Demi Lovato is opening up about life following her 2018 overdose.
The singer, 28, joined Paper magazine for a tell-all interview ahead of the release of her YouTube documentary, “Dancing With The Devil”, and her upcoming album, Dancing With The Devil… The Art Of Starting Over.
Not only does Lovato reveal she went back to rehab following her near-fatal overdose in July 2018, but the star also a moment when she “wanted to give up.”
RELATED: Demi Lovato Explains Why She Feels ‘More Joy’ Than Ever Following Her 2018 Overdose
“Going back over the past year, I thought my life was going to turn out a lot differently than it has. At one point I was engaged to a man, and now I’m very much not,” she said. “And so I just wanted to allow myself the freedom to match my outside to what I feel like on the inside, and that’s what I’ve done.”
According to Lovato, reading negative headlines about her almost caused another slip with her sobriety.
“I think it was right after I got out of rehab in 2018. I saw an article somewhere that said I was morbidly obese, and that is the most triggering thing that you could possibly write about somebody with an eating disorder,” she recalled. “That sucked, and I wanted to quit, I wanted to use, wanted to give up. And then I just realized that if I don’t look at those things then they can’t affect me. So, I stopped looking and I just really try not to look at anything negative. I think the positives outweigh the negatives. I think that if they didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing this.”
But one thing that helps Lovato, she says, is letting herself have alcohol and marijuana.
“The way that I’ve come about it is, I went back to treatment after [the overdose], in 2019, after slipping up with substances. I had done so well with my eating disorder, in comparison to the years before. And when I went back, my therapist, my eating disorder specialist there, was like, ‘How do you feel with food recovery?’ And I was like, ‘I feel really great, but I think it’s because I’ve legalized so much,’” she explained. “I feel like I wanted to get a great understanding of it for myself before I told the world about it, and also, it’s just really important to note that just because I am trying this doesn’t mean it’s for everybody. Just like the dogmatic views of complete sobriety, that isn’t a one size fits all solution for everybody.”
The YouTube documentary “Dancing With The Devil” is streaming now while Lovato’s album Dancing With The Devil… The Art Of Starting Over drops April 2.
Read Lovato’s full interview with Paper at papermag.com.
