Demi Lovato’s documentary Simply Complicated is officially out on YouTube, and the 25-year-old singer gives her fan an inside to her private life, including love life, heartbreak, drugs, and even the health issues she’s been battling for years.
“I am Demi Lovato,” she says over a voiceover while clips from her life flash by. “I’m 25. The last decade has taught me a lifetime of lessons. I’ve learned that secrets make you sick. I’m learning how to be a voice and not a victim. I’ve learned that sex is natural. I’ve learned that love is necessary. Heartbreak is unavoidable, and loneliness is brutal. I’ve learned that the key to being happy is to tell your truth and be OK without all the answers. This is my story. This is Simply Complicated.”Embed from Getty Images
Lovato has always been very open about her personal struggles and health, she’s battled with drug addiction, mental health issues, including being bipolar. Lovato admits that she started using cocaine when she was 17 after she was bullied in school. To avoid being bullied, she became friends with the popular girls that encouraged her to party, drink alcohol and do drugs, such as cocaine and Adderall. Her father was an addict and an alcoholic and passed away from cancer in 2013. “I guess I always searched for what he found in drugs and alcohol because it fulfilled him, and he chose that over a family.”
She partied hard and on one occasion she threw a party at a hotel where she was drinking and using Adderall. One of her dancers told on her and she punched the dancer in the face. This resulted in Lovato being sent to rehab, which is where she was diagnosed as bipolar. “I wasn’t working my program. I wasn’t ready to get sober. I was sneaking it on planes, sneaking it in bathrooms, sneaking it throughout the night. Nobody knew.” What followed was a two-month period where she was using every day. One night, she did cocaine and took Xanax. “I started to choke a little bit,” she says. “My heart started racing, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, I might be overdosing right now.'” Lovato was out of control and being very difficult to work with, to the point that her management team was ready to leave her.
She eventually got sober, and one of the people that helped her was Wilmer Valderrama. “When I was in a relationship with Wilmer, I went three years without purging,” she continues. “When we broke up, that’s one of the first things I did. When I feel lonely, my heart feels hungry, and then I end up bingeing, and I don’t know how to figure out how to be alone.” They started dating when she was 18 and he was close to 30. “I think it was love at first sight, and I don’t really believe in that, but I believe that it happened. We connected on a level that I’ve never connected with anybody before. He was just my rock, my everything.” The pair are now broken up, but still remain friends. “You don’t share six years with somebody and not give them a piece of your heart, and vice-versa. I’m pretty sure that I’m not gonna meet anybody that compares to him, but I’m trying to keep an open heart and an open mind when it comes to that.”
Check out the documentary below:
