Demi Lovato is sharing the details of her July 2018 overdose in her new four-part YouTube documentary Dancing With the Devil, which premiered at the virtual South by Southwest festival Tuesday night. The “Sober” singer revealed while recounting the night using heroin laced with fentanyl that led to her having three strokes, a heart attack and multiple-organ failure that she had also been sexually assaulted.
“I didn’t just overdose; I also was taken advantage of,” Lovato said of the night of her overdose, as per USA Today. Noting that she had experienced her “fair share of sexual trauma” throughout her formative years, the artist said when she was found, having overdosed, she was naked and blue. “I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me, and when I woke up in the hospital, they asked if I had consensual sex,” she recalled. “There was one flash that I had of him on top of me. I saw that flash, and I said yes. It actually wasn’t until maybe a month after my overdose that I realized, ‘Hey, you weren’t in any state of mind to make a consensual decision.’”
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The former Camp Rock star experienced a “similar situation” as a teen, she continued, when she lost her virginity to rape. “We were hooking up, but I said, ‘Hey, this is not going any further. I’m a virgin and I don’t want to lose it this way.’ And that didn’t matter to them; they did it anyway,” she shared. “I internalized it; I told myself it was my fault because I still went in the room with him. I still hooked up with him.”
Being part of the “Disney crowd” that was publicly declaring their intention to wait until marriage to have sex, Lovato felt she had no other option but to stay quiet, which turned her trauma inward. “Then I had to see that person all the time, and so I stopped eating and coped in other ways — cutting, throwing up, whatever,” she shared. “My bulimia got so bad that I started throwing up blood for the first time.”
She continued, “You know what, f— it. I’m just gonna say it. My #MeToo story is me telling somebody that someone did this to me, and they never got in trouble for it. They never got taken out of the movie they were in. I just kept it quiet because I’ve always had something to say. I’m tired of opening my mouth. There’s the tea.” The first two episodes of Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil will stream for free on YouTube on March 23, and new episodes will be released weekly for the next two Tuesdays.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
