Demi Lovato Says She Hasn’t Always Been “By-The-Book Sober” — Is She Now?

In Demi Lovato's tell-all docuseries, Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil, the singer chronicled her struggles with addiction and her 2018 overdose. It may have been the most vulnerable we've seen Demi. "I had three strokes, I had a heart attack, my doctors said I had five to 10 more minutes," she shares in the trailer.

Her major overdose happened in 2018. And sadly, it appears that Demi suffered brain damage from it. “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 in my vision. For a long time, I had a really hard time reading. It was a big deal when I was able to read a book, which was like two months later, because my vision was so blurry," Demi told ABC News.

Since opening up about her past struggles, the "Fast" singer has been candid about her sobriety journey. So, is Demi sober now? Here's what to know.

Demi shared that her experience with sobriety hasn't been linear. Although she stopped using "hard" drugs, she revealed to CBS Sunday Morning in 2021 that she was "California Sober" and was drinking and smoking cannabis "in moderation."

"Yeah. I think the term that I best identify with is California sober," Demi explained. "I really don't feel comfortable explaining the parameters of my recovery to people, because I don't want anyone to look at my parameters of safety and think that's what works for them, because it might not."

She continued: "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."

Demi's "California Sober" admission sparked debates among those who consider cannabis a dangerous drug and those who don't. Although the method seemed to work for her, she later revealed that she preferred being "sober sober."

"I no longer support my California sober," Demi wrote in an Instagram Story, per Today. "Sober sober is the only way to be.”

In Dancing With the Devil, Demi spoke more on her non-traditional approach to sobriety.

“I haven’t been by-the-book sober since the summer of 2019,” she says. “I realized if I don’t allow myself some wiggle room, I go to the hard s--t. And that will be the death of me.”

Demi added: "Telling myself that I can never have a drink or smoke marijuana, I feel like that's setting myself up for failure because I am such a black-and white-thinker. "I had it drilled into my head for so many years that one drink was equivalent to a crack pipe."

The docuseries also chronicled the difficulties Demi had with her first management team (headed by Phil McIntyre) over the years, and how that conflict contributed to her eventually giving up on remaining sober. In addition to monitoring any drug usage, her team also kept a close eye on what Demi was eating (she's had an eating disorder since she was young), which eventually led to an extremely unhealthy dynamic.

"I realized that over time as the things with [my] eating disorder were getting bad ... it progressively got worse and worse with people [on my team] checking what my orders at Starbucks were on my bank statements," Demi said.

Demi added, "Just little things like that led me to being really, really unhappy. My bulimia got really bad [again] and I asked for help and I didn't receive the help that I needed. 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?”

According to Demi, her team told her that she was being "selfish" when she reached out for help. She was told that if she broke her sobriety, it would "ruin things for not just you but for us as well."

Demi ultimately felt controlled. "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. If I was in a hotel room at night, they would take the phone out of my room so I couldn’t call room service — or if there was fruit in my room they would take it out because that’s extra sugar. We’re not talking about brownies ... it was fruit," she explained.

Now, Demi is managed by a new team led by controversial figure Scooter Braun, and she seems to be much happier with the way things are handled. “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," Demi said. 

It was never disclosed what Demi overdosed on, but we do know that she was given Narcan, which helps revive people who have overdosed on a type of opiate (there are many kinds, including fentanyl and heroin). Although it was first reported that Demi overdosed on heroin, a source later refuted that claim. In the documentary, one person being interviewed did mention heroin, but again, it's unclear if that's what Demi was using and/or overdosed on.