Demi Lovato Remembers Her Wild Years, When Cocaine, Vodka & Bulimia Ruled Her Life
Demi Lovato may carry herself as one of America's Sweethearts, but as she has made clear, she hasn't always been the golden girl her publicist has made her out to be. Following the publication of her memoir, Staying Strong: 365 Days a Year, the 21-year-old sat down for an interview with _Access Hollywood_, giving them a revealing and candid look at her past and her behaviour behind-the-scenes that almost wrecked her career before it had begun.
Demi has managed to regain control of her body and mind
“I’m very, very good at manipulating people and that was something that I did in my disease, I would manipulate everyone around me. There were times I would just continue to lie, so that everything looked OK on the outside,” the X Factor judge told AH's Kit Hoover. Lovato went on to describe how her lying turned into deception and conniving, going on to describe some of the times she would go to whatever lengths necessary to have things her way in her wild teenage years.
“Something I’ve never talked about before, but with my drug use I could hide it to where I would sneak drugs. I couldn’t go without 30 minutes to an hour without cocaine and I would bring it on airplanes,” she revealed further. “I would smuggle it basically and just wait until everyone in first class would go to sleep and I would do it right there. I’d sneak to the bathroom and I’d do it. That’s how difficult it got and that was even with somebody [with me], I had a sober companion, somebody who was watching me 24/7 and living with me [and] I was able to hide it from them as well.”
The former Disney star went on to describe how her battles weren't just with drugs, revealing that her lowest point came as she battled the bottle, in this case a Sprite bottle. She recalled "going to the airport" with "a Sprite bottle just filled with vodka" at only "nine in the morning," as the moment she looked at herself and decided it was time to get help. She continued, "I was throwing up in the car and this was just to get on a plane to go back to LA to the sober living house that I was staying at…I had all the help in the world, but I didn’t want it. When I hit that moment I was like, it’s no longer fun when you’re doing it alone."
Demi's biggest battle came with booze
Next page: Demi's mother opens up as they both recall their eating disorders
Demi went on to discuss her eating disorder too, opening up in her AH interview about how her food-related-troubles began before she was even a teenager. Describing her weight problems as something that "was always there," Demi recalled how she "started overeating, compulsively overeating" at just "8 or 9 years old," with this overeating turning into under-eating and even developed into bulimia. She said, "I went from doing that [overeating] to being unhappy with my body. I went to just completely starving myself and that turned into throwing up and starving myself and it was just this crazy battle going on inside of me. It got really difficult [and] I would throw up and it would just be blood and it was something that I realized if I don’t stop this, I am going to die.”
Demi has managed to get her life in order at last
Demi's mother, Dianna, was also present at the interview and recalled how she dealt with her daughter's hidden drug problem and her own struggles with an eating disorder, struggles that landed both mother and daughter in rehab, where their relationship only flourished from there on.
In regards to Demi's drug use, she recalled, “I suspected [she was using drugs]. It’s like any other parent, when you see things, when you see signs you don’t want to believe that’s what actually going on. So when they’re telling you that’s not what is going on… you want too badly to believe them and I think for a long time I was in denial. I didn’t know. I didn’t actually see her, so when she said, ‘Oh no, There’s nothing going on. I’m not using, I’m not drinking, I wasn’t doing any of these things,’ Why was I not to believe her?”
Going on to describe her own weight issues, Dianne thanked her daughter's own rehab stint in 2010 for making her realise that she had problems of her own, problems that she needed to resolve before it was too late. Thanks to help from her daughter, they were both able to get the help they needed. Dianna continued, “I had issues I needed to work on as well because I wasn’t setting a good example for her. I had a terrible eating disorder that I had for many, many years and I didn’t realize it and I had to face up to the fact that I was suffering as well. And a lot of what [Demi] went through with an eating disorder had to do with what she had seen growing up and I also had severe depression and I ended up asking for help actually they did an intervention with me and said, ‘Mom, you need to get help.’”
With those difficulties resolved and their demons seemingly in the past, Demi and Dianna have only grown closer as a result and with each other to rely on, both hope they will never fall back into an eating, drinking or drug-related nightmare.We hope so too!