Singer Demi Lovato has revealed that she was sexually assaulted and "left for dead" by the dealer who delivered her a dangerous cocktail of heroin and other drugs on the night of her near-fatal overdose in 2018. The 28-year-old singer made the revelations in her upcoming docuseries, Dancing With The Devil, set to air March 23.
Nearly three years after she was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital after being found unresponsive in her Hollywood Hills home, Lovato says she now wants to tell her story. According to the New York Times, which has watched the documentary, it tells the story of what happened on the night when the singer nearly died from a heroin overdose.
Telling Her Own Story
In the documentary, Lovato recalls how she was forced to face what happened when she woke up in the hospital after the incident and doctors asked her if she had had consensual sex. "I remembered him lying on top of me, so I said, 'yes,'" Lovato says in her YouTube docuseries.
Lovato says that she soon realized that because of her highly inebriated state the night of the July 2018 near-tragedy, she had been in no condition to agree to sex. Journalist Caryn Ganz, who interviewed the former Disney star for the New York Times piece, wrote: "The drug dealer who brought her heroin that night sexually assaulted her, then left her close to death."
Lovato in the docuseries says that she was so weak and shocked that it took her almost a month to realize what exactly happened to her. "It wasn't until maybe a month after my overdose that I realized, 'Hey, you weren't in any state of mind to make a consensual decision,'" she recalls.
"That kind of trauma doesn't go away overnight," she adds.
The music sensation's overdose included three strokes, a heart attack and organ failure, along with pneumonia, asphyxiation, brain damage and lasting vision problems that made it impossible for her to drive.
Inside Lovato's Life
In the documentary, Lovato also sheds light on her private life, saying that she feels like she "dodged a bullet" by calling off her engagement with ex Max Ehrlich last September. Besides, the Sorry Not Sorry hitmaker also discussed some of the extreme health problems that she experienced as a result of that night.
"I wish I could say the last night that I ever touched heroin was the night of my overdose but it wasn't," she says, explaining that she wanted to take "the power back" from her drug dealer.
However, she doesn't name the dealer despite the allegedly sexual and drug assault. "I wanted to rewrite his choice of violating me," she explains. "I wanted it now to be my choice, and he also had something that I wanted, which were drugs. I ended up getting high." Lovato says she regretted doing that, as she realized that, in the aftermath of her relapse, she had hit rock bottom.
Lovato's current sobriety is also a topic of conversation, and when she's asked if she is "entirely sober now," she simply just looks straight at the camera in the documentary. At one point she also reveals that she still uses "alcohol and marijuana" with "balance."
When asked, what changed her life, Lovato says, "Autonomy, for me, is what changed my life." She also reveals that she ended up writing the song 'Sober' — confessing she was no longer clean — in June 2018 after realizing she had become addicted to heroin.
