UPDATE: Demi Lovato did not suffer a heroin overdose, a source close to the singer is now telling TMZ. Hours after revealing that the “Sorry Not Sorry” singer was hospitalized on July 24, the site claimed a source close to the former Disney star said initial reports that her health crisis was an apparent heroin overdose are untrue. However, the person would not say what Demi overdosed on.
ORIGINAL: If there’s one thing that Demi Lovato has been very open about, it’s her battle with drug abuse. The 25-year-old singer was reportedly rushed to hospital in Los Angeles on July 24 because of a suspected heroin overdose, according to TMZ. While the singer may not have spoken about that drug before, in the past she has come clean about her cocaine addiction and her love of alcohol. In fact, she spoke about it openly in her 2017 YouTube documentary Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated.
Demi kicked off the film with an in-your-face admission, according to Billboard. The “Sorry, Not Sorry” singer said, “I actually had anxiety around this interview because the last time I did an interview this long, I was on cocaine.” Although the former child star’s secret battle with drugs spilled out into the open in 2010 when she punched one of her backup dancers, she claims she actually started abusing drugs, the year before. After allegedly being bullied at school she said one of the popular girls introduced her to booze, Adderall and cocaine. She was just 17 and working at Disney when she started using coke. Demi said, “I was scared because my mom always told me that your heart could just burst if you do it. But I did it anyways, and I loved it the first time that I did it.”
Demi soon became an expert at hiding her addiction, telling Access Hollywood in 2013, “Something I’ve never talked about before, but with my drug use I could hide it to where I would sneak drugs. I couldn’t go without 30 minutes to an hour without cocaine and I would bring it on airplanes.” Things spiraled out of control when she was on tour with the Jonas Brothers in 2010. She threw a party at a hotel. The next day one of her dancers told on her, revealing that she was using Adderall. Furious, she punched the dancer in the face and was later hauled into rehab.
But Demi, who was then diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, didn’t commit to the program at that time. “I wasn’t working my program,” she said during the documentary. “I wasn’t ready to get sober.” By the time Simply Complicated was released in October 2017, Demi said she was finally sober after her management almost dropped her. However, in June 2018 she shockingly revealed that she was facing her demons again, dramatically coming clean to fans in the song “Sober” that she had relapsed. Now, we just pray that she wins this latest battle.