Demi Lovato, who has admitted to cutting, overeating and starving herself as far back as elementary school, didn’t know the name for some of her problems until suffering a breakdown last fall.
“Looking back it makes sense,” the 18-year-old said. “There were times when I was so manic, I was writing seven songs in one night and I’d be up until 5:30 in the morning.”
Bipolar disorder is characterized by alternating periods of extreme highs and extreme lows.
Lovato knew she was “depressed from a very young age,” but it took an intervention to get her to seek medical help.
And after three months in an Illinois rehab center, Lovato said she feels “like I am in control now where my whole life I wasn’t in control.”
Knowing first-hand how therapy can radically change a person’s life, it’s no surprise that the singer-actress has vocalized her support for Catherine Zeta-Jones, who also recently sought treatment for bipolar disorder.
“I don’t know Catherine Zeta-Jones personally but what she has decided to do it SO brave. And SO difficult but worth it,” she tweeted last week. “I’m proud of her.”
That’s pretty much the only explanation for how the young star painstakingly managed to play the real-life part of a perfectly happy Disney-bred celebrity while, on the inside, she was crumbling.
In a new “20/20″ interview with Robin Roberts, Lovato admitted she secretly began cutting herself at age 11.
“It was a way of expressing my own shame, of myself, on my own body,” she explained. “I was matching the inside to the outside.”
“And there were some times where my emotions were just so built up, I didn’t know what to do,” she continued. “The only way that I could get instant gratification was through an immediate release on myself.”
But Lovato’s body issues – she’s struggled with both bulimia and anorexia – actually date back even farther than that.
“I was compulsively overeating when I was 8 years old,” she said. “So, I guess, for the past 10 years I’ve had a really unhealthy relationship with food.”
The singer-actress, now 18, began having trouble hiding her personal problems while on an international tour with the Jonas Brothers last year.
“I was performing concerts on an empty stomach,” Loavato recalled. “I was losing my voice from purging. I was self-medicating.”
“I was not taking medication for depression,” she added, “and I literally was so emotionally whacked out that I took it out on someone that meant a lot to me.”
In late October, Lovato punched Alex Welch, one of her back-up dancers, an act that she takes “100 percent, full responsibility” for.
“I feel horrible,” she told Roberts. “[She] was my friend.”
It was at that point that Lovato’s family and management intervened, encouraging her to seek in-patient treatment at Timberline Knolls, a rehabilitative center in a Chicago suburb.
Lovato finished her program at the facility in January, thanks in no small part to the motivation of her younger half-sister, Madison De La Garza, a child actress on “Desperate Housewives.”
“A picture of my little sister, on my little bulletin board, was one of the main things that kept me going,” Lovato said. “I just kept thinking, ‘OK, set this example for your little sister.’”
Now she’s looking to her future – which won’t include her Disney Channel series “Sonny with a Chance.”
The starlet recently told People she’s stepping down from the show not just to focus on her music career, but because being in front of a camera again would make her “nervous.”
“I don’t think going back to ‘Sonny’ would be healthy for my recovery,” she told the magazine.
Lovato will devote a portion of her time to working with Seventeen and The Jed Foundation on “Love is Louder Than the Pressure to be Perfect,” a project geared to helping other struggling teens safely cope with their issues. She’ll also serve as a Seventeen magazine contributing editor.
“My fans have been such an incredible support system for me — I hope I can repay this and help other girls learn from my experiences,” she said when the collaboration was announced.
The 18-year-old singer-and-actress – who left an unnamed Chicago-based facility in January after being admitted in November – has already revealed she was treated for an eating disorder in the clinic and she has now admitted her parents were so worried about her mental health they staged an intervention to make her confront her problems.
She said: “I basically had a nervous breakdown. I was really bad off. My parents and manager pulled me aside and said, ‘You need to get some help.’ It was an intervention. I wanted freedom from the inner demons. I wanted to start my life over.”
Now the ‘Sonny With A Chance’ star is looking forward to returning to work and says she has made vast changes to how she lives her life.
She explained in an interview with Seventeen magazine: “I allow myself a lot of freedom and I’m very peaceful now. I have come to realise that just making yourself happy is most important. Never be ashamed of what you feel. You have the right to feel any emotion that you want, and to do what makes you happy. That’s my life motto.”
The 18 year old pulled out of the Jonas Brothers’ world tour in October and checked into a medical facility to address emotional and physical issues.
It subsequently emerged one of her backing dancers, Alex Welch, had accused the star of lashing out at her in an altercation on a plane. A legal dispute with Welch was settled in December.
Lovato spent the winter holidays under doctors’ care and reached out to fans earlier this month to thank them for “all their love, support and prayers” during her rehab stint.
She moved out of the treatment center earlier this week and is now working to get her life back on track as she continues to receive help as an out-patient, reports TMZ.com.
A source adds to People.com, “(Lovato has) completed her prescribed treatment and (is in) an outpatient program near the treatment facility.
“For now, she is getting back to her regular routine and spending time with her family and close friends.”
Pornography distributor Vivid Entertainment is desperate to obtain the rumored Demi Lovato sex tape – so they can destroy it.
