The first 5 minutes of Demi’s ‘Dancing With The Devil’ doc are harrowing to watch

Demi Lovato is a survivour in every sense of the word.
March 24, 2021 9:21 a.m. EST

Warning: the following may be triggering for some readers as it discusses depression, drug addiction, drug overdose and sexual assault. If you are in crisis, call 911. More resources at the bottom of this story.

We all knew the Demi Lovato docu-series Dancing With The Devil was coming, and now that the first two episodes are here, we still have not adequately prepared ourselves for it. 

The series, which goes into detail about the events leading up to Demi’s 2018 drug overdose and subsequent recuperation, uses animation to reconstruct some events, and couples that with frank interviews with Demi, her team, her family, friends, and even the medical professionals who saved her life. It's not an easy watch.

Episode two is particularly intense because, in the first five minutes, there is revelation upon revelation, layered with bare emotion. The full picture of that fateful night and morning after are brought to vivid colour in this episode, and it is harrowing to watch. We warn you the details here might be triggering to some.

Off the top, creative black and white animation reconstructs the morning Demi was found passed out in her bed by her assistant Jordan Jackson. Jordan tries to wake her twice but when she takes a closer look, she sees Demi is drooling and something feels off. Calling Max Lea, head of security, he instructs her to turn her on her side and clear an airway as he rushes over there.

When he gets there, all the while there is tension about whether or not 911 should be called.

“By that point, some more people had started to arrive at the house,” Jordan explains, “And I'm just kinda like, ‘Do I call 911? Like, what do I do?’ So, I called, and I just remember sneaking downstairs to make the phone call because I didn't want to get in trouble for calling 911.”

With that, we get a glimpse into the world of Hollywood and the power that tabloids and paparazzi have over the narrative. In the Framing Britney Spears documentary, we saw how the paparazzi gladly snapping photos of Britney as she was wheeled out on an ambulance stretcher and taken to hospital further served to traumatize her and affect her career along with her family’s opinion of her ability to adequately care for herself and her children. 

In Dancing With The Devil, Demi's team is obviously worried that by calling 911, the same thing could happen to Demi. This is further explored when we learn that Jordan asked the 911 operator for the ambulance to turn off the sirens, which they refused.

Jordan’s revelations don’t stop there. When the paramedics arrived with their Narcan kits (naloxone), Jordan remembers, “They got their Narcan out, trying to really just bring her back to life. There was one point where she turned blue. Like, her whole body completely turned blue. And, yeah, I was just like, she's dead for sure. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen. It was-- yeah, it was tough. Really tough to watch.”

In the first five minutes, we fully realize how close Demi was to death. Later in the episode, Demi herself faces the camera and says she was five to ten minutes away from death had Jordan not woken her. 

Other interviews with her family and best friends go into detail about what procedures done to her in the hospital, like the blood dialysis that was sewn into her neck, and her temporary blindness after waking from the ordeal. She also suffered multiple organ failures and permanent brain damage because the overdose caused three strokes and a heart attack.

“I can’t drive anymore,” Demi admits. “I have blind spots in my vision.”

The most disturbing layer to this series of harrowing revelations is that Demi details how her drug dealer, who came over that night at her request for drugs, sexually assaulted her when she was too high to consent. Demi revealed that she herself only fully realized a month after she awoke in the hospital.

“I've had my fair share of sexual trauma throughout childhood, teenage years,” she says. “And when they found me, I was naked, I was blue. I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me.”

After all of this trauma to her body, her organs, and her mind, her neurologist Dr. Lahiri admits that even he is surprised at how well she has recovered since this dramatic medical ordeal unfolded. 

“It's not very common that you'd see someone with a drug-related overdose with this degree of multi-organ failure that would come out of it relatively unscathed and do as well as she has,” Dr. Lahiri states in his interview with Demi sitting next to him. 

With this small glimpse into Demi’s life, we are getting a fuller picture of what she's survived and how she has turned this brush with death into a fighting chance for life. We have no idea what episode three of Dancing With The Devil (which drops March 30th on YouTube) will explore, but the good news is that Demi is alive to tell it.

Resources: 
For addiction hotlines: visit Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction.
For text message crisis support in Canada: Text CONNECT to 686868 or 741741.
For sexual assault hotlines and services across Canada: go here.
If you or someone else are in immediate crisis, call 911.

RELATED: Demi Lovato opens up about her near-fatal overdose in doc trailer

[video_embed id='2142542']RELATED: Demi Lovato opens up about her near-fatal overdose in doc trailer [/video_embed]


You might also like