Demi Lovato recreates the night of her near-fatal overdose as she is strapped to a ventilator after being ‘left for dead’ in powerful music video for Dancing With The Devil
- The 28-year-old singer relives her near-fatal overdose in 2018, depicting herself receiving fentanyl-laced drugs on that fateful July night to fighting for her life on a ventilator
- Demi was strapped to a ventilator in order to keep her breathing as she suffered from multiple organ failure, a heart attack, and several strokes due to her overdose, which is shown in the music video
- Continuing to tell the true story of her overdose, Lovato can be seen texting her drug dealer, whom she claimed raped her as she overdosed on a deadly combination of heroin and fentanyl
- The singer recently admitted that she has become more lenient with her sobriety, allowing the moderate use of alcohol and marijuana
Demi Lovato recreated the night of her 2018 overdose in the powerful music video for her single Dancing With The Devil.
In the visual, which premiered on Thursday evening via YouTube, the 28-year-old singer relives the near-fatal experience in 2018, depicting herself receiving fentanyl-laced drugs on that fateful July night to fighting for her life on a ventilator.
‘Lord, I’m sorry for dancing with the devil,’ belts the songstress during the song’s goosebump inducing bridge, while writhing around in a hospital bed with tear-filled eyes.
Emotional: Demi Lovato’s emotionally-charged music video for her latest single Dancing With The Devil premiered on Thursday evening via YouTube
The five-minute long video commences with a close-up shot of Lovato’s neck, which had to have a tube sewn into it by doctors at Cedars-Sinai medical center in order to ‘clean’ her blood.
She was also strapped to a ventilator in order to keep her breathing as she suffered from multiple organ failure, a heart attack, and several strokes due to her overdose.
To create an accurate depiction of her trauma, Lovato donned a golden blonde wig – reminiscent of her hair at the time of her overdose.
‘It’s just a little red wine, I’ll be fine,’ began the Disney Channel alum from her hospital bed, with mascara running down her face.
Fight for her life: In the visual, the 28-year-old relives her near-fatal 2018 overdose, from receiving the fentanyl-laced drugs on that fateful July night to fighting for her life on a ventilator
‘Lord, I’m sorry for dancing with the devil,’ belts the songstress during the song’s goosebump inducing bridge, while writhing around in a hospital bed with tear-filled eyes
The scene then cuts to Lovato, presumably hours prior to her overdose, throwing back a glass of wine at a bar, before adding more and more drinks to her tab.
As she continues to drink, the song’s lyrics reiterate the ‘you deserve it’ thoughts often used to justify the overconsumption of alcohol.
‘It feels like it’s worth it in my mind,’ sings Lovato, while simultaneously laying in a gurney and taking a shot.
The next scene shows the star riding in the backseat of a vehicle with her friends as she seemingly falls deeper and deeper into her emotional and mental spiral.
‘Twisted reality, hopeless insanity, I told you I was okay, but I was lying,’ declared Demi in one lyric, referencing to the reassurances she gave her friends about reintroducing herself to alcohol/drug use after six years of forced sobriety.
Spiraling: The scene then cuts to Lovato, presumably hours prior to her overdose, throwing back a glass of wine at a bar, before adding more and more drinks to her tab
Worth it? ‘It feels like it’s worth it in my mind,’ sings Lovato, while simultaneously laying in a gurney and taking a shot
Demi, moving around in her hospital bed with tears welling up in her eyes, belts out Dancing With The Devil’s powerful chorus, while various nurses perform check-ups on the star’s vitals.
Continuing to tell the true story of her overdose, Lovato – once all of her friends have left her Hollywood Hills home – can be seen texting her drug dealer, whom she claimed raped her as she overdosed on a deadly combination of heroin and fentanyl.
Once her dealer-turned rapist left the scene, Demi was discovered hours later by her former assistant who, in the music video, can be seen attempting to shake the star awake.
‘I though I could walk away easily, but here I am falling on my knees,’ sings Lovato as she is being rushed away in an ambulance, with various health care workers hooking her up to various machines and working their hardest to save her life.
Powerful: Demi, moving around in her hospital bed with tears welling up in her eyes, belts out Dancing With The Devil’s powerful chorus, while various nurses perform check-ups on the star’s vitals
Her secret: ‘Twisted reality, hopeless insanity, I told you I was okay, but I was lying,’ declared Demi in one lyric, referencing to the reassurances she gave her friends about reintroducing herself to alcohol/drug use after six years of forced sobriety
One particularly tearjerking scene showed Demi waking up in the hospital as her family remained huddled around her, with her little sister Madison wiping tears from her face.
Lovato has mentioned in interviews promoting her YouTube docu-series that she was unable to physically see Madison, as she awoke with temporary blindness.
The video concludes with the Camp Rock actress being bathed by a nurse in her hospital bed, who reveals a ‘Survivor’ tattoo on Demi’s neck.
Looking back at the terrifying moment in her song, Demi claimed she ‘almost made it to heaven’ and was ‘out of control’ at the time.
The exchange: Continuing to tell the true story of her overdose, Lovato – once all of her friends have left her Hollywood Hills home – can be seen texting her drug dealer
Her song, which is the first single from her new album Dancing with the Devil… the Art of Starting Over, sees her suggest her overdose ‘was closer than you know.’
Demi’s lyrics read: ‘Dancing with the devil / Out of control / Almost made it to heaven / It was closer than you know (closer than you know).
‘Playing with the enemy (oh) / Gambling with my soul / It’s so hard to say no / When you’re dancing with the devil.’
