Demi Lovato takes listeners on a harrowing journey through her own relapse into substance abuse in her new song.
In the single "Dancing With the Devil," also the title of her new YouTube documentary, the pop star sings about giving into temptation and spiraling back into addiction to drugs and alcohol. Both projects were drawn from her experience of relapsing in 2018 and then suffering a near-fatal opioid overdose later that year.
"It's just a little white line, I'll be fine," Lovato sings. "But soon that little white line is a little glass pipe / Tin foil remedy, almost got the best of me / I keep prayin' I don't reach the end of my lifetime, mmm."
The chorus goes, "I was dancing with the devil / Out of control / Almost made it to heaven / It was closer than you know / Playing with the enemy / Gambling with my soul / It's so hard to say no / When you're dancing with the devil."
Listen to Lovato's song "Dancing With the Devil" below:
In the documentary Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil, the singer reveals that she relapsed "with drugs and alcohol" in spring 2018 after a photo shoot and just one month after celebrating six years of sobriety onstage during a concert.
"I picked up a bottle of red wine that night and it wasn't 30 minutes before I called someone who I knew had drugs on them," she said in the documentary, later adding, "I just so happened to run into my old drug dealer from six years before and, like, the odds of that happening were crazy and he had a duffel bag and I just went to town. I went on a shopping spree. That night I did drugs that I'd never done before. I had never done meth before, I tried meth. I mixed it with molly, with coke, weed, alcohol, oxycontin. And that alone should've killed me."
The singer said that two weeks later, she was "introduced to heroin and crack cocaine." She noted, "I started using recreationally and obviously you can't do that with heroin before you become addicted to it."
In July 2018, Lovato suffered an overdose at her Hollywood Hills home, where she was partying with friends. Her assistant found her unconscious in bed. The singer said in the documentary that she thinks her drug dealer gave her "what I assume now to be fentanyl by giving me 'aftermarket pills.'"
"I had three strokes," she shared. "I had a heart attack."
The 28-year-old artist added, "My doctors said that I had five to 10 more minutes."
The documentary Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil began streaming on YouTube on Tuesday, March 23.