more than a month after Lovato’s overdose, de la Garza said Lovato is “doing really well” and that she’s “working on her sobriety.”
“She’s happy. She’s healthy. She’s working on her sobriety, and she’s getting the help she needs,” she said. “That in itself encourages me about her future and about the future of our family.”
Lovato reportedly entered an out-of-state rehabilitation center and also sought help from an addiction specialist in Chicago following her nearly two-week hospitalization.
Toward the end of her appearance, which she said Lovato gave her permission to do, she spoke candidly about the country’s opioid crisis.
“You don’t see it coming, and that’s the scary thing,” she said. “The opioid crisis in America is at an epidemic level, and people don’t understand that until they start researching it … After this happened, I started researching and looking into how opioids are killing our kids. It’s happening, I think, it’s every 15 minutes someone dies of an overdose. It’s not just the kids, either — it’s grownups. It’s mothers. It’s fathers.”
Lovato was transported on July 24 from her Hollywood Hills home, when she was reportedly revived with Narcan, to the hospital after her assistant found her unresponsive in her bed.
“She understands the severity of her overdose, and the recovery has been very challenging for her,” a source told PEOPLE at the time of the singer, who spent her 26th birthday in treatment.
“She wants to be sober. She wants to get help. She understands that it will take a lot of work and commitment to stay healthy, but this is what she wants,” the source added.
