I was on drugs and saying I was clean, says Demi

POP star Demi Lovato has admitted she was taking drugs several years ago while simultaneously saying in public she was sober. She speaks out in her new documentary, Simply Complicated, admitting she was still using substances for a period of time in 2012.

The 25-year-old, who is now totally clean, went to rehab in 2010 to seek treatment for a dependence on alcohol and drugs, and get therapy for an eating disorder and self-harming.

Of her relapse in 2012, she recalled: ‘I wasn’t working my programme, I wasn’t ready to get sober,’ she explained, adding: ‘I was sneaking [cocaine] on planes, I was sneaking it in bathrooms, sneaking it throughout the night… I went on a bender of like, two months where I was using daily.

‘There was one night when I used a bunch of coke and I popped a few Xanax bars, and I began to choke a little bit. My heart started racing, and I thought to myself: “Oh my God, I might be overdosing right now,”’ the Cool For The Summer singer said.

Eventually, what triggered Demi to stop was the thought of losing those she cares about. ‘The most important thing to Demi is losing people... she cares about and that love her,’ said her sobriety coach Mike Bayer.

This week she posted before and after photos, above. One is where she looks gaunt and underweight, while suffering bulimia nervosa, next to a more recent healthier snap. She labelled the photos ‘then’, ‘now’ and captioned it ‘recovery is possible’.