Demi Lovato Wants to "Set the Record Straight" About Her Near-Fatal Overdose

• Demi Lovato said she hopes to "set the record straight" about her near-fatal 2018 overdose with her upcoming documentary, Dancing with the Devil.
• Speaking on the Ellen DeGeneres Show Monday, she explained, "A lot of stories were going around at that time that didn’t really know exactly what had happened."
• Lovato also spoke about the importance of allowing role models to make mistakes, commenting, "What’s great is we live in a time where nobody’s perfect, and we’re not going to get role models by watching people not make mistakes. We’re going to meet and learn from our role models who have overcome their deepest, darkest struggles."

Demi Lovato appeared on the Ellen DeGeneres Show Monday to speak about her upcoming YouTube documentary, Dancing with the Devil, which will be released on March 23, 2021. Speaking to DeGeneres, she explained that she hoped to "set the record straight" about her near-fatal 2018 overdose with the documentary, while stressing the importance of allowing role models to "make mistakes."

"I talk about a lot [in the documentary]. And the world has been so loving and accepting of me telling my story. There’s been so much love and support," Lovato said, as Us Weekly reports (opens in new tab). "What’s great is we live in a time where nobody’s perfect, and we’re not going to get role models by watching people not make mistakes. We’re going to meet and learn from our role models who have overcome their deepest, darkest struggles."

"A lot of stories were going around at that time that didn’t really know exactly what had happened," Lovato added. "I just wanted to tell the world, 'Hey, this is what happened, this is how I got through it, and hopefully this can help you too,' because this journey has been such a wild ride, but I’ve learned so much, and I can’t wait to share it with the world."

In the trailer for Dancing with the Devil, which dropped last week, Lovato speaks about the terrifying severity of her overdose (opens in new tab). "I had three strokes, I had a heart attack," she says. "My doctors said that I had five to 10 more minutes."

Speaking on a Television Critics Association panel Wednesday, she detailed the lasting physical impacts she still deals with. "I was left with brain damage, and I still deal with the effects of that today. I don't drive a car, because I have blind spots on my vision," Lovato said. "And I also for a long time had a really hard time reading. It was a big deal when I was able to read out of a book, which was like two months later because my vision was so blurry."