Pop singer, Demi Lovato, has a new YouTube documentary series titled, “Dancing with the Devil,” which adopts the same emotional format as the previous series done by her.
The series explores the singer’s discomforting relationship with her mental health, eating disorders, alcoholism, drug addiction and her publicized overdose in 2018. In the trailer, she unveils that for several years she’s been both filtering her experiences and keeping quiet about certain scenarios to maintain her outer shell. Though still guarded in this series, Lovato slightly strips the exterior and confronts the darkest points in her life.
Lovato was not the only person in her family to face drug addiction. She reveals that both her parents had addictions, which contributed to her toxic relationship with them. She also began doing beauty pageants at a young age and the emphasis on perfection greatly affected her self-esteem.
“I remember actually making a pact with myself saying ‘If I don’t win this pageant, I will never eat again,” Lovato said in the documentary.
Eventually, the grueling pressure to look a certain way as a female entertainer consumed her, and she relapsed into her eating disorder and began drinking.
Though we’ve seen many female entertainers speak on this topic, it can be heartbreaking to listen to Lovato explain how desperately she strived to be the perfect role model for her fans.
In 2018, Lovato suffered three strokes, a heart attack, pneumonia via asphyxiation, multiple organ failure and brain damage, which left her unable to drive due to blind spots in her vision. Upon waking up in the hospital blind, she could not see her sister Madison who had come to visit her. Lovato found poetic irony in this situation being that her reason for becoming sober, to begin with, was because her parents would tell her she would not be able to see Madison if her drug habits continued.
It’s undeniable that Lovato is armored with incredible strength after all the obstacles she’s faced and is now on the road to healing as she embarks on her growth journey.
The first two episodes of the docuseries are available to stream now. The third episode will be available on Tuesday, March 30, and the fourth episode on April 6.