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Demi Lovato gets real about the aftermath of her 2018 overdose: ‘I had three strokes. I had a heart attack’

By Brooke Villanueva Published Feb 17, 2021 10:53 pm

Demi Lovato got real about the overdose she experienced a couple of years ago—an unfortunate incident that almost took the singer’s life. 

In the official trailer for her docuseries Demi Lovato: Dancing With The Devil, she revealed that it made her suffer three strokes and a heart attack in particular. “My doctors said that I had five to 10 more minutes,” she recalled. 

According to Yahoo Entertainment, the overdose happened on July 24, 2018, just “a month after Lovato revealed in her song Sober that she had relapsed after having maintained her sobriety for six years.” It took place at her home in Los Angeles, where she was revived with an opioid reversal drug called “Narcan.” She was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and went into rehab two weeks later.

Lovato pointed out that aside from the substances, as reported by People, “past traumas” and other challenges she encountered in the entertainment industry also stirred up her “breaking point.” 

"I dealt with a lot of the repercussions and I feel like they are still there to remind me of what could happen if I ever get into a dark place again," she declared. "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 on the emotional side."

What was the aftermath of the incident? “I was left with brain damage, and I still deal with the effects of that today,” she told reporters, as stated in the same article. “I don’t drive a car, because I have blind spots on my vision. And 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.” 

While it was indeed a “painful journey,” she “wouldn’t change a thing” about it, after all. “Everything had to happen in order for me to learn the lessons that I learned,” she said. “I’m proud of the person I am today, and I’m so proud that people get to see it in this documentary and I couldn’t be more grateful that I had someone by my side.”

The documentary, directed by Michael D. Ratner, is set to premiere on YouTube on March 23.

If you suspect someone dealing with drug problems in the Philippines, the Dangerous Drugs Board recommends that you help them seek professional guidance, which includes counseling, treatment, and rehabilitation. You may contact them via their official website or phone number 8929-1753 "for other queries and means of helping a person recover from drug dependency."

Article thumbnails from Demi Lovato's Instagram account