Demi Lovato: Why The Art Of Starting Over Didn’t Work For Her – And Why She’s Not As Good Of An Advocate As She Claims Herself To Be

My previous few blog entries have been about smear campaigns that had been put on women. The headline of the year 2025 seems to be Blake Lively’s accusation in her legal complaint against her ‘It Ends With Us’ co-star and director, Justin Baldoni, that he and people involved in his production company, Wayferer Studios, plotted a smear campaign against her last year when their movie first came out. There’s enough reason to believe that’s just not true, and you can read all about it in my previous post about the Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni saga. This will certainly be the legal battle of the year that we’ll be following just as much as we did the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard legal battle.

In her legal complaint, Lively accused Baldoni of many, many things; harmful things, including sexual harassment, unethical behaviour, and creating a toxic and harmful working environment while filming. The 80 page legal complaint also mentioned several celebrities, such as Taylor Swift and Hailey (Baldwin) Bieber (check out my previous two posts for reference). She compared the smear campaign plotted against them to that plotted against her during the promotional tour for the movie. Again, you can read more about it in my previous 3 blog entries that reference the Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni saga where I also discuss the online smear campaigns plotted against Lively, Swift and Bieber respectively.

In my previous post with Selena Gomez as the main subject matter, which heavily discussed the smear campaign against Hailey Bieber that even involved death threats at one point, I also mentioned Demi Lovato. Just like Gomez, Lovato is another Disney alum. She and Gomez first when they were 7 years old after starring together on ‘Barney & Friends’. Lovato later starred in ‘Camp Rock’, as well as its sequel, as Mitchie, alongside the Jonas Brothers. The role was actually meant for Gomez, but she passed on the role because she felt Lovato was better suited for her. Maria Canals-Barrera played Lovato’s mother in the ‘Camp Rock’ franchise, as she did Gomez’s mother in ‘Wizards of Waverly Place’.

Following the success of the first ‘Camp Rock’ movie, Lovato went on to star in her own Disney television series, ‘Sonny With A Chance’, which co-starred former actress, Tiffany Thornton. The two were close during filming. Lovato even served as a bridesmaid at Thorton’s 2011 wedding to Chris Carney, who tragically passed away in December 2015 in a car accident. Thorton’s best friend, Brittany Lauren Blanton, also died in a car accident just two days prior. Thorton and Carney shared two children together. She has since moved and married Josiah Capaci in 2017. Capaci treats Thorton’s two older children as his own, and the two had two more children of their own. After quitting her life as an actress in 2016, she’s dedicated her life to Christianity and is now an influencer.

The entire cast of ‘Sonny With A Chance’, including Lovato, reunited during the pandemic in 2020. Lovato was full of praise of Thorton for being her confidant during that period of her life. She said, ‘When I went away to treatment for the first time, I remember it like, you were my biggest inspiration coming out of it because you dealt with all of those pressures of being a woman on TV. I wasn’t sleeping. I was miserable, and angry too, because I felt like I was being overworked — which I was. I had an eating disorder and I was underweight and freezing. I love all of you guys so much, but I went through so much during that show that I would rather just start a whole new project with all of you.’ And when asked to give advice to up-and-coming young actors, Lovato said, ‘Speak up for your needs, always tell the people around you how you feel. If you’re tired, tell them you’re tired. If you’re sick, be honest about being sick and not feeling good.’

It was a tough period in Lovato’s life. Not only was she working on a TV show, but she also worked on the ‘Camp Rock’ sequel, toured with the Jonas Brothers to promote their musical film, and an album at the time. In November 2010, Lovato entered rehab for the first time for ‘emotional and physical distress’ after she punched a backup dancer. Her rep told TMZ at the time, ‘Demi Lovato left her tour early this weekend in order to seek medical treatment for emotional and physical issues she has dealt with for some time. Demi has decided to take personal responsibility for her actions and seek help. She is doing just that. [Demi] regrets not being able to finish her tour, but is looking forward to getting back to work in the near future.’ The singer and actress later opened up to People magazine of her stint in rehab, ‘Looking back, it makes sense. There were times when I was so manic I was writing seven songs in one night, and I’d be up until 5:30 in the morning.’ Her stint in rehab saw Lovato leave her tour early, as well as quit her show. The cast would continue on with the show without her for another year with a brand new show called ‘So Random!’

