Monday night, Demi Lovato shared her experiences and wisdom at the NewYork-Presbyterian Church’s annual benefit event for the Youth Mental Health Center. The singer has rarely shied away from speaking honestly and truthfully about her complicated journey with mental health, substance abuse and eating disorders. In conversation with Dr. Charlie Shaffer, she spoke about the lessons she learned during her five inpatient treatment programs.
“I went through inpatient treatment five times, and every time I returned to the treatment center I felt defeated,” Lovato explained to People magazine. “I know that experience firsthand, but I think the silver lining was when I started talking and building relationships with my treatment team, whether it was a job or a program.”
She added: “I think that when I started noticing the joy in life and the little things, that light of hope started to change. It was totally foreign to me before, because I was so used to not seeing hope.”
It wasn’t until Lovato’s fifth hospitalization that she realized she “definitely felt different” and started to acknowledge that she’d made it this far. “I felt like I’d hit rock bottom, and I knew what I had to do, which was to live a life of recovery,” she says. “And it was something I’d been putting off for a long time.”
Throughout her career, Lovato has documented her hopeful recovery and unfortunate accident in multiple documentaries, but also in music. In 2021, she Dancing with the Devil…How to Start Over An accompanying documentary series also follows her recovery from a drug overdose in 2018. As this story becomes increasingly intertwined with her highly publicized life, Lovato has had to learn to separate her mental health from her identity.
“It wasn’t until I first went to therapy that I realized this wasn’t me. It’s just part of who I am. I mean, my struggles have shaped me into the porcelain you see today, but it’s never been my identity since,” she said. “It’s just become something that makes me a little bit more interesting, I guess you could say… [I’m] I’m grateful for what I’ve been through and what I’ve overcome.”
