DEMI’S MOM TELLS ALL! HOW SAVED MY DAUGHTER

Dianna De La Garza opens up about Demi Lovato’s darkest days, intervention and road to recovery

Demi Lovato was out of control. While on tour with the Jonas Brothers in 2010, the pop star, then 18, punched a female backup dancer after learning the woman had told Demi’s stepdad about her secret drug use. “That was a big turning point,” Demi’s mom, Dianna De La Garza, tells In Touch exclusively. “That’s when we realized her problems had become serious. I had to focus on making sure she got the help that she needed.”

Dianna was desperate to save her little girl. She immediately contacted an inpatient women’s treatment center near Chicago and convinced Demi to check in. That’s when, Dianna writes in her deeply personal new memoir, Falling With Wings: A Mother’s Story, she finally learned just how bad it really was: Not only had her Disney-star daughter been drinking alcohol regularly and cutting herself — Dianna found bloody rags in her room — but when a counselor asked Demi about her drug use, “My jaw dropped,” her mom, 55, writes. “‘Cocaine, pot and Adderall,’ Demi said.” Thirty days later, Dianna recalls, Demi, who was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder during her stay, was still “withdrawing from substances and just beginning to conquer an eating disorder.”

ROCK BOTTOM

Days after leaving rehab, Demi relapsed. In a 2017 documentary, Demi, now 25, admitted that for more than a year, she was publicly pretending to be sober but privately getting high off bags of pills and eight balls of cocaine. During one two-month coke- and Xanax-fueled bender, she revealed, “I was using daily.” But Dianna refused to give up on her. In early 2012, Dianna and Demi’s entire professional team staged an intervention with the help of addiction specialists. “Within 48 hours, everyone who had a stake in Demi’s future was seated at the table in her manager’s office,” Dianna writes in her book, adding, “We all knew Demi’s life was at stake, not just her career.”

But this time, it worked. Demi committed to getting clean and moved into a sober house where she lived for more than a year, even while serving as a judge on The X Factor. Dianna’s only regret is that she didn’t help Demi sooner. “When Demi was going through her issues, I didn’t recognize it as a parent because I had my own issues,” the former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader tells In Touch. After both Demi and Dianna’s eldest daughter, Dallas Lovato, 30, a voice-over actress, went to rehab, and as youngest daughter Madison De La Garza, 16, faced online bullying over her weight, Dianna herself sought treatment for lingering PTSD issues stemming from the physical abuse she’d endured while married to Demi’s late father as well as “an eating disorder, depression, anxiety, ruminating thoughts and addiction to Xanax,” she writes in her book. She tells In Touch that if she’d known when Demi was young what she knows now, “I probably would’ve recognized things a lot faster and I probably could’ve gotten help for her a little bit sooner.”

A LIFE TRANSFORMED

Demi has now been sober for six years. Though Dianna, like any mom, still worries about her daughter, she says she has no fear that Demi will return to her old ways. “I just don’t see that happening because she’s in such a good place and she’s so strong. She also has this support system and the tools to help her stay in this good place,” Dianna explains, adding that she hopes her book can help people see that “no matter what your family may be going through, there is always hope — and there is always help.” ◼