Demi Lovato: A Young Talented Woman Defined By Mental Illness And Addiction In Her Career – And She’s Now Redefining That For Herself

As long as we’re on the subject of early fame and instant success, I think we better discuss Demi Lovato. She recently made headlines when she reunited with the Jonas Brothers during one of their tour stops to perform two popular Camp Rock songs, ‘Wouldn’t Change A Thing’ and ‘This Is Me’. Of their unexpected reunion, Lovato said on the Chicks In The Office podcast, [He] was like, ‘Hey, what are you doing next weekend on the 10th? We would love to have you come and perform “This Is Me” and “Wouldn’t Change a Thing.” You’ve been a huge part of our journey and vice versa … This show is really important to us and we would love to have you there.’ It was so nice, and like I said, it was so healing for me too. We’ve been through so much together all of us, the Jonas Brothers and I, and it was really, really great to spend time with them. They just thanked me profusely for flying across the country to perform with them and it was just so thoughtful. I felt so appreciated and it was really healing for us. I loved it, every second of it was so great. It was an instant like, ‘Let’s do this.’ Because in this new era of mine too, I’m throwing it back to the memes and some of the things I’ve been posting have been really nostalgic. So this just fit in with everything that I’ve been doing. And on top of that, it’s such a meaningful song to me — ‘This Is Me’ is my first big song that I’ve ever had. So getting to perform that with them for the first time in God knows how many years was just so full circle and so special and it was great to see them.’

Also recently, Lovato released her 10th studio album and scored her first-ever Top 10 hit on the Billboard charts. In June of this year, she got married to her longtime love, Jutes, who’s also a musician. Things are certainly looking up for the young star, who just like Dana Plato and Lindsay Lohan, was thrust into early fame and instant success at a young age; who just like Plato and Lohan, lived a troubled life; who just like Plato and Lohan, didn’t have the right people around her to guide her and mentor her through her struggles.

For one, Lovato’s father struggled with addiction. He passed away in 2013 after a battle with cancer. She was never close with him and considered her stepfather to be a father figure in her life. Nevertheless, she’d written several songs about her complicated relationship with her biological father, including ‘For The Love Of A Daughter’ off of her 2011 album, Unbroken. In the face of her father’s struggles with addiction, Lovato faced her own battles. In an interview on the Call Her Daddy podcast, she told Alex Cooper that addiction was a common theme in her family. On top of her father abusing drugs and alcohol, he was also bipolar and schizophrenic. Her mother battled an eating disorder and was abusing Xanax. It’s been researched that children with addicted parents are likelier to have addictive personalities and become addicts. 

Lovato recounted in the same episode of Call Her Daddy that the seeds of her eating disorder were planted when she started acting and competing in beauty pageants as a child. The pressure to be “beautiful” can be incredibly high in both industries. Lovato recounted that she felt her eating disorder officially started in junior high after being bullied by her peers and receiving notes that had messages like “Demi should kill herself”. In 2009, at 17 years old, Lovato met a group of friends who drank, partied, and did drugs regularly. It was this friend group who influenced her to try cocaine for the first time. Lovato recalled initially being scared to try the drug as her mom told her that her heart would stop if she ever did cocaine. Her addiction came to a head in 2010 when she had a physical altercation with a backup dancer who had “told on her” for her drug use.

Alyson Stoner, Lovato’s Camp Rock co-star, recently opened about her friendship with Lovato in her newly released memoir. They wrote, ‘For several years, I felt suffocated under the weight of Demi’s power and terrified of her PR team. Her moods swung unpredictably from euphoric to furious to dejected. The hardness in her eyes and bite to her speech that she formerly used to jokingly imitate Regina George from Mean Girls cemented as a fixed state. To get through the tour, the entire crew bent the knee, accepting that at any moment we could be open targets for her to externalize her pain. At sixteen, being forced to submit to her power plays was confusing. She verbally lashed out behind the curtain, and then we’d walk onstage for a sound check meet-and-greet and publicly kiss her crown. Her fans sent me DMs saying I deserved to die and that they’d cut me up if I ‘messed with’ their idol. Most uncomfortably, media outlets centered her as a main topic in my interviews, and I answered each question with a smile while feeling sick from withholding secrets. I felt so pathetic about struggling to move on, especially when I knew I wasn’t even a passing thought on her mind anymore.’

After 14 years of not speaking to one another, the two stars reunited when Lovato interviewed Alyson for her 2024 documentary Child Star, which explored the harsh realities young actors face growing up in the spotlight. Stoner wrote, ‘Demi apologized, and I didn’t realize that my teen self had been waiting on the doorstop to hear her say sorry ever since that tumultuous time. I had the chance to more fully understand and empathize with her excruciating experiences. As we explored the possibility of reconnection, we turned our eyes to protecting current and future generations from the same plights.’

