March 2018 – Lovato opens up about her sexuality
After avoiding directly answering questions about her sexuality, the star revealed in her 2017 YouTube documentary Simply Complicated that she was open to dating men and women. In an interview with InStyle, she discussed the topic further.
“I’m very fluid,” she shared. “I think love is love. You can find it in any gender. I like the freedom of being able to flirt with whoever I want.”
“I’m not suffering because I’m alone,” she continued. “There were many years I was in a relationship and I wasn’t learning about myself. Now I’m learning about what I like, what I need, and what I want.”
August 2018 – First post after hospitalization
A few weeks after her July 2018 hospitalization for an apparent drug overdose, the singer opened up to her concerned fans in a since-deleted post on Instagram. “I have always been transparent about my journey with addiction,” she began. “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.”
Lovato continued: “I want to thank God for keeping me alive and well. To my fans, I am forever grateful for all of your love and support throughout this past week and beyond. Your positive thoughts and prayers have helped me navigate through this difficult time.”
“I want to thank my family, my team, and the staff at Cedars-Sinai who have been by my side this entire time. Without them I wouldn’t be here writing this letter to all of you,” she 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.”
March 2019 – Reflecting on what would have been the seven-year anniversary of her sobriety
The star took to her Instagram Stories to share a hopeful message on her recovery and encourage fans to seek help if they need it.
Today I would’ve had 7 years sober,” she wrote. “I don’t regret going out because I needed to make those mistakes but I must never forget that’s exactly what they were: mistakes.”
“Grateful that AA/NA never shuts the door on you no matter how many times you have to start your time over,” she continued. “I didn’t lose 6 years; I’ll always have that experience but now I just get to add to that time with a new journey and time count. If you’ve relapsed and are afraid to get help again, just know it’s possible to take that step towards recovery. If you’re alive today, you can make it back. You’re worth it.”
November 2019 – Learned from her experiences
At the 2019 Teen Vogue Summit in Los Angeles, Lovato reflected on her hospitalization and shared that she has “never been more in tune with who I am than where I’m at today.”
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that I’m actually an extremely sensitive person,” she said. “I am human, so be easy on me. And I’m so tired of pretending like I’m not human. That’s one thing that I won’t do anymore. When you say stuff, it affects me. I’m human. I try not to look, but I see it.”
When asked what she sees when she looks in the mirror now, Lovato said, “I see someone that’s overcome a lot.”
She continued, “I genuinely see a fighter. I don’t see a championship winner in there, but I see a fighter and I see someone that’s going to continue to fight no matter [what] challenges are thrown their way.”
“Genuinely I just want people to remember that I’m a singer,” she added. “I think that a lot of the things I’ve been through kind of outshined my successes in the music industry or acting now. I just want people to remember that that’s what I want to give to the world so please focus on that and not the other things.”
January 2020 – “Anyone”
Ahead of her heart-wrenching Grammys performance, where she delivered an emotional rendition of her then-brand new song “Anyone,” Lovato discussed the song with with Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1.
“I wish I could go back in time and help that version of myself,” she said about listening to the song now. “If I ever come back, I want to sing this song,” Lovato recalled thinking during her stay at the hospital.
“I almost listen back and hear these lyrics as a cry for help,” Lovato said. “And you kind of listen back to it and you kind of think, how did nobody listen to this song and think, ‘Let’s help this girl?'”
“I was recording it in a state of mind where I felt I was okay, but clearly I wasn’t,” Lovato added. “I even listen back to it and I’m like, ‘Gosh, I wish I could go back in time and help that version of myself.’”
February 2020 – “Ups and downs” of mental health
Lovato stopped by Ashley Graham’s Pretty Big Deal podcast to speak about her eating disorders, recovery process and self-care practices. She continued that opening-up process with a vulnerable Instagram post.
