Demi Lovato has opened up about relapsing into her eating disorder in an honest and powerful new interview on The Ellen DeGeneres show.
Demi revealed that she relapsed into her drinking, drug taking and disordered eating after leaving rehab in 2011.
“I have to preface it with the fact that I got sober at 19. So I got sober at an age where I wasn’t even legally allowed to drink,” she told Ellen.
“So I got the help that I needed at the time and I took on the approach of a one size fits all solution, which is sobriety, just sobriety. My whole team took that approach and we did it and we ran with it for a long time.”
Demi said that her management led her to relapse, due to their micro-managing and controlling actions.
“My bulimia got really bad and I asked for help and I didn’t receive the help that I needed,” she explained. “So I was stuck in this unhappy position. Here I am sober and I’m thinking to myself, ‘I’m six years sober, but I’m miserable. I’m even more miserable than I was when I was drinking. Why am I sober?'”
“So when they left, they totally played on that fear and I felt completely abandoned and I drank.”
“That night I went to a party and there was other stuff there and it was only three months before I ended up in the hospital with an OD.”
However, Demi takes complete responsibility for her actions: “Ultimately, I made the decisions that got me to where I am today. It was my actions that put me in the position that I’m in.”
“I think it’s important that I sit here on this stage and tell you at home or you in the audience or you right here that if you do go through this, you yourself can get through it.”
“You can get to the other side and it may be bumpy, but you are a 10 out of 10, don’t forget it. And as long as you take the responsibility you can move past it and learn to love yourself the way you deserve to be loved.”
The star claimed that her former management team would enforce a negative attitude to her food regimen – even going so far as to hide sugar from the singer which led her to relapse into bulimia.
Ellen explained to the audience that unbeknownst to her, Demi’s team would hide certain foods and beverages that had been left in the star’s dressing room when she appeared on the show previously.
Demi replied: “I didn’t know that until today too, but I lived a life for the past six years that I felt wasn’t my own because I struggled really hard with an eating disorder, yes, and that was my primary problem and then it turned into other things.”
“My life, I just felt it was so… and I hate to use this word, but I felt it was controlled, by so many people around me,” she said.
She also claimed that her phone would be taken from her while she stayed in hotels during her tours, to prevent her from ordering food from takeaways or restaurants.
The star explained that her diet was so strictly controlled, she wasn’t allowed to have a birthday cake on her birthday.
“For many years, I didn’t even have a birthday cake. I had a watermelon cake, where you cut your watermelon into the shape of a cake and you put fat free whipped cream on top and that was your cake,” she recalled.
“I just really wanted birthday cake, so this year when I turned 27, you know, I have a new team, and Scooter Braun, my manager, gave me the best birthday cake. I spent it with Ariana Grande, who is one of my good friends, and we just had the best birthday and I just remember crying because I was finally eating cake with a manager that didn’t need anything from me and that loved me for who I am and supported my journey.”
“I think at some point it becomes dangerous to try to control someone’s food when they’re in recovery from an eating disorder.”
