**Warning: Contains discussion of drug abuse, alcohol and overdose, which can be fatal.**
Demi Lovato has opened up about how her near-fatal drug overdose affected her health.
The 31-year-old woman, who now uses the pronoun she/her again after previously changing her pronoun to they/them, nearly died in July 2018 due to a heroin overdose.
“Cool for the Summer” singer and Camp Rock The actress has since revealed that she suffered long-term effects on her physical health as a result of the overdose.
Lovato’s near-fatal overdose came after nearly six years of sobriety.
This led to her suffering from organ failure, three strokes and a heart attack, and the singer also contracted pneumonia because she choked on her own illness.
The overdose had long-term effects on her health: Lovato appeared on Sirius XM. The Howard Stern Show 9/11 to reveal long-term damage.
Lovato explains that her overdose was so severe that it affected her vision, which has a lasting effect on the singer’s vision to this day.
“So I still have vision problems. (…) I don’t drive a car. I don’t drive anymore because I have blind spots in my vision,” she explains.
“(…) During the first three months after the overdose, the condition improved significantly, but then residual effects remained. For example, when I look at you, if I look into your eyes, I don’t see your nose or your body. mouth.”
Lovato notes that the lasting damage was caused by a lack of oxygen that may have flowed to her brain during the overdose, killing “some cells that never recovered.”
In addition to her vision impairment, Lovato also has hearing impairment as a result of her overdose, but says she reminds herself “of the importance of not living in the past and not regretting things.”
“I try to stay positive, have a healthy outlook on what happened to me and just stay in the moment,” she adds.
Lovato is now completely sober – despite previously claiming that drinking alcohol and smoking weed was normal, but finding that they simply sent her back to other substances, which meant she had to return to treatment in 2021.
The singer decides: “All I did was replace my addiction with something that I thought was safer. It sent me into a deep depression where I gained a lot of weight from just smoking and eating. I hid in my room because I didn’t want to go outside and have anyone see me. (…) This deep sadness that I felt because I did not feel life. I was in this walking coma where I didn’t feel any pain, but I also didn’t feel any joy.
“Now when I laugh and laugh and have tears streaming down my face, it feels so much more rewarding than when I laughed when I was high.”
If you need friendly, confidential drug advice, you can call American Drug Addiction Centers at (888) 830-7624 24 hours, seven days a week or contact them through their Web site.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available through Mental Health of America. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. You can also contact the Crisis Text Line by texting MHA to 741741.
You can also call 1-800-985-5990 or text “TalkWithUs” to 66746 for the SAMHSA Disaster Helpline.