Demi Lovato says she didn't get the help she needed before overdose

Demi Lovato has opened up about her terrifying overdose in 2018, saying she had been struggling with bulimia and feeling very low before it happened.

The US singer – who has been open about her addiction struggles – was rushed to hospital after the overdose in July 2018, and ended up checking into rehab.

Opening up on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Lovato said she had been sober for six years before relapsing, but that she had been having a tough time and hadn’t been given the help she needed.

Read more: Demi Lovato’s history of addiction struggles

“I got sober when I was 19, so I got sober at an age where I wasn’t even legally allowed to drink,” she said.

“I got the help I needed at the time and I took on the approach of a ‘one size fits all’ solution and that was just sobriety.”
 

The star, 27, said her approach worked for a long time but that her eating disorder started to worsen and she began to feel unhappy.

“I asked for help, and didn’t receive the help that I needed,” she said.

She went on: “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?’”

The star ended up going to a party where she drank, and three months later she overdosed.

Lovato also told how for many years she felt as if she was being “controlled” by those around her.

The Skyscraper singer told DeGeneres that for six years she lived a life that she felt “wasn't my own”.
 

She said: “My life, I just felt was so, and I hate to use this word, but I felt like I was controlled, by so many people around me.

'If I was in my hotel room at night, they would take the phone out of the hotel room so I couldn’t call room service.

“If there was fruit in my room they took it out because that’s extra sugar.”

Read more: Demi Lovato shares unedited bikini shot

She went on: “For many years I didn't even have a birthday cake.”

Lovato said things had now changed as she has a new team and that her manager Scooter Braun treated her to a birthday cake when she turned 27.