On Thursday (Feb. 5), Demi Lovato got candid with Ellen Degeneres about her battle with addiction, substance abuse, and an unknown eating disorder. In July 2018, the “Fall in Line” singer suffered from an accidental heroin overdose that was laced with the deadly fentanyl narcotic. Following her downward spiral into drug abuse, the 27-year-old singer/songwriter was unsure if she would be able to maintain a career as a musician. Now, Lovato is being more transparent than ever about her journey during her most recent interview on The Ellen Show.  Kevin Winter/Getty Images

According to Lovato, she and her team were constantly at odds due to their aggressive food monitoring tactics that eventually led to her abusing drugs. During the interview, Lovato revealed how her brutal her team was in regards to her eating habits, stating:

“If I was in my hotel room at night, they would take the phone out of the hotel room so I couldn’t call room service, or if there was fruit in my room they took it out because that’s extra sugar. We’re not talking about brownies and cookies and candies and stuff like that, it was fruit.”

The Glee actress then went on to detail how her team members’ over-controlling tactics led to her questioning her sobriety, saying:

“So I was stuck in this unhappy position and here I am sober and I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m six years sober but I’m miserable.'” Lovato continued, “I’m even more miserable than I was when I was drinking. Why am I sober?”

When she attempted to express how her management’s micromanagement was affecting her, she was told that she was being “selfish” and that her eating habits could potentially “ruin everything not only for herself but for all of those around her.” All of this aggression eventually led to Lovato relapsing on drugs and alcohol and her eventual 2018 overdose that required her to stay at Cedars Sinai Medical Center for a total of two weeks. 

Now, Demi Lovato is standing tall and speaking on the experiences that have allowed her to display a level of resilience rarely seen in the music industry. Check out the videos of Demi Lovato detailing how her eating disorder led her down a dark path of substance abuse and addiction in the video provided below. 

Demi Lovato has gained some perspective on how all her demons coincide, as she explained on Ashley Graham’s podcast, “Pretty Big Deal,” that eventually, relapsing from her eating disorder by over-exercising and heavily dieting would come to play a part in her near-fatal overdose in 2018. Demi has been very open about her struggles with alcohol, cocaine, and Oxycontin addiction as well as bulimia, and she firther addressed all of these issues on Graham’s podcast on Tuesday.

“I’m tired of running myself into the ground with workouts and extreme dieting,” Demi expressed. “I thought the past few years was recovery from an eating disorder, when it actually was just completely falling into it. And I just realized that, like, maybe my symptoms weren’t as obvious as before, but it was definitely an eating issue.” Demi further explained how elements like her disordered eating habits as well as her toxic environment led to her overdose a year-and-a-half-ago, which nearly killed her.

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“I think when you have certain people around you that are telling you certain things, that you should look a certain way, it makes it harder. I was in that situation, and I was just running myself into the ground. And I honestly think that’s kind of what led to everything happening over the past year. [It] was just me thinking I found recovery when I didn’t, and then living this kind of lie and trying to tell the world I was happy with myself when I really wasn’t.”

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Demi spent two weeks in the hospital after nearly losing her life, before entering a long-term treatment centre. The singer made her comeback at the Grammys last month, where she performed her new song, “Anyone,” that she wrote just a few days before she overdosed. “[‘Anyone’] represented that period in my life when everything hit the fan,” she told Andy Cohen on his radio show following her incredible Grammys performance. “I thought if I ever come back from this—I was in the hospital, I didn’t know—if I ever come back from this, if I end up going back to music and I’m onstage and I get a first performance, I want it to be at the Grammys and I want it to be this song.” Following her powerful Grammys moment, Demi had the honour of singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl.