Demi Lovato says she still struggles with vision and hearing impairment after 2018 overdose

‘The closest thing that I get to a regret is when I overdosed,’ singer says

Demi Lovato has opened up about the lasting health struggles she continues to face following her 2018 overdose.

The “Sorry Not Sorry” singer recently appeared on SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live, where she revealed that her near-fatal overdose left her with vision and hearing impairment. “I wouldn’t change my path because I don’t have any regrets,” she told host Andy Cohen on Wednesday 12 July.

“The closest thing that I get to a regret is when I overdosed and I wish somebody had told me, one, that I was beautiful, because I didn’t believe it,” Lovato shared. “And two, I wish that someone would’ve told me that if you just sit with the pain, it passes.”

“That overdose caused me a lot of - it actually caused a disability. I have vision impairment and hearing impairment to this day,” the 30-year-old singer said, even admitting that she doesn’t drive anymore due to “blind spots in [her] vision”.

However, the Disney Channel alum went on to explain how the lasting effects of her overdose are a “daily constant reminder” throughout her sobriety journey.

“Anytime I look at something - like, I have blind spots in my vision when I look at your face,” Lovato told Cohen. “And so it’s a constant reminder to stay on the right path, because I never want that to happen again.”

In July 2018, Demi Lovato was rushed to the hospital after suffering “complications” from a reported overdose. She had previously celebrated six years of being sober.

In her YouTube documentary series, Dancing with the Devil, which was released in March 2021, Lovato revealed that she became addicted to meth, heroin, and crack cocaine in the weeks before her overdose.

“I’m surprised I didn’t OD that night,” she shared in the docuseries. “I just went to town. I went on a shopping spree. That night I did drugs I’d never done before. I’d never done meth before, I tried meth. I mixed it with [ecstasy], with coke, weed, alcohol, oxycontin. And that alone should have killed me.”

Two weeks later, she added, she was “introduced to heroin and crack cocaine”. Lovato suffered three strokes and a heart attack during her overdose, leaving her with permanent brain damage.

Lovato has been very open about her sobriety journey and mental health struggles. When the “Skyscraper” singer was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2011, Lovato shared that the diagnosis provided her with a sense of “relief” because she had spent “so many years struggling” with her mental health.

“I was so relieved that I had finally had a diagnosis,” Lovato said at the Hollywood & Mind Summit in Los Angeles last May. “I had spent so many years struggling, and I didn’t know why I was a certain way in dealing with depression at such extreme lows, when I seemingly had the world in front of me just ripe with opportunities.”

Lovato is now fully sober after initially adopting a “California sober” approach that involved marijuana and alcohol in moderation. “I no longer support my ‘California sober’ ways,” the singer said in an Instagram Story in December 2021. “Sober sober is the only way to be.”