Demi Lovato isn’t holding anything back on YouTube. During the Television Critics Association’s 2021 winter tour, the singer appeared during a panel to promote her upcoming four-part docuseries Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil. From the docuseries’ very trailer it’s clear that this project won’t be shying away from the truth.
The docuseries is being marketed as a tell-all about what led to Lovato’s 2018 drug overdose. But the singer promises it will be much more than that. “For the past couple year’s I’ve heard a lot of stories about my life and what people think has happened,” Lovato said during the panel. “I want to set the record straight.”
Part of what the series will explore is the process of Lovato’s recovery. In the wake of her overdose she experienced three strokes and a heart attack. “Unfortunately, I was left with brain damage and I still deal with the effects of that today,” Lovato revealed. “I don’t drive a car because I have blind spots in my vision. I also, for a long time, had a really hard time reading. Reading was a big deal and 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’re kind of still there to remind me of what could happen if I ever get into a dark place again. I’m grateful for those reminders, but I’m also so grateful that I’m someone who had to do a lot of rehabbing. The rehabbing came on the emotional side and the therapeutic side, internally.”
As much as Lovato’s history with substance abuse will be covered in Dancing with the Devil, that’s not the docuseries’ sole focus. The series will cover Lovato’s path to recovery, her growing spirituality, and her path to self-acceptance. It will also deal with some previously undisclosed trauma that has defined the singer’s life.
“It’s not just about my journey. The thing is that I touch on so many topics in this documentary that it’s not just about substances,” Lovato said. “In fact the third episode is really not about substances at all and talks about past traumas that I have dealt with and have never spoken about because it was too hard. I never had a place and also I wasn’t ready. I think waking up in 2018 after what had happened to me made me realize there’s so much work I have to still do on myself. Because of that I was able to come out and talk about some of the traumas that I’ve had in my past and experiences in the industry that have, that were some of the reasons that led up to that breaking point, actually.”
Ultimately the singer and songwriter just hopes that her journey will resonate with those going through similar challenges. “That’s my biggest purpose in putting this documentary out is to help others,” Lovato said. Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil will premiere on YouTube on March 23. It will be directed by Michael D. Ratner and composed of four parts.
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Originally published at https://decider.com/2021/02/17/demi-lovato-dancing-with-the-devil-tca/ on .
