For the past nine years, Demi Lovato has been revealing and unpacking a history of trauma, layer by layer, in documentary form. First, with 2012’s Stay Strong, which starred a seemingly-sober Lovato and detailed her post-rehab recovery at 18. (She later revealed she’d been using throughout filming.) Her 2017 doc, Simply Complicated, was billed as an “apology” to fans that laid bare the true depths of her addiction and chronicled the making of her brassy R&B album Tell Me You Love Me, released that fall. But as she makes clear in her latest four-part YouTube Originals docuseries Dancing with the Devil — directed by Michael Ratner and coinciding with the release of her upcoming album of the same name — Demi has really only ever allowed viewers, the cameras, and even those closest to her to see how much she wanted them to see. Until now.
Dancing with the Devil is Demi at her most authentic and autobiographical. She relives the night of her near-fatal 2018 overdose in painstaking detail, and speaks candidly on how years of micromanaging her recovery led to a breaking point; she shares for the first time allegations of sexual abuse; she reflects on how all these experiences have ultimately freed her. With commentary from Demi’s loved ones, caseworker, former assistant, doctor, head of security, and even Elton John, Dancing with the Devil is finally her unfiltered truth. Here’s what we learned along the way.
Episode 1, ‘Losing Control’Demi filmed another full, unreleased documentary.
Following the release of Simply Complicated and Tell Me You Love Me, Demi filmed an entire documentary in 2018 that captured her life on tour. Though it appeared onscreen Demi wasn’t holding back, she cloaked much of her reality. “In that documentary, I was allowing the cameras to see the tip of the iceberg,” she recalls. There’s a vulnerable moment during a break from tour, though, that seems to depict the distress Demi was facing: “I’ve been working on trying to be free for 13 years.” While certain clips from the unreleased doc are included in the latest docuseries, after Demi was hospitalized for her overdose, the version started in 2018 was permanently shelved. Any filming stopped until she began making her new docuseries in spring 2020.
The control around her eating disorder and sobriety made her miserable.
Demi has battled an eating disorder since age 8, and prior to her 2018 relapse, employed a team of assistants, a wellness coach, a dietician, a nutritionist, and therapists to help her. Still, her eating issues persisted to the point that they began infringing on her own inner circle; friends and team members say they needed to be careful about what they ate around her. “There were times where I had to spend the night because she, like, ate a cookie,” recalls Jordan Jackson, her former assistant. While her friend Matthew Scott Montgomery believes her team was put in place to help her avoid relapsing, “it totally backfired.” “The control and the restriction was way too toxic for her and she was miserable,” he says. According to Lovato, outsourcing management of her eating habits and wellness took away her agency: “I feel like decisions have been made for me, more so than I’ve made decisions for myself,” she puts it.
One month after her sixth anniversary being sober, Demi relapsed.
Lovato celebrated her sixth year sober on-stage with DJ Khaled at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, on March 15, 2018. But one night, just a month later, she says she picked up a bottle of red wine and within 30 minutes called someone whom she knew had drugs on them. “I remember being at a photoshoot and just thinking to myself, I don’t even remember why I’m sober anymore. I’m so miserable. I’m not happy,” she says. At a party later that night, she ran into her drug dealer from six years prior. “That night I did drugs I’d never done before,” Demi recalls. “I’d never done meth before. I mixed it with molly, coke, weed, alcohol, oxycodone, and that alone should have killed me.”
She began doing heroin and crack cocaine for the first time in 2018.
The singer began using heroin recreationally not long after relapsing, but soon realized “recreational” use wouldn’t be a long term possibility for her. After going on a trip to Bali a few weeks later where she’d write “Sober” — revealing she was no longer off drugs and alcohol — Demi discovered she was “physically dependent” on crack and heroin; her drug use at the time is captured in the film through Demi’s personal photos and videos.
The night of Demi’s overdose, no one knew she was using hard drugs.
Demi had told the people in her life that after being sober since she was 19, she wanted to try drinking and smoking again “recreationally.” Lovato did not make anyone aware she was using hard drugs, admitting she “manipulated” those closest to her intentionally so they wouldn’t find out. On July 24, 2018, after her friend Dani Vitale’s birthday party and a night of bar-hopping, Demi invited her friends back to her house to continue the night, but they declined. While she told them she was going to bed, she really ended up calling her drug dealer to come over. In her account of the night, Vitale recalls feeling uneasy about leaving Demi’s home. “We were halfway away from the house and we pulled over, and I look at my friend Janelle and I said, Do you feel weird, and she says, I feel weird. Should we have stayed? And I’m like, What is she going to do? She’s going to go to bed. No, she’s fine.”
Her then-assistant found her the morning of her overdose.
Demi’s assistant, Jordan Jackson, came to her house the morning after the party to bring her to a doctor’s appointment. When Lovato didn’t answer several knocks on her bedroom door, Jordan entered the room to find Lovato naked, on her back, with vomit around her. Jackson thought she was drunk or hungover, but upon realizing Lovato was unresponsive, she called Max Lea, Demi’s head of security. As more of Demi’s team members came to assist, the situation became dire. “There was one point that she turned blue — her whole body completely turned blue. I was just, like, she’s dead for sure. It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” Jordan recalls. Eventually, Jordan snuck downstairs to call 9-1-1, fearing she might get in trouble for calling; in order to curb expected media attention, she is heard on a recording of the call requesting “no sirens” but is told by emergency services that could not be guaranteed. It wasn’t long until Demi’s condition became a national headline.
Demi was on the brink of death.
Following the overdose, Demi suffered three strokes, a heart attack, and brain damage from the strokes; because she asphyxiated, she had pneumonia and multiple organ failure. “I’m really lucky to be alive. My doctors said I had five to 10 more minutes and had my assistant not come in, I wouldn’t be here today,” Demi says point blank.
Demi woke up in the hospital blind.
The singer’s brain damage affected her vision center specifically, to the point that Lovato woke up legally blind and remained that way for the next two months. Although her younger sister, Madison De La Garza, was at her bedside, Lovato was unable to recognize her. Demi revealed that since the overdose she can no longer drive and still experiences blind spots in her vision. “Sometimes when I go to pour a glass of water, I totally miss the cup because I can’t see it anymore,” Demi says.
She was allegedly sexually assaulted the night of her overdose.
The night of her overdose, Lovato says her drug dealer supplied her with what she believes were “aftermarket” (or counterfeit) drugs laced with fentanyl. While the dealer remains unnamed in the the documentary, driveway security footage is shown of the man leaving the scene. “He ended up getting her really high and leaving her for dead,” says musician and Demi’s friend, Sirah. In addition to giving her drugs, Lovato claims her dealer physically took advantage of her. “There was one flash I had of him on top of me,” Demi recalls. When interviewed by hospital staff in the immediate aftermath of her overdose and asked if she had consensual sex that night, Lovato says, “I [saw] that flash and said ‘yes.’ It wasn’t until a month after my overdose that I realized, ‘Hey you weren’t in any state of mind to make a consensual decision.’” (The dealer in question has since been charged for “possession of heroin and ketamine” unrelated to Lovato’s case; Lovato has not pressed charges as of publication.)
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