Lovato went straight to work after her stay in rehab. By September 2011, only 8 months after she left rehab following a two month stay, she released her next album, ‘Unbroken’. With that being said, not only was she now a singer, actress, and performer, but also she became the face of sobriety. Everywhere she went, she’d talk about her path to sobriety. She was seen as brave to the public. In private, however, she was still struggling. In private, she was still battling addiction. Lovato opened about that time in her 2017 ‘Simply Complicated’ documentary. She said, ‘I wasn’t working my program. I wasn’t ready to get sober. I was sneaking [cocaine] on planes, sneaking it in bathrooms, sneaking it throughout the night—nobody knew. I was either craving drugs or on drugs. I was not easy to work with. I was using while I had a sober companion, and I went through, like, 20 sober companions.’ At that point in time, the last time she used drugs was in 2012, when she invited random strangers to her hotel room. She had to perform on ‘American Idol’ the following day. In 2013, she became a judge on ‘The X Factor’ alongside Britney Spears, and was as living in a sober house. In the same documentary, she said, ‘You really have to lean into the people that are trying to support you. You really have to surrender, because that’s when the change is gonna happen.’

Things were looking up for Lovato between 2013 and 2017. She was clean and sober, though she still was struggling with her eating disorder. She said in her 2017 documentary, ‘Food is still the biggest challenge in my life. I don’t want to give it the power to say it controls my every thought, but it’s something I’m constantly thinking about.’ The documentary also showed her speaking to her manager at the time, Phil McIntyre , about her purging the night before. By March of 2018, the singer celebrated 6 years of sobriety. She started at the time, ‘Just officially turned 6 years sober. So grateful for another year of joy, health and happiness. It IS possible.’ A few months later, however, things took a downturn as she released her next song, ‘Sober’, where she sang in the chorus, ‘Momma, I’m so sorry. I’m not sober anymore. Daddy, please forgive me, for the drinks spilled on the floor.’

This leads us to that fateful July 24, 2018. Lovato overdosed and was hospitalized. Numerous people were seen visiting her at the facility, including her ex-boyfriend of 6 years, Wilmer Valderrama, as well as her former friend, Selena Gomez, and collaborator, Christina Aguilera. She then entered a rehab facility to work through her recovery. In a statement posted on Instagram, Lovato said, ‘I now need time to heal and focus on my sobriety and road to recovery. The love you have all shown me will never be forgotten and I look forward to the day where I can say I came out on the other side. I will keep fighting.’ She kept a low profile for months until 2020. In January, she gave a powerful performance of ‘Anyone’ at the Grammys. Gomez posted a shoutout to her following the performance. She wrote on Instagram at the time, ‘Demi I’m so happy for you. Thank you for your courage and bravery. That February, Lovato sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl.

That’s where it gets tricky. That year, Lovato released numerous single, alongside multiple collaborators. Her most notable two singles, however, were ‘I Love Me’ and ‘OK Not To Be OK’ as a collaborator with Marshmellow. The reason why I’m saying they were notable isn’t because there was anything special about them per se. But rather because both singles and music videos somehow referenced her past and her letting go of it. The ‘I Love Me’ music video referenced Lovato’s 2015 ‘Confident’ era, her time with the Jonas Brothers, her former relationship with Valderrama and him getting married to another woman, as well as her OD. The music video for ‘OK Not To Be OK’ represented the younger version of Lovato’s character in ‘Camp Rock’.

Another thing she let go of following her near-fatal overdose was her management team. She told Ellen DeGeneres in 2020, ‘I lived a life for the past six years that I felt wasn’t my own. I struggled really hard with an eating disorder, yes, and that was my primary problem. But my life, I just felt it was so, I don’t like to use this word, but I felt like it was controlled. If I was in my hotel room at night, they would take the phone away so I couldn’t order room service, or if there was fruit in my room, they would take it out, because that’s extra sugar. We’re not talking about brownies and cookies and candy and stuff like that, it was fruit too. For many years I didn’t even have a birthday cake. I had a watermelon cake, where you cut your watermelon into the shape of a cake and then you put fat free whip cream on top and that was your cake. For years I did that and it kind of became an ongoing joke but I just really wanted birthday cake. This year, when I turned 27, I have a new team and Scooter Braun, my manager, gave me the best birthday cake. I just remember crying because I was finally eating cake with a manager that didn’t need anything from me and that loved me for who I am and supported my journey. At some point, it becomes dangerous to try to control someone’s food when they’re in recovery from an eating disorder.’

Yes, you read that right. THE Scooter Braun. The one that practically stole Taylor Swift’s masters and had his clients like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande overworked when they were at their lowest. With the new management team by her side, ‘Demi released her 2021 album, ‘Dancing with the Devil… the Art of Starting Over’. To promote the album, she released the single, ‘Dancing With The Devil’. The music video chronicled the events that led to her OD. This included her being taken advantage of and raped by her dealer. She then also released a 4 part documentary film to go with it, where she opened up further about what led to her 2018 OD. I watched the music video. I listened to the entire album. I even watched the documentary. And let’s just say I have opinions.

