Demi Lovato Explains How Her Eating Disorder Contributed to Overdose

Demi Lovato is warning of the dangers of trying "to control someone's food when they're in recovery from an eating disorder."

Appearing on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" Thursday, Lovato opened up about how her eating disorder affected her sobriety while discussing how members of her former team had been pulling the strings when it came to her diet, even taking fruit out of her hotel rooms because it contained "extra sugar."

Ellen began by saying she just discovered Lovato's people would "hide" certain foods from her dressing room when the pop star would come by the daytime talk show.

"So you've been honest about your eating disorder. I just learned today that when you came for the last six years -- you're no longer with this team -- but there was a team that used to handle everything before you got here," Ellen said. "They were told to hide all of the sugar and put everything away so that when you got to your dressing room, even backstage, there was no sugar anywhere near. Did you know that was happening?"

"I didn't know that until today too," said Lovato, who has appeared on "The Ellen Show" 10 times. "But I lived a life for the past six years that I felt like wasn't my own. Because I struggled really hard with an eating disorder, yes, and that was my primary problem and then it turned into other things, but my life, I just felt was -- I hate to use this word, but I felt like it was controlled by so many people around me."

"If I was in my hotel room at night, they would take the phone out of the hotel room so I couldn't call room service, or if there was fruit in my room they took it out because that's extra sugar," the singer continued. "We're not talking about brownies and cookies and candies and stuff like that, it was fruit."

Lovato revealed she didn't have cake on her birthday "for many years" and would opt for a watermelon cut with "fat-free whipped cream" on top. "It kind of became this ongoing joke," she explained, yet said how she "just really wanted birthday cake."

When she turned 27 back in August, her manager, Scooter Braun, gifted her a birthday cake. Lovato, who also celebrated her birthday with Ariana Grande, recalled how the sweet treat brought her to tears.

"This year, when I turned 27 -- I have a new team -- Scooter Braun, my manager, gave me the best birthday cake and I spent it with Ariana Grande, who is one of my good friends, and we just had the best birthday," she said. "I just remember crying because I was finally eating cake with a manager that didn't need anything from me and that loved me for who I am and supported my journey."

"I think at some point it becomes dangerous to try to control someone's food when they're in recovery from an eating disorder," she added.

As the Grammy winner's eating disorder got "worse and worse" her sobriety was affected. After being sober for six years, Lovato relapsed and in July 2018, she nearly died from a drug overdose.

"I have to preface it with the fact that I got sober at 19. So I got sober at an age where I wasn't even legally allowed to drink," she explained, adding that she got the help she "needed" at the time. "I took on the approach of a one-size-fits-all solution, which is sobriety, just sobriety. My whole team took that approach and we did it and we ran with it and it worked for a long time."

"It progressively got worse and worse, with people checking what my orders at Starbucks were on my bank statements," she continued. "Just little things like that, it led me to being really, really unhappy. My bulimia got really bad, and I asked for help and I didn't receive the help that I needed. So I was stuck in this unhappy position. Here I am sober and I'm thinking to myself, 'I'm six years sober, but I'm miserable. I'm even more miserable than I was when I was drinking. Why am I sober?'"

The actress said she then asked her team for help, but they told her she was "being very selfish."

"When I heard that, my core issues are abandonment from my birth father as a child... when they left, they totally played on that fear and I felt completely abandoned, so I drank," she said. "I went to a party and there was other stuff there, and it was only three months before I ended up into the hospital with an OD."

"Ultimately, I made the decisions that got me to where I am today, it was my actions that put me in the position that I'm in," Lovato expressed. "I think it's important that I sit here on this stage and tell you at home, or you in the audience, or you right here that if you do go through this, you yourself can get through it, you can get to the other side."

"You are a 10 of 10 and don't forget it," she concluded. "As long as you take the responsibility, you can move past it and learn to love yourself the way you deserve to be loved."

On a much lighter note, Lovato also spoke about her love for Rihanna and how much she wants to "make out" with her. Check out more in the clip, below.

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