Lovato first got her beginnings as a 7 year old young girl when she appeared on Barney & Friends alongside Selena Gomez, a fellow Disney alum. The two were once inseparable; the best of friends. It was actually her that was originally offered the lead role on Camp Rock, but opted out because she thought Lovato would be perfect for it. This turned out to be Lovato’s breakthrough role. The two went on to star in 2009’s Princess Protection Program. Their friendship, however, didn’t pass the test of time. They went through their fair share of ups and downs, starting when Gomez became friends with Taylor Swift in 2008. Their relationship was very much on-and-off; mostly off. The last time they were seen together publicly was 2017 when they posed together at the InStyle Awards that year. In a 2020 interview with Harper’s Bazaar, Lovato said of her former friend, ‘When you grow up with somebody, you’re always going to have love for them. But I’m not friends with her…I will always have love for her.’

Despite everything, Gomez had nothing but kind words to say about her former friend, even in the midst of their complicated relationship. It’s safe to say that she was one person that was a good source of comfort at a certain point in Lovato’s life. The same couldn’t be said about others in her life, including her former management team, which she let go of and fired following 2018 near-fatal overdose. Of that time in her life, Lovato said during her interview on Call Her Daddy, ‘There was someone that came into the picture, and when they came into the picture, everything in my life was controlled. I started having a sober companion, which was helpful for me, but it should not have lasted three years. It became controlling around my food. And for someone in recovery from an eating disorder, that’s so dangerous. It actually exasperated my eating disorder to the point where I became bulimic again from 2016 to 2018. I snuck out of my hotel room because they didn’t let me have phones in my hotel rooms because they didn’t want me to call room service. I didn’t have food in my hotel room, like, snacks in the mini bar, because they didn’t want me to eat the snacks. They barricaded me into my hotel room. They put furniture outside my door so I couldn’t get out and sneak out and eat if I wanted to. It was that level of controlling when it came to my food, which just made my eating disorder worse. I felt trapped. I felt like I couldn’t get out of this situation and my way of blowing everything up was relapsing on drugs and alcohol. They always said if you use, we’re out. And I was like, ‘All right, time to get out, bye.’ I was] totally under the impression that if I don’t listen to this person, who knows so much about recovery, I’m going to lose everything. And so you put all of your trust and your faith into one person and then from that, everyone around me listens to that one person and they go with it. I’ve learned a lot from that experience. Like, no one can control me anymore. I was under the control from 18 to 25 and those are years when you’re trying to figure out your adulthood. You’re no longer a teenager, but for some reason, I have people controlling everything I ate. My business decisions were always being made for me and now I’ve found my voice. No one can ever do that to me again and I feel empowered by what I went through because I had to grow and I had to learn to accept that I’m my own boss.’ So it’s fair to say that much of Lovato’s life and career was controlled by the people around her; by the people claimed to love her; and the ones who were supposed to protect her. But in reality, she was just used as a paycheque. She was just used to make the big bucks for everyone involved in her team. I personally won’t ever forget watching Lovato’s Simply Complicated documentary where she told her manager that she purged the night before because she was reeling from a breakup, and he, in turn, dismissed her and basically said to her, ‘Well, everyone goes through breakups…’ Something like this was obviously not anything she wanted – or needed – to hear.

And speaking of her personal life, Lovato faced much turmoil and scrutiny in her personal life just as much as she did in her career. She famously dated Joe Jonas for a month in 2010 after years of being friends. The teen romance fizzled due to Lovato’s struggle with addiction. Jonas later told Vulture of that time, ‘I felt like I needed to take care of her, but at the same time, I was living a lie because I wasn’t happy but felt like I had to stay in it for her because she needed help. I couldn’t express any of that, of course, because I had a brand to protect.’

Later that year, Lovato began dating That 70’s Show actor, Wilmer Valderrama. Lovato was 17 at the time, and Valderrama was 29. That in itself should’ve been a cause for concern, and Lovato later herself acknowledged this about their union in her 2022 album, Holy Fvck. Nevertheless, the two were in a relationship with one another for 6 years, until 2016, and they even stayed friends for a while after their breakup. Valderrama was seen spending time with Lovato in her Simply Complicated documentary, and was even by her side following her near-fatal overdose.

In her 2021 Dancing With the Devil documentary, Lovato revealed that she was raped by someone, an actor she didn’t name but revealed was employed by Disney, when she was 15 years old. When she went to tell executives, nothing was done to protect her, and the person in question remained employed by the company. She was raped a second time in 2018 by her drug dealer while she was unconscious after he gave her the dose that almost killed her. Following the news of her overdose, the drug dealer went on camera and told a reporter that he ‘didn’t want to hurt anyone’.

