Demi Lovato is facing some hard truths in her new song “Sober.”
Without warning, the singer released the song on Thursday. It seems to indicate she’s relapsed after six years of sober living.
Lovato has been open about her deeply personal struggles with drugs and alcohol. At the height of her fame as a Disney Channel star, in 2010, the pop star checked into rehab, where she was officially diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated for addiction, self-harm and bulimia.
“Momma, I’m so sorry I’m not sober anymore / Daddy, please forgive me for the drinks spilled on the floor,” she sings in the ballad’s powerful chorus. “To the ones who never left me we’ve been down this road before.”
Lovato released a lyric video alongside the song, which begins with flashes of a room in disarray with empty bottles and clothes strewn across the floor.
At one of her lowest points, Lovato heavily depended on cocaine to get her through the day, forcing her to take the drug everywhere she went, including airplanes.
“I wasn’t working my program. I wasn’t ready to get sober. I was sneaking it on planes, sneaking it in bathrooms, sneaking it throughout the night. Nobody knew,” she revealed in her YouTube documentary “Simply Complicated.”
The former Disney star recently shut down speculation that she was drinking again after singer Hayley Kiyoko posted a photo of Lovato holding a cup of an unidentified liquid with a group of friends.
“I don’t have to defend anything but it was Red Bull,” Lovato fired back after a fan questioned her sobriety.
Every March, Lovato celebrates her sober anniversary, posting a heartfelt message to her fans.
“Just officially turned 6 years sober. So grateful for another year of joy, health and happiness. It IS possible,” she wrote earlier this year, earning praise from friends like Ellen DeGeneres.
But her journey has not been without ups and downs. Lovato revealed that a “terrible experience” at the Met Gala in 2016 nearly drove her to drink. She texted her manager and then promptly attended an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that same night.
“What keeps me on this path is there’s a drive that I have to stay sober because I know that my life depends on it,” Lovato told Entertainment Tonight last year. “If I would have continued down that road, I don’t know if I’d be here today.”
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