Demi Lovato sitting in a chair.© Demi Lovato

Demi Lovato reveals she had three strokes and a heart-attack in ‘Dancing with the Devil’ docuseries

“Any time that you suppress a part of yourself, it’s gonna overflow.”


Jovita Trujillo - Los Angeles
Senior WriterLos Angeles
FEBRUARY 17, 2021 8:27 PM EST

Demi Lovato is telling her story. The official trailer for her YouTube docuseries “Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil” was released Wednesday and fans can expect to see an honest and vulnerable side of the artist they have never seen before. In the four-part docuseries coming March 23th, the 28-year-old singer reveals shocking details about her struggles with addiction and her near-fatal overdose in 2018. It’s a window into Lovato’s life over the past few years and includes in-depth details of the pain, and strength it took to make a comeback mentally and musically. “I had so much to say over the past two years, wanting to set the record straight about what it was that happened,” Lovato shares at the start of the trailer. “Any time that you suppress a part of yourself, it’s gonna overflow.”

© Angelo Kritikos

Demi Lovato

On July 24, 2018, Lovato was hospitalized for a near-fatal overdose just a month after she revealed in her single “Sober” that she had relapsed after 6 years of sobriety. The docuseries includes footage from her 2018 Tell Me You Love Me World Tour, which was going on at the time of her overdose. Along with interviews with her friends Sirah and Matthew Scott Montgomery, her sisters, and mother, Dianna De La Garza, and stepfather, Eddie de la Garza. Those closest to her had no idea how bad it had gotten. “Demi’s good at making you believe she’s okay,” her stepfather says. The series will cover everything induing her heroin use. Lovato explains, “I had crossed a line that I had never crossed before… I snapped.” After shocking 911 audio from the night of her overdose, Lovato reveals, “I had three strokes. I had a heart attack. My doctors said that I had five to 10 more minutes [to live].”

The new teaser also gives fans a first listen to her song that inspired the title, “Dancing With the Devil.” Musicians like Elton John and Christina Aguilera also offer insight into the situation. It will cover recent chapters in the artist‘s life like her whirlwind engagement and break up with actor Max Ehrich, the decision to chop off all her hair, and her current sobriety. When asked if she’s “entirely sober now,” Lovato looks at the camera and cuts away before her answer.

At a Television Critics Association panel Wednesday, Lovato said the ordeal left her with brain damage, per USA Today. “I don’t drive a car, because I have blind spots in my vision,” she said. “I also, for a long time, had a really hard time reading. It was a big deal when I was able to read out of a book, which was, like, two months later because my vision was so blurry.”

“I dealt with a lot of the repercussions, and I feel like they kind of are still there to remind me of what could happen if I ever get into a dark place again,” she continued. “And I‘m grateful for those reminders, but I’m so grateful that I was someone that didn’t have to do a lot of rehabbing. The rehabbing came in the emotional side, and the therapeutic side internally, and I did a lot of work after that... just not physical.”