She was a 17-year-old actress on family-friendly TV when, she says, she first used cocaine. As her singing career took off, so did her problems with drugs and alcohol. In 2010, she first sought treatment for addiction, along with mental health issues including bipolar and eating disorders.
She has addressed her ongoing recovery in interviews, on social media, and in her music. Celebrities are at risk for premature mortality as well as drug-related death. Despite being a vulnerable patient group, celebrities influence people’s health behaviors through biological, psychological and social processes.
Who is Demi Lovato?
According to Wikepedia Demetria Devonne Lovato (born August 20, 1992) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and executive producer. After appearing on the children’s television series Barney & Friends (2002–2004), she rose to prominence for her role as Mitchie Torres in the Disney Channel musical television film Camp Rock (2008) and its sequel Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam (2010). The former film’s soundtrack included “This Is Me”, Lovato’s duet with Joe Jonas, which became a top-ten single on the Billboard Hot 100.
After signing with Hollywood Records, Lovato released her pop rock debut album, Don’t Forget (2008), which debuted at number two on the Billboard 200. Its follow-up, Here We Go Again (2009), debuted at number one in the US, while its title track peaked in the top 15 of the country. Lovato’s third studio album, Unbroken (2011), experimented with pop and R&B. It spawned two singles: “Skyscraper”, which peaked in the top ten of the US, and “Give Your Heart a Break”, which became her first number-one single on the Mainstream Top 40 chart. Lovato’s fourth studio album, Demi (2013), debuted with US sales of 110,000 copies, her highest first-week sales in the country. Its lead single, “Heart Attack”, peaked in the top ten of the US, while also becoming her first top-three single on the UK Singles Chart. For her fifth and sixth studio albums, Confident (2015) and Tell Me You Love Me (2017), Lovato infused soul and focused on more mature content as opposed to her previous work. The former granted Lovato her first Grammy Award nomination, while the latter became her first album to be certified Platinum by the RIAA, and its lead single, “Sorry Not Sorry”, became her highest-charting single in the US, reaching number six.
On television, Lovato starred as the titular character on Sonny with a Chance (2009–2011), served as a judge and mentor on The X Factor USA in its second and third seasons, and appeared as a recurring character on Glee. Her struggles with personal issues received significant media attention in the 2010s, in response to which she published a book, Staying Strong: 365 Days a Year (2013), and released YouTube documentaries about her life and career, Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated (2017) and Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil (2021).
As of 2017, Lovato has sold over two million albums and 20 million singles in the United States, according to Billboard. She has received numerous accolades, including an MTV Video Music Award, 14 Teen Choice Awards, five People’s Choice Awards, and two Latin American Music Awards. She also holds one Guinness World Record and was also included on the Time 100 annual list in 2017. Outside of the entertainment industry, Lovato is an activist for several social causes.
Health and Drug Problems
Lovato had suffered from bipolar disorder, anorexia nervosa (binge type), self-harm, and being bullied before she went into rehab at age 18. On November 1, 2010, Lovato withdrew from the Jonas Brothers: Live in Concert tour, entering a treatment facility for “physical and emotional issues”. It was reported that she decided to enter treatment after punching female dancer Alex Welch; her management and family convinced her she needed help. Lovato said she took “100 percent, full responsibility” for the incident. On January 28, 2011, Lovato completed inpatient treatment at Timberline Knolls and returned home. She acknowledged that she had bulimia, had cut herself, and had been “self-medicating” with drugs and alcohol “like a lot of teens do to numb their pain”. She added that she “basically had a nervous breakdown” and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder during her treatment. Lovato later said that she had used cocaine several times a day and smuggled cocaine onto airplanes.
In April 2011, Lovato became a contributing editor for Seventeen magazine, writing an article that described her struggles. In March 2012, MTV aired a documentary, Demi Lovato: Stay Strong, about her rehab and recovery. She began work on her fourth studio album the following month. In January 2013, it was reported that Lovato had been living in a sober-living facility in Los Angeles for over a year because she felt it was the best way to avoid returning to her addictions and eating disorder. Lovato celebrated the five-year anniversary of her sobriety on March 15, 2017.
In her 2017 YouTube documentary Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated, Lovato revealed publicly that her treatment at Timberline Knolls was not entirely successful, stating that she still struggled with alcoholism and a cocaine addiction in the year following her stint in the treatment centre and further revealing that she was in fact under the influence of cocaine while being interviewed about her sobriety for Demi Lovato: Stay Strong. She stated: “I wasn’t working my program. I wasn’t ready to get sober. I was sneaking it on planes, sneaking it in bathrooms, sneaking it throughout the night. Nobody knew.”
Lovato also stated that her drug and alcohol addictions caused her to not only nearly overdose several times, but later began to impact her ability to perform and promote her third studio album Unbroken, referencing a 2012 performance on the eleventh season of American Idol where she was severely hungover. After her management team had expressed their intentions to leave her, Lovato agreed to resume treatment and counseling for her addictions, leading to her move to a sober-living facility in Los Angeles with roommates and responsibilities to help her overcome her drug and alcohol problems.
On June 21, 2018, Lovato released the single “Sober” in which she revealed she had relapsed after six years of sobriety. On July 24, 2018, she was rushed to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after emergency services were called to her home due to an opioid overdose. She was reported to be stable and recovering later in the day. Lovato was reported to have overdosed on fake oxycodone laced with fentanyl and was revived with naloxone. She was hospitalized for two weeks and subsequently entered an in-patient rehab facility. In December 2018, Lovato took to Twitter to dismiss rumors regarding her overdose and went on to thank her fans, writing: “If I feel like the world needs to know something, I will tell them MYSELF. All my fans need to know is I’m working hard on myself, I’m happy and clean and I’m SO grateful for their support.” She went on to add that some day she would “tell the world what exactly happened, why it happened and what my life is like today.. but until I’m ready to share that with people please stop prying and making up shit that you know nothing about. I still need space and time to heal. “In 2021, Lovato said that she had multiple health complications due to the overdose, including multiple strokes, a heart attack, and brain damage, the latter of which caused lasting vision problems. Also READ : Robert Downey Jr: Drug Addiction Problems