Of the first time she was raped, Lovato said, ‘I really beat myself up for years, which is also why I had a really hard time coming to terms with the fact that it was a rape when it happened. We were hooking up, but I said, ‘Hey, this is not going any further. I’m a virgin, and I don’t want to lose it this way.’ And that didn’t matter to them. They did it anyways. And I internalized it, and I told myself that it was my fault because I still went in the room with him. I still hooked up with him.’ She then had to see the person that raped her on a constant basis, which added to her trauma. She coped through self-injury and bulimia.

Following her 2018 overdose, Lovato woke up at the hospital, where staff members asked if she had engaged in consensual sex. Lovato recalled, ‘There was one flash that I had of him on top of me. I saw that flash, and I said yes. It actually 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.’ That kind of trauma doesn’t go away overnight.’ It certainly doesn’t, but rape wasn’t the only thing that happened to Lovato that night. As a result of her drug consumption, in addition to overdosing on what she believes was a combination of heroin and fentanyl-laced oxycodone, Lovato suffered three strokes, multiple organ failure, brain damage, pneumonia via asphyxiation and a heart attack. When she woke up in the hospital, Lovato was legally blind and unable to recognize her own sister at her bedside. Her vision was also impaired to the point where she was unable to drive.

The year 2020 was the year that changed everything – for Lovato and everyone else. That was the year of the Covid-19 pandemic. That was also the year that Lovato got engaged (the first time) to actor Max Ehrich. He proposed that July after he’d quarantined with her and her family. In the Dancing With The Devil documentary, Lovato said, ‘I rushed into something that I thought was what I was supposed to do. I realized, as time went on, that I didn’t actually know the person that I was engaged to. The hardest part of the breakup was mourning the person that I thought he was. But I’m not the only one who felt fooled. I mean, I was just as shocked as the rest of the world at some of the things that were said and done.’

The formerly engaged couple split shortly after resurfaced tweets and videos allegedly posted by Ehrich showed the American Princess star professing his love for Selena Gomez. At the time, Lovato insisted the posts were fake and made out to cause drama. That said, she shamed anyone who shared them. It turned out that everything about the tweets and the public displays of affection and adoration that Ehrich showed for Gomez in the past was true. It suddenly became so clear that Ehrich had used Lovato; both for his 15 minutes of fame and to get his sloppy seconds. Lovato even released a song about it, simply titled ‘15 Seconds’, following their breakup.

Though she’d declared herself ‘too queer to marry a man’ following her breakup with Ehrich, she eventually did marry a man, Jutes, in 2025. Lovato declared a lot of things following her 2018 near-fatal overdose that either didn’t hold to be true or were just plain weird. As time went on and years went by, it became harder and harder to take her seriously. Her public persona became a symbol for mockery. At the same time, it was clear night and day that Lovato was going through something internal, and she wasn’t as ‘fine’ as she made herself out to be.

Going back to the very beginning of this blog entry, I put an emphasis on the very fact that Lovato called her unexpected reunion with the Jonas Brothers ‘healing’. I did so because of the great history she’s had with the band throughout the years since their very beginnings in the entertainment industry in the 2000’s. Things weren’t as smooth sailing for the once close friends and collaborators. The friction between them stemmed from Lovato’s addiction and the lack of support from them following her near-fatal overdose in 2018. Both Nick and Joe Jonas DID publicly acknowledge Lovato’s overdose in tweets. Nick wrote at the time, ‘Like all of you I am reeling at the news about Demi. All of us love her and need to pray for her to get well. She is a fighter.’ Joe shared the testament by writing, ‘Like all of you, I am thinking of [Demi] right now. She needs our prayers and support. We all know how strong you are Demi.’ And finally, Kevin wrote, ‘Sending my prayers and thoughts to [Demi] and her family right now.’ Nevertheless Lovato was a no-show at neither Joe Jonas’ wedding to Sophie Turner nor Nick Jonas’ wedding to Priyanka Chopra, and it’s unknown whether any of the Jonas brothers were in attendance at Lovato’s wedding to Jutes.

These past 17 years that fans have followed a Lovato and the Jonas Brothers have been wild and crazy, to say the least. They were certainly filled with their fair share of ups and downs. And so were the years that fans have followed Lovato’s (former) friendship with Selena Gomez. When you think of Demi Lovato, you most likely think of her personal life, as well as the brutally honest personality that she’s shared online. It’s easy to think of her as a problematic person; and that’s mostly because she is one. Or better yet, she was a problematic person. She wasn’t a role-model so to speak, nor did it even seem like she wanted to be one in the first place.

