In Demi Lovato’s upcoming YouTube documentary series “Dancing With the Devil,” the singer revealed she was sexually assaulted the night of her near-fatal overdose in 2018.
According to BuzzFeed News, Lovato said in the doc that she was raped by her drug dealer, who remains anonymous, on the night she overdosed on heroin.
“I didn’t just overdose. I was taken advantage of,” she said. “When they found me, I was naked, blue. I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me.”
Lovato added that when she was subsequently hospitalized, a nurse asked if she’d had consensual sex that night. The singer briefly remembered the incident and said yes, but realized a month later that wasn’t true.
“When I woke up in the hospital, they asked if we had had consensual sex… There was one flash that I had of him on top of me. I saw that flash and said, ‘yes,’” Lovato recounted. “It wasn’t until a month after the overdose that I realized, ‘You weren’t in any state of mind to make a consensual decision.’”
Lovato further said in the docuseries that her 2018 overdose came after she had been sober for six years.
“I’m surprised I didn’t OD. I just went to town. I went on a shopping spree. That night I did drugs I’d never done before,” she said, before describing the potentially lethal cocktail of intoxicants she used. “I’d never done meth before, I tried meth. I mixed it with ecstasy, with coke, weed, alcohol, oxycontin… and that alone should have killed me.”
The singer has recently been open about the repercussions of her overdose. She disclosed earlier this year that she suffered a heart attack and three strokes in the aftermath of the incident, and said she is still recovering from brain damage and partial blindness.
“Dancing With the Devil” premiered at South by Southwest’s online film festival on Tuesday. The four-part docuseries, directed by Michael D. Ratner, will be released on March 23 on YouTube.
Check out the trailer for “Dancing With the Devil” below.