Demi Lovato is currently promoting her new album, Holy Fvck, and the media tour has featured some of the most candid interviews of Demi’s career.
We suppose that’s fitting, given the confessional — and controversial — nature of the album’s lyrics.
In the first single, “29,” Lovato opens up about her relationship with Wilmer Valderrama, which began when she was 17 and he was 29.
Demi clearly feels that Wilmer’s behavior was predatory and that the adults in her life failed to protect her.
And sadly, it seems that was not the only time that Demi was let down by the people entrusted with keeping her safe.
Appearing on Spotify’s popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast this week, Lovato opened up about her struggles with disordered eating — and the unnamed member of her management team who made her situation far worse.
“My security guard walked by my room, or was made aware that they had barricaded me into my hotel room,” Demi said, recalling a low point in 2017.
“They put furniture outside of my door so that I couldn’t get out, sneak out, and eat if I wanted to.”
Demi added that her condition had left her so ill that she was vomiting blood.
Despite this alarming symptom, Lovato’s management team would not allow her to seek medical treatment.
“This was in, like, 2017, and this person looked at me and said, ‘You’re not sick enough,’” she recalled.
“And I think that was his way of saying, ‘No, you’re not going back to treatment, because if you do, this will look bad on me.’ And so I didn’t, I didn’t go back into treatment. And less than a year later, I ended up overdosing.”
Demi also revealed that her struggles with substance abuse started in her very early teens, but she was not encouraged to seek treatment until much later.
“My mom didn’t think she would have to lock up the opiates from her 13-year-old daughter but I was already drinking at that point,” Lovato said.
“I had been bullied and was looking for an escape. And when my mom saw how many of the pills had disappeared, and how fast they did, she took them away and locked them up.”
Demi added that it was around that same time that she got drunk for the first time, recalling that she imbibed by herself “just to see what it felt like.”
“That should’ve been a major red flag,” Lovato said.
At 17, Demi used cocaine for the first time, recalling, “[I] loved it too much, and that led into me going to treatment right after I turned 18.”
Demi’s path to sobriety has not always been a straight line, but insiders say that these days, the singer is happier and healthier than ever before.
Demi is dating Jute$, a Canadian singer-songwriter whom she met while recording her latest album.
So her career and love life are both progressing beautifully — but more importantly, Demi is several years sober.
And hopefully, she’s receiving the support she deserves from the people in her inner circle.
