Demi Lovato on Relapsing and Being "California Sober"

The thing that I keep going back to is like at the end of the day, my head on my pillow, do I feel good about the choices I'm making and do I stand strong in my beliefs? Yes. Then I'm not going to let what someone in Idaho has to say about what I'm doing today. Well people want absolutes, right? Whether it comes to recovery from drugs and alcohol or whether it comes from anything. They don't want you to deviate from the path and they want you to always be helpless in the face of your addictions. This is the thought process between a lot of the 12-step programs that you're helpless in the face of your addictions. I don't know if that's true. I have never had a drug or an alcohol addiction. I've never had that kind of a compulsion so I don't know. What I read about you is that you think of yourself now as California sober. Please tell me what the fuck California sober is. I saw the smile on your face start to form and it just made me so happy. All right. Part of my process now is not defining the parameters publicly because I don't feel like it's anybody's business but me and my treatment team. But it's a term that a lot of people use to identify this path of moderation with the help of some green plants. You know what I'm saying? I do. And so green is the key word. And that's that. Yeah. But it's such a loaded subject that even bringing it up you have to kind of guard yourself from the way other people are going to perceive what you're doing. Right. I'm a celebrity and I guard everything I say. Even if I'm speaking my truth I still have to guard it to some degree because I'm working so hard not to offend anyone. So it's like yes but every aspect of my life is that way now. Yeah do you find that this green stuff makes you more relaxed in dealing with the anxieties of life or like what is. The green stuff is weed. We'll just like yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll just like call it what it is. Yeah it's it's something that you know it helps and it also like is something that you can use for different things. It can it it helps me learn how to meditate at first. You know it was a lot easier to smoke a little bit and then meditate than it was to just go in without with just like the most clear mind. It helped me build a relationship with meditation to where I don't need it to meditate anymore. You know there's there's things there's benefits to it. I think there's also just a sense of security and knowing that that even if I'm having a bad night and I turn to that that's not going to kill me. Right. You know. I guess you get there without weed. You can you totally can. I just found that like weed gets you there quicker. Yeah. Just a little bit. And I just yeah. It doesn't hurt you. That's the thing. It doesn't hurt your body. But I do know people that have gotten addicted to weed. You know. And that's something to be mindful of for sure. But I have a physical addiction. No it's not an addiction like alcohol or benzo or coke or anything like that. It's a it's an impulse. It's a psychological addiction. That's what it is. Yeah. I mean maybe for some people it's a physical addiction like really really rare. But for most people there's no there's nothing happens when you get off it. There's no withdrawals. Yeah. I think that it's something to be like mindful of just like anything new in my life. I kind of I have a treatment team that I run things by. So you run weed by them. Yeah. What they say. Whatever. You know I came out of I went to treatment for like a relapse. I relapsed in 2019. And it was heavy. And it was a heavy one. Explain to everybody what you went through because it's like it sounds normal but you almost died. So I overdosed on heroin and crack that was well the heroin was laced with fentanyl. And I OD'd in 2018. And that experience was a near death experience for me. The doctors told me I had five to 10 minutes before it was too late. When they found me I was blue. I was there's blood. I had three strokes a heart attack and multiple organ failure. And I still have brain brain damage from it. What kind of brain damage. So I have blind spots in my vision and I also had hearing loss from everything. The blind spots are like like I don't I don't drive. I can't unless I was on like an open dirt road and I could just like I just don't want to put other people at risk on the roads. So you like normally you see everything like you see everything in front of you right now. No. So even like your face I see your eyeballs when I'm looking at your eyes. I see your eyes but I don't see your nose your mouth or even your microphone. What do you say this part. It looks like I looked at the sun. You know when you're a kid and you look at the sun because someone told you not to because I'm that kid. Yeah it's like that when you look at the sun and like your or even like a camera flash and it kind of goes like greenish bluish. It's not black but it's can't see. And it's just like a blind spot that takes over kind of like everybody's bottom half of their face. And so my focus on someone's bottom half of their face if they were if I did you look down. Yes. At their teeth. I have to look down at people's mouths when they talk. So you only see like a stripe like a strip of their face. Yeah literally just exactly where you put it. I could see the top of your fingers but not your hand. And so for the first few months like I couldn't read out of a book. I was so hard to like tweeze in my eyebrows couldn't do that at first. How do you live. How do you live. Exactly. My brows are extremely important to me so that was a huge thing. Thank you so much. Thank you. You're doing a great job whatever you can say. Thank you. Whatever you can say. Savage. Oh my God. But yeah it's so there was things that and I had to ask like opinions on my outfit. Like I couldn't wow couldn't see what shoes went with my outfit. Is this getting any better. No. So it plateaued after six months like whatever it would be after six months after the overdose would be what it'll be for the rest of my life. And so and this is from the stroke. Wow. So this this experience that you had your you had