“Woke up feeling not super confident even tho my PBD episode just came out. Let this be a reminder to anyone struggling out there — this life is a journey with tons of ups and downs but you can’t give up,” the “Confident” singer wrote to her followers. “I deal with sh– on the daily but I know I’m gonna be okay with God on my side. Also you guys, my friends and family are pretty helpful too.”
March 2020 – Shares what led to her 2018 relapse
While visiting The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the singer got serious about the events that led to her 2018 relapse, overdose and hospitalization.
She revealed that her breaking point stemmed from an eating disorder that became all-consuming. “It let me to being really, really unhappy; my bulimia got really bad and I asked for help. And I didn’t receive the help that I needed,” she told DeGeneres.
Lovato continued that her then-management team questioning her sobriety was not very compassionate. “They responded with, like, ‘You’re being very selfish, this would ruin things for not just you but for us as well,'” she said. “And when I heard that, my core issues are abandonment from my birth father as a child…so when they left, they totally played on that fear and I felt completely abandoned. So I drank. And that night I went to a party and there was other stuff there, and it was only three months before I ended up in the hospital with an O.D.”
“I think it’s important that I sit here on this stage and tell you at home, or you in the audience, or you right here that if you do go through this, you yourself can get through it,” she concluded. “You can get to the other side and it may be bumpy, but you are a 10 out of 10. Don’t forget it. And as long as you take the responsibility, you can move past it and learn to love yourself the way that you deserve to be loved.”
July 2020 – Body image struggles
“I used to have people watching me the night before a photo shoot to make sure that I didn’t binge or eat and be swollen the next day,” the pop star told Bustle for its July cover story. “It’s just a totally different world now…I don’t prepare for photo shoots, even. I can eat Subway for breakfast.”
Now, Lovato has figured out what she truly wants. “I want a career that has nothing to do with my body,” she told Bustle. “I want it to be about my music and my lyrics and my message. And I want a long-lasting career that I don’t have to change myself for. Music brought me so much joy when I was younger, and I lost that joy throughout the hustle and bustle of the music industry. I got miserable. And I don’t ever want it to be like that again. That’s what I want.”
September 2020 – World Suicide Prevention Day
Demi Lovato chatted with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe about her collaboration with Marshmello “OK Not To Be OK,” which was released on World Suicide Prevention Day.
“I’ve dealt with depression and suicidal ideation since I was seven years old, and that’s something that I’ve been very vocal about. I’ve talked about it for years. And so today, I don’t take it lightly,” Lovato told Lowe in the interview. “I easily could have been someone that wasn’t having this interview today. So, I’m grateful that I’ve had the support and the team around me to help me get through this time. And what I just want everyone else to know is that I’ve been there and you can get past it too. It can be very, very dark, but we have to remember that we can’t seek permanent solutions for temporary problems, because life ebbs and flows. And just as happiness can be fleeting, sadness as well. So, we have to hold onto that hope, and we have to just keep fighting and powering through.”
She also shared a powerful message on Twitter (below).
December 2020 – Glitter stretch marks
Lovato painted a (literal) picture of how she’s been celebrating her eating disorder recovery, which included loads of gold glitter tracing her stretch marks. The singer, who struggled with bulimia since she was a teenager, wrote on Instagram, “I used to genuinely believe recovery from an eating disorder wasn’t real. That everyone was faking or secretly relapsing behind closed doors. ‘Surely she throws up here and there,’ ‘she can’t POSSIBLY accept her cellulite’… those were just a few of the things that I used to tell myself growing up,” she wrote.
She continued: “I’m so grateful that I can honestly say for the first time in my life – my dietitian looked at me and said ‘This is what eating disorder recovery looks like.’ In honor of my gratitude for the place I’m in today, this was a lil shoot I did by myself in quarantine this summer when I wanted to celebrate my stretch marks instead of being ashamed of them. I started wearing actual glitter paint on my stretch marks to celebrate my body and all of its features (whether society views them as good OR bad) My stretch marks aren’t going away so might as well throw a lil glitter on em’ amiright?”
See here.
