“I had three strokes. I had a heart attack. My doctors said that I had five to ten more minutes [to live.]”
Demi Lovato revealed that her near-fatal drug overdose was much more serious than fans ever even knew in a trailer for her upcoming four-part YouTube Originals documentary “Demi Lovato: Dancing with Devil.”
The 28-year-old pop star said she hopes to “set the record straight” about what really happened when she was hospitalized for a heroin overdose in 2018.
“For the past couple years, I’ve heard a lot of stories about my life and what people think has happened, and I wanted to set the record straight,” Lovato said. “If it can help you, I hope that it can. That was ultimately my purpose to putting this out, to help people on this path.”
When recalling her overdose on July 28, 2018, Lovato said she “snapped” despite her skyrocketing success at the time — having just been nominated for a Grammy and two hit songs topping charts.
“Demi’s good at making you believe that she’s OK,” her step-dad Eddie De La Garza said. “Demi is very good at hiding what she needs to hide,” her sister Madison De La Garza joined in.
“She should be dead,” adds a friend.
The trailer, which previews a snippet of her forthcoming song, “Dancing with the Devil,” debuted Wednesday at the Television Critics Association’s Winter 2021 press tour and leaves no stone unturned as Lovato even discusses her now-failed engagement to Max Ehrich — flashing her diamond before the next scene cuts to her scowling no longer wearing a ring.
“I don’t even know why I’m sober anymore,” she declares at one point, later in the trailer adding that she’s “really struggling” while in recovery.
Lovato also revealed that the OD left her with brain damage, according to Billboard, and she’s unable to drive because of blind spots in her vision. She also had to re-learn to read after suffering intense eye damage.
“I was left with brain damage and I still deal with the effects of that today,” she said at the TCA event. “I don’t drive a car because of blind spots in my vision. … I had a lot of trouble reading.”
“I’ve had a lot of lives, like my cat you know?” Lovato said. “I’m on my ninth life.”
“Dancing With the Devil,” which will open the 2021 SXSW film festival in March, will premiere on YouTube March 23.
Credit: Notigroup Newsroom.
[This article may have been written with information from various sources]