For years, throughout the entirety of her career, Lovato spent her so much of her time and effort advocating for mental health. But should she have been? No, most probably not. She should’ve instead worked on her sobriety and recovery journey, as well as her mental health. Before that fateful July 2018 night, she spent 6 years telling the entire world that she was done; that she was happy and healthy. In reality, she was anything but. In reality, she needed mentorship and guidance throughout her sobriety, which her management team didn’t provide. They provided the mentorship and guidance that was fit for their needs, which was $$$. That wasn’t what she needed. And in the long run, their method was what led to her eventual return to drug and alcohol use. In June 2018, Lovato released ‘Sober’, an apology and a love letter to her family. In it, she described the difficulty of being lonely and how it led to her returning to drug abuse.  She apologized multiple times throughout the song:

• “Momma, I’m sorry I’m not sober anymore.”

• “Daddy, please forgive me for the drinks spilled on the floor.”

• “I’m sorry for the fans I lost who watched me fall again.”

As the world was watching, Lovato’s addiction and drug use only escalated over time until it almost killed her. Her struggle with addiction is like many addicts who go through cycles of relapse. Sobriety is an ongoing battle. Before her, Glee actor Cory Monteith struggled with addiction. He tried to get clean and went to rehab in March 2013. Unlike Lovato, he had the full support of his bosses, colleagues, family, friends, as well as his real-life girlfriend, Lea Michele. But even that wasn’t enough. Only 4 months later, on July 13, 2013, Monteith passed away of an accidental overdose.

In August 2018, Lovato made an official statement to her fans that read in part, ‘I have always been transparent about my journey with addiction. What I’ve learned is that this illness is not something that disappears or fades with time. It is something I must continue to overcome and have not done yet.’ And she was absolutely right. Overcoming addiction is an ongoing process. There’s no end to it; just like there’s no end to overcoming any illness for that matter – mental illness, chronic illness, etc. Addiction isn’t a choice, but the decision to want to overcome it certainly is; and a brave one at that. That brave decision wasn’t ever solely made by Lovato at her own will until her near-fatal 2018 overdose, and even that was an entire process. After declaring herself as being California Sober in 2021, she’s now fully sober.

While speaking with Andy Cohen in a 2023 interview of her overdose and the consequences it had on her life in the longterm, Lovato said, ‘I wouldn’t change my path because I don’t have any regrets. When I think about things, the closest thing that I get to a regret is when I overdosed … that overdose caused me a lot of … it actually caused a disability. I have vision impairment and hearing impairment to this day. I don’t drive because I have blind spots in my vision. It’s a daily constant reminder. You know, anytime I look at something, like, I have blind spots in my vision when I look at your face, and so it’s a constant reminder to stay on the right path because I never want that to happen again. Luckily in the mind state that I’m in now — you know, being sober, having a clear head — I just think in a more positive mind space and I’m not focusing on the shame at all. I know I have a lot of sympathy for where I was at that time and the choices that I made and I understand why it happened and what happened, but there’s no shame that comes with it because it was just a life lesson that I had to learn.’

Demi Lovato is a woman who’s practically had her entire life controlled by others. She had no say whatsoever in the matter of the course of her own life. As the entire world watched her make mistakes and spiral out of control, many spent their precious time judging and mocking her. I, on the other hand, empathized with her. As someone who’d gone through sexual trauma and mental health struggles especially, and even addiction of my own, I empathized with her. You can’t expect recovery to happen overnight. It can take months; sometimes even years, like it did for Lovato. And even when it does finally happen, there’s no such thing as being done working on your recovery. But it CAN happen, and once it does, so much good starts happening to you; FOR you. One thing is for sure, though, and it’s that you gotta have the right people around you who support you and your process. So to end this blog entry on a more positive note, here are some Demi Lovato quotes to live by:

• No matter what you’re going through, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and it may seem hard to get to it but you can do it and just keep working towards it and you’ll find the positive side of things.

• I think scars are like battle wounds – beautiful, in a way. They show what you’ve been through and how strong you are for coming out of it.

• Recovery is something that you have to work on every single day and it’s something that it doesn’t get a day off.

• I don’t let anyone’s insecurities, emotions, or opinions bother me. I know that if I am happy, that’s all that matters to me.

• I try to keep it real. I don’t have time to worry about what I’m projecting to the world. I’m just busy being myself.

• Never be ashamed of what you feel. You have the right to feel any emotion that you want, and to do what makes you happy. That’s my life motto.

• Creativity is what helps me escape a lot of my inner demons.

The End