The tape, which Lovato’s camp insists doesn’t exist, was allegedly filmed while the teen star was on tour. X17Online.com claimed earlier this month that her uncle, Francisco Lovato, would stand guard while she had romps on her tour bus. The site further said that an explicit tape “could leak any day now.”
Lovato’s rep slammed the report, saying, “Perpetrating these completely unfounded rumors from supposed sources while Demi is in treatment dealing with serious physical and emotional issues is disgusting.”
The rep added that Lovato, 18, is estranged from her uncle – brother to her father, Patrick, whom she’s also estranged from – casting further doubt on whether the purported tape is real.
But Vivid’s founder, Steve Hirsch, told TMZ.com that if the footage is out there, he wants it.
“After everything that Demi Lovato has been through, we would never consider distributing a sex tape with her,” Hirsch said. “In fact, we would purchase it and either give it back to her or destroy it.”
Like Lovato, Hirsch has struggled with his own personal demons in the past. According to TMZ, he’s a former addict and owns an outpatient treatment center in California, called Hollywood Recovery Services.
The “Sonny with a Chance” star – who was indisputably the girl in several racy photos that did make it on to the Web earlier this month – is still being treated at an in-patient facility reportedly in Chicago, but was given the opportunity to spend part of the Christmas holiday with her family.
Lovato was photographed Saturday for the first time since she abruptly left her tour with the Jonas Brothers in late October following an altercation with backup dancer Alex Welch. The singer-actress was sporting a more goth look than she’s usually known for – pale face makeup, maroon lipstick, black nail polish and all black clothing (save for a leopard-print jacket).
According to TMZ.com, she was spotted with her family as they went to Hollywood Blvd., a combination movie theater/restaurant in Woodridge, Ill., outside Chicago. Lovato was required to return to her facility a few hours later. It is unknown when she’ll be released for good.
Even celebs gone bad get to go home for the holidays.
Demi Lovato, who has been in a treatment facility since early November, was granted time away from the undisclosed center to spend with family, a source told RadarOnline.com.
Lovato, who is rehabbing for “emotional and physical issues,” was permitted to spend “Christmas with her family outside of the facility,” the source told the website. “She will return to the treatment center that [same] night.”
This gives the fallen Disney starlet, 18, exactly 24 hours to spend quality time with stepfather Eddie De La Garza, mother Dianna and sister Madison De La Garza.
The singer/actresses’ brief escape from rehab comes just days after she reached a financial settlement with Alex Welch, the back-up dancer whom Lovato tussled with in October.
“The parties are satisfied and the dispute has been resolved amicably and completely,” Welch’s lawyer told TMZ.com.
When Lovato reemerges from rehab for good, however, she’ll find that some consequences of her actions are beyond financial repair.
The Disney show that launched her career, “Sonny with a Chance,” will film several new episodes without her, though she is also rumored to be joining the cast of “The Avengers” movie, which will start filming in April.
If that casting news is true, it looks like her new year will be brighter than the way she ended 2010.
Troubled singer/actress Demi Lovato has reached a financial settlement with a dancer who accused the Disney star of punching her in the face.
Alex Welch threatened to sue Lovato earlier this month if she didn’t apologize for reportedly lashing out at her during an incident on a plane in October.
The dancer claimed the altercation left her with a black eye and a bruised cheekbone, and the fight is rumored to have prompted Lovato to pull out of a world tour with the Jonas Brothers and check into rehab for undisclosed “emotional and physical issues”.
Lawyers for both parties have been locked in negotiations to avoid a court showdown and they have now reached an agreement.
Welch’s attorney, Donald Karpel, tells TMZ.com, “The parties are satisfied and the dispute has been resolved amicably and completely.”
Details of the deal are confidential and have not been released to the press.
Demi Lovato, one of Disney’s biggest names, checked herself into a treatment center to deal with “emotional and physical issues,” her representatives said in a statement Monday night.
The statement did not specify the 18-year-old’s problems, but said Lovato checked herself into a facility to address the concerns.
A person familiar with the situation previously told The Associated Press that Lovato entered treatment for problems including an eating disorder and cutting herself. The person, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly due to the sensitivity of the matter, later clarified the statement, saying Lovato had dealt with those issues in the past.
Lovato, who is star of Disney’s “Camp Rock” movies and the sitcom “Sonny With a Chance,” was on an international tour as a special guest of the Jonas Brothers, but left the tour over the weekend to enter an undisclosed facility, according to the statement.
“Demi has decided to take personal responsibility for her actions and seek help,” the statement said. “She is doing just that. Demi and her family ask that the media respect her privacy during this difficult time.”
In a 2009 interview with The Associated Press, Lovato, who has also released several records, said she had to leave middle school at one point because she was bullied so badly.
“It was more verbal harassment than physical abuse, but that’s actually more scarring than anything,” she said. “And I had to leave because I just couldn’t deal with it. And I’ve home-schooled ever since.”
Lovato was linked earlier this year to Joe Jonas, her “Camp Rock” co-star, but the two later broke up and said they remained friends.
Her rep said Lovato regretted not finishing the tour but “is looking forward to getting back to work in the near future.”
Watch Demi Lovato rock out in her brand new music video for “Get Back.” The teen sensation has been busy performing on the Jonas Brothers’ sold out tour, and she is gearing up to release her debut album. Don’t Forget is due out on September 23rd.
