“Dancing with the Devil” a four-part docuseries covering Demi Lovato’s struggle with addiction, comes out on YouTube on March 23.
The series heavily covers Lovato sharing her story of her drug overdose in 2018.
The first sentence Lovato says in the trailer is, “I’ve had so much to say over the past two years, wanting to set the record straight about what is was that happened.” The trailer starts out with Lovato sitting in a chair, and then cuts to a montage of significant moments in her life and career since she was a child star, leading to a picture of her after her 2018 overdose.
Lovato was taken to the hospital in July 2018 after being found unconscious at her Los Angeles home. The overdose was reportedly caused by opioids laced with fentanyl, a month after she announced she had broken six years of sobriety. In the trailer she stated, “I’ve had a lot of lives, like a cat. I’m on my ninth life.”
Lovato’s parents and one of her sisters are included in the docuseries to help tell the story. Her stepfather and sister both commented on her ability to deceive them. “Demi’s very good at hiding what she needs to hide,” Madison Lovato comments in the video. Lovato’s parents and two sisters appears throughout the docuseries. Also included are Elton John, Christina Aguilera, Sirah and Matthew Scott Montgomery.
There’s a scene of Lovato one month before the overdose, on a phone call being praised for her show that night. She was told it was only going to get better from there. It then abruptly cuts to a snippet of the 911 call that was made during Lovato’s overdose. Lovato also states that she had three strokes, a heart attack, and at one point it was thought by her doctors that she only had five to ten more minutes. Lovato also suffers from brain damage caused by the overdose, that includes blurry vision that makes her unable to drive.
Lovato has been open about her struggles with mental health, addiction, and eating disorders throughout her career. In her 2012 documentary “Stay Strong,” she spoke about her daily battle with eating disorders, self-harm, mental health struggles and addiction. She talked about the extent of her substance abuse during her teenage years in her 2017 documentary “Simply Complicated.”
One thing I’ve always appreciated about Lovato, is that she is not afraid to be authentic and real when it comes to talking about mental health and sobriety publicly. There’s often a disassociation with celebrities where fans and consumers can’t understand that they are real people who can struggle with addiction and other things. This documentary, as well as her others, shows that Lovato will be laying the timeline of every part of her addiction out fully.