First and foremost, I just want to say that I actually absolutely loved the lead single and the entire album. I think it was her best work yet. That particular album, I felt, was where she was her most truthful. There were so many times before throughout her career where she was advocating for sobriety and was the face of sober living when, in reality, she was high AF. Not this time, though. The album was dark, unfiltered, and emotional. It was also inspiring, heartwarming and uplifting. I think my favourite song that wasn’t a single from the album was ‘15 Minutes’, which chronicled her broken engagement to Max Ehrich. It was a sad time in her life because the person she loved and thought loved her ended up using her as a PR relationship. But at least the song is a smash. And even though the album was the most authentic and vulnerable to date, there were a few issues with it:

• It was uncohensive: some say the album’s filler songs and subject matters dilute its sonic experience. 
• There was an unclear focus: some say the album doesn’t know what kind of album it wants to be, shifting genres and styles throughout. 
• It was Radio-light: The album isn’t as radio-heavy as Lovato’s previous ones. 

The album, I felt, was too long. I could forgive her for that, though, as I could listen to it to its entirety in several days rather than listening to it in one take. Most people, though, don’t have the patience for it. The critics were hardy on her, and I had to digress. It was a work of art that was important to her and to her fans. It was a work of art that made us root for her. BUT…. And there’s a big ‘but’ in there. Her work was overshadowed by her personal life and her being TOO outspoken. Her mistake was the documentary that she released alongside the album. It wasn’t her making the documentary that was a mistake, but rather that she opened up about her life WAY too much. More particularly, she revealed too much about her sobriety journey. So much so, that, to me, she became an untrustworthy person.

In the documentary, Lovato revealed that she decided for herself to live a ‘California Sober’ lifestyle. Of that decision, Lovato said, ‘Telling myself that I can never have a drink or smoke marijuana, I feel like that’s setting myself up for failure cause I’m such a black-and-white thinker. After almost dying from the OD and after so many years of being the poster child of sobriety, I didn’t want people to criticize me for that,” she explains. She also expressed fear that if she revealed her choice, it would convince others to do the same. “It isn’t for everybody. Recovery isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. And you shouldn’t be forced to get sober if you’re not ready. You shouldn’t get sober for other people. You have to do it for yourself.’

Numerous celebrities Lovato previously worked with made cameo appearances in the documentary, including Will Farrell, Christina Aguilera, and Elton John. Though John, who’s been sober for over 30 years now, had nothing but praise for Lovato, he did challenge her lifestyle of choice. He said in the documentary, ‘“I loved her so much. When you’re young and you’re famous, my God it’s tough. You are put on a pedestal and you’re not supposed to be human … She’s human and she’s adorable and she’s brave.’ BUT….. that’s where the BUT comes in, because he was the one who made the emphasis that moderation doesn’t work. He said, ‘If you drink, you’re going to drink more. If you take a pill, you’re going to take another one. You either do it or you don’t.’

He’s the one person who’d know exactly what he’s talking about, because he’d been there. He’d been in Lovato’s shoes. He even developed epilepsy due to his drug use. Lovato herself now has permanent brain damage due to her 2018 overdose. That alone should’ve been enough for her to stop using completely, but it wasn’t, and she had someone like Scooter Braun as her manager who enabled her to live that way. This revelation made her look like a total hypocrite and a phoney. One can’t make an entire album about their recovery journey and road to sobriety, then say that they’re living the California Sober lifestyle, and expect to be taken seriously. It just doesn’t work this way. She tries so hard to portray herself as the ‘perfect girl’ when, in reality, she’s far from it. It’s dangerous.

Advocacy is an art in itself. It takes a lot of courage and strength to be one. Advocacy is a commitment to do good by encouraging others to live and let live. To be an advocate, a good advocate no less, one needs to be committed to change, be able to share your commitment, and be open to learning more about the issue at hand. For Lovato, it was addiction. She knew how to be an addict, but she didn’t know how to recover. She didn’t practice what she preached, and that was the reason why she failed. To monetize from advocacy that one doesn’t practice is fraud – plain and simple. And that’s what she was. That what she’s always been, in a way.

