Demi Lovato opens up about the sad and painful realities of suffering addictions and mental health conditions. In a trailer for his new YouTube docu series, released Wednesday, Lovato revealed that the overdose he experienced in 2018 caused him three blows and a heart attack.
“I’ve had a lot to say over the last two years that I wanted to tell the record about what happened,” the actress and singer said at the beginning of the trailer.
The four-part documentary, “Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil,” focuses on Lovato’s personal and professional life up to the overdose he experienced in July 2018 and beyond.
“I had three strokes. I had a heart attack,” Lovato said. “My doctors said I had five or ten more minutes.”
Many relatives, friends and other Lovato celebrities, including Elton John and Christina Aguilera, are seen in the trailer. Some of the highlights said they were not sure if he would survive the overdose.
“I’ve had many lives, like my cat. I’m in my ninth life,” Lovato said. “I’m ready to go back to doing what I love, which is making music.”
On Wednesday, during a virtual panel for the Association of Television Critics, Lovato also told reporters that he continues to suffer brain damage due to the incident affecting his day-to-day skills, according to The Associated Press.
“I was left with brain damage and still today I take care of the effects,” he said. “I don’t drive a car because I have blind spots in my vision. For a long time, I had a hard time reading. It was a great thing when I was able to read a book, which was like two months later, because my vision was so blurred “.
The 28-year-old singer and actress has been at the forefront of her fight against mental health and addiction for years. Several of his songs talk about these battles, and in the 2017 YouTube documentary, “Simply Complicated,” Lovato revealed that he first tried cocaine when he was 17 and working for Disney Channel. A few years later, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Mental health and addiction are common problems around the world, and each of these problems can aggravate the other, research shows. Surveys show that about half of people in the United States who experience mental health illnesses also experience substance abuse disorders, according to studies cited by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Lovato told Glitter magazine on Wednesday that he finally hopes the documentary will “help people who have followed the same path as me.”
“What I learned is,, it’s so much more than mental health, you know? My life is now about spiritual growth and how I can help everyone, even people who don’t have mental illness, how we can help raising everyone’s vibrations so we can live on a more positive planet, ”Lovato told the magazine. “That’s how I navigate during my day; how do my choices today positively affect those around me? How will I improve today? So hopefully, people can see it in the document as well.”
The YouTube documentary will be released on March 23rd.