a heart attack. You had strokes. You have this vision issue that's going to exist for the rest of your life. So I'm sure everyone around you then was like hey you got to stay the fuck away from all drugs forever like this is it like we almost lost you. This could be it for your life. So how do you how do you ease in a weed from there. So it's it took a lot of time. What was the impetus like what what led you to do it. What led me to do it actually was I got into recovery from my bulimia and I thought all right this is an addiction I've had since I was 12. How is it that everything started at 12 for me. I was like how is it that I finally found recovery from this but yet I'm still struggling with substances. I thought well what am I doing with food that's different and I wasn't looking at it from a dogmatic approach this all or nothing mentality. You know I was eating Taco Bell and letting myself keep it down and not throwing it up anymore. And that to me was a new the normal person like doesn't know that that of course that's what you do with Taco Bell. You like where you let it sit. This was a new fucking idea for you. My mind was blown. You would eat you would go on a bender eat Taco Bell and then just like OK out of the pool boys. Pretty much pretty much every time you ate something terrible like that you knew that you were going to throw it up. Yeah yeah. And so when I when I went after I had relapsed in 2019 on the hard stuff I went back to the treatment center I'd gone to right after treatment and I just said to them I was like I think I need to allow myself the ability to really try this middle path and not like before when I said I was on a middle path but really was like going was like really trying to party. Like I mean like if I want to smoke then I'll let myself smoke and I just I kind of came to terms with I kind of came up with that and talked it through with my treatment team back home and let everyone know like hey this is I have to own my truth and and my treatment team said OK like we'll support you and stand by you what do you need from us that will help. And it was at that point that like I started getting this thing called the Vivitrol shot which is a shot that blocks all the opiate receptors in your brain. So if you know I mean honestly even if I were to get like in a bad injury and go to the hospital I couldn't even get opiates in a hospital because like my body will reject them so much it goes into withdraws immediately. Really. Yeah. And why do you need that. So it also helps with bulimia because what people don't realize about bulimia is that it helps bulimia when you throw up your opiate receptors go off in your brain. So sometimes people actually get addicted to the high you get after throwing up rather than like people think that it's like there's actually a physical component in your brain that people get addicted to. And that's why people become addicted to the feeling that euphoria after you. That's crazy. I had no idea. I thought it just you always felt every time I've ever thrown up I'd felt terrible. I never would have imagined that there's a I guess because you're sick. I think like if you're not sick maybe you don't feel terrible. I don't I don't understand. I don't know but now I'm thinking of trying it. No no no no no my God no no no. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Listen I'll never be bulimic. I fucking I eat like a pig. And that's OK. It's OK. I eat like a pig. Thank you. If that's what if that's what makes you happy then like own your truth and live it. So I'm still curious as to like what about weed made you want to even introduce it into your life after working so hard to be sober and having this horrible experience with overdosing. Right. So I don't I often say and this is really hard for people to hear sometimes but I think that drugs saved my life at times because had I not had something to medicate with I wouldn't be here. I would have taken my life by now. I've dealt with suicidal ideation since I was seven years old and that's just something that's always been a part of my journey. I don't know why but depression is I've been I've had a journey with that. There was a period of time where I thought to myself I'm so miserable I'm still sober. Now I'm sober again. This is after the overdose. I'm so sober and still so unhappy. What am I doing. And I got to this place where I kept thinking if I pick up you know that term I had been told so many times by people in recovery or a treatment team whatever not this treatment team but a different one that if I picked up that I would die and I I thought to myself what kind of life am I living if I'm miserable 24 seven and if I feel like the bottom is going to drop out I'm going to die. Like that's not really a life to live. And so I thought what if there's some sort of relief in between that's not going to kill me. That's not that's not I don't know super dangerous. You know what is it. And I thought well I live in California. You know why not a little weed. And so I tried it and it wasn't so bad and I began to appreciate what it could do for me. It stopped me from going to the other things. A lot of people say that weed is a gateway drug but what people don't know is that it can also be a drug that can provide a little bit of relief for people who feel like when they get that low they're either going to pick up something really dark really heavy or something more ominous. You know yeah I don't buy that gateway shit. I don't either. I really don't. And I don't buy it with anything. Also I hate even calling weed a drug because it's a sacred plant like it's sacred medicine. And so talking like a healer. Yeah I am. But it but it is. It's like it's under the category of plant medicine. So there's definitely some magical properties to it. Catch new episodes of the Joe Rogan experience for free only on Spotify. Watch back catalog JRE videos on Spotify including clips easily seamlessly switch between video and audio experience on Spotify. You can listen to the JRE in the background while using other apps and can download episodes to save on data costs all for free. 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