The music video for Dancing With The Devil comes just one day after the third dramatic episode of her four-part documentary series of the same name premiered on YouTube.
Dancing With The Devil, directed by Lovato’s friend Michael D. Ratner, documents the singer’s near-fatal overdose, which occurred at her Hollywood Hills home on July 24, 2018.
The catastrophic event in Lovato’s life was the crescendo to months of re-familiarizing herself with alcohol and drugs – even developing addictions to heroin and crack cocaine – after being sober for six years.
Demi admitted to CBS that the relapse came after a period of deep unhappiness: ‘I have been sober for however many years but I am still miserable.’
‘I didn’t control any of my life at that period of time. But, yes, I also needed to grow up and take control.
‘And that’s something I haven’t done until the past two years of my life, which is [why] I’m now in control of my finances. I’m now in control of … the food that I eat, how often I work out.’
On the evening of her overdose, Lovato explained that she was out with friends celebrating her former choreographer and creative director Dani Vitale’s birthday in Los Angeles.
Taken advantage of: Lovato claims she was also raped by her drug dealer as she overdosed on a deadly combination of heroin and fentanyl, saying verbatim that she was ‘left for dead’
Upsetting scenes: Once her dealer-turned rapist left the scene, Demi was discovered hours later by her former assistant who, in the music video, can be seen attempting to shake the star awake
‘I met up with some friends and we went to several different bars. We came back to my house and around 5:30 in the morning I said I was going to bed,’ she recalled in the documentary. ‘But the reality was that I had called one of my [drug] dealers over.’
Unknowingly, Demi was sold heroin laced with the dangerous sedative fentanyl.
On top of being sold and consuming the often deadly cocktail of drugs, Lovato claimed she was also raped by her dealer that night.
‘I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me,’ said the star.
Lovato’s former assistant Jordan Jackson discovered the singer-songwriter in the morning seemingly lifeless in bed, noting that she ‘wasn’t really moving’ and had been ‘drooling.’
‘I though I could walk away easily, but here I am falling on my knees,’ sings Lovato as she is being rushed away in an ambulance, with various health care workers hooking her up to machines and working their hardest to save her life
Reunited: One particularly tearjerking scene showed Demi waking up in the hospital as her family remained huddled around her, with her little sister Madison wiping tears from her face
Panicked, she immediately got in contact with Demi’s head of security Max Lea, who revealed that his security staff described Demi as being ‘propped up’ in bed with ‘vomit everywhere.’
As Lovato’s close knit team scrambled to figure out what to do, Jackson bravely made the decision to call 911, despite concerns regarding Demi’s condition getting out to the press.
In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, Demi said she was only a few minutes away from death when she was found on that fateful morning.
‘The doctors told me that I had five to 10 minutes and… like, if no one had found me, then I wouldn’t be here,’ she said in a clip released Friday.
‘And I’m grateful that I’m sitting here today,’ she told correspondent Tracy Smith.
In the documentary, Lovato revealed that, as she fought for her life in hospital, she suffered a heart attack and three strokes on top of having pneumonia and multiple organ failure.
She had to have a tube ‘sewed into her neck’ that was actively ‘taking her blood into a machine, cleaning it, and putting it back into her neck,’ as recalled by her mother Dianna De La Garza.
De La Garza noted that when Demi finally woke up in hospital, she had no recollection of her overdose, with Lovato adding she was ‘so shocked’ she had overdosed because she was not ‘injecting’ the drugs, but ‘smoking’ them.
‘At the end of the day, if you do too much of anything, it’s gonna kill you,’ the Sober songstress stressed.
Better place: The Sonny With A Chance star explained in her recent conversation with CBS Sunday Morning’s Tracy Smith that she is now in a much better place: ‘I feel good… I feel more joy in my life than I’ve ever felt because [I’m not] quieting or diminishing any part of myself’
The traumatic event has since left Demi legally blind, and she is still dealing with hearing loss, tinnitus and blind spots in her vision.
It was also when she woke up in the hospital that Demi had to face the reality that she was sexually assaulted by her drug dealer, after doctors asked if she had had ‘consensual sex’ the nigh of her overdose.
‘And there was one flash I had of him on top of me. And I saw that flash and [at the time] I told the doctors “yes.”
‘It actually wasn’t until maybe a month after my overdose that I realized, “Hey, you weren’t in any state of mind to make a consensual decision,”‘ Demi explained, adding that ‘that kind of trauma doesn’t go away overnight.
Once she was released from hospital, Lovato checked into a rehab facility, where she stayed until the end of 2018.
The Sonny With A Chance star explained in her recent conversation with CBS Sunday Morning’s Tracy Smith that she is now in a much better place: ‘I feel good… I feel more joy in my life than I’ve ever felt because [I’m not] quieting or diminishing any part of myself.’
Demi is now gearing up for the release of her next album, Dancing With the Devil… The Art of Starting Over, on April 2, with the final episode of her YouTube docu-series airing Monday.
Despite her unimaginable struggles, Lovato recently admitted during an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast that she has become more lenient with her sobriety, allowing the moderate use of alcohol and marijuana, noting that the parameters of her recovery may not be effective for everyone.
‘I would say that, like, I think the term that I best identify with is California sober…,’ she told the former Fear Factor host.
‘You know, I am cautious to say that just like I feel the complete abstinent method isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for everybody, I don’t think that this journey of moderation is a one-size-fits-all solution for everybody, too.’
Doing things her way: Lovato recently admitted during an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast that she has become more lenient with her sobriety, allowing the moderate use of alcohol and marijuana
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