Since the release of her 2021 album and documentary, Lovato released her next album in ‘Holy FVCK’ the following year. During her press tour for it, she appeared on the ‘Zane Lowe Show’, and said, ‘”Everything that I write about comes from personal experiences, and I had gone through a rough time last year. And I went back to treatment, and when I came out, I had all of this unresolved trauma that I hadn’t dealt with or that I started to deal with in treatment. And then when I came out, I was like, ‘It’s OK to be angry and feel those things.’ So when I was making the album, in the first week, I had a lot of anger, and I think it showed in a lot of the songs, ‘Freak,’ ‘Heaven,’ ‘Eat Me.’ Towards the end, you’ve got love songs. With time, comes trust. I never have come out of treatment, I mean, maybe the first time, expecting people to trust me right away. It was a learning experience of, OK, people are going to have to learn to trust you again. The only way they can do that is by you proving yourself and not just talking, but taking actions that are towards your recovery.’

That last part is extremely important. Trust. It’s something we hadn’t been able to do throughout Lovato’s entire career. How do we know that we can trust her now? She gave us more than enough reasons not to believe her; not to trust her; not to take her word for anything. She’s also proven herself time and time again to not be a girls’ girl. She’s proven herself to be, all in all, a judgemental a**hole. She had a history of judging and publicly shaming Selena Gomez because she didn’t show enough support towards her throughout her addiction when Gomez herself was going through lupus and bipolar struggles , Taylor Swift for ‘taking away’ Selena Gomez from her when they became friends, and then for her donating $250,000 to Kesha to cover her legal fees in her trial against Dr. Luke, the Jonas Brothers for trying so hard to help through her addiction and failing at it, and even a random ice cream she went to that, according to her, triggered her eating disorder because it sold candy. To that I’d say, ‘The world doesn’t revolve around you, Demi!’

And speaking of ED, Lovato released yet another documentary last year, ‘Child Star’, where she invited more former child stars like Drew Barrymore Christina Ricci, and JoJo Siwa to speak of their experiences of being in the limelight at an early age. She also invited her former co-stars, Alyson Stoner and Raven. Stoner, who goes by they/them pronouns, spoke of being the first person to confront Lovato of her eating disorder. Lovato said, “I remember one time you followed me into the bathroom in ‘Camp Rock 1’ and I had been purging. You picked up on it because your spidey senses were already in tune with those behaviors, and you followed me in and you talked to me. I was really grateful that someone didn’t just shun me, in that moment, or shame me at all. I felt like you were very understanding, but that was definitely a moment I remember being — one, ‘Oh my god, somebody knows. F*ck.’ But two, I was really grateful that you were there for me.’ To which Stoner said, ‘We know what we were dealing with at the surface level was just one part of the story of what we’re going through each day.’

Stoner then went on to describe what it was like working with Lovato on ‘Camp Rock 2’. They said, ‘It felt so hard to access you in that way. We lost that thread of trust, closeness and it didn’t seem like you wanted to be reached either at that point. The last few years of working together felt really challenging. The treatment did feel drastically different. I do remember a sense of walking on eggshells and so there was definitely a lot of fear of a blowup.’ Lovato apologized for her behaviour at the time. When speaking with Raven in the documentary, Lovato said, ‘When we first got on the phone to talk about this project, I was like, ‘I watched you on ‘That’s So Raven’. Such an inspiration.’ You were like, ‘B—h, I was on your show.’ I was like, ‘Oh my god, she was.’’ To which Raven said, ‘I mean, you weren’t the nicest person. You weren’t like, ‘Welcome!’ You weren’t doing that. Being the type of person I am and that I’ve been in the industry for as long as you, and I understand the glaze over the eyes. I didn’t hold it against you. I just was like, ‘Something’s going on there.’’

‘I was trading connection for success.’ – Lovato said in the documentary. And that’s certainly the case. Not just during her Disney days when she was on ‘Camp Rock’ and ‘Sonny With A Chance’, but throughout her entire career path. The main reason why her 2021 ‘Starting Over’ era failed was because she, yet again, started working and getting herself out there in the public when she just wasn’t ready. Had she waited just a little bit longer, she would’ve been much better off as an artist, and maybe we even would’ve taken her seriously this time. Her ‘Holy FVCK album should’ve been her comeback album following her 2018 overdose. Her ‘Child Star’ documentary should’ve been her comeback documentary. And in between, she should’ve been off social media and away from the public eye entirely.

When you go through trauma, health struggle, or mental health struggle, the best thing you can do for yourself, as well as for others, is take a break and take care of yourself. There’s nothing, and I mean nothing, more important than your health. Demi Lovato didn’t get the memo. As hard as it is to do so, I want to believe that she’s in a much better place now. I’m rooting for her. Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.’