When the Reality of Addiction Meets the Fantasies of Pop Stardom
Demi Lovato’s long struggle with sobriety—and her transparency about it—complicates the expected celebrity narrative of “overcoming.”
“What I’ve learned is that this illness is not something that disappears or fades with time,” Demi Lovato recently said in a statement after being hospitalized for a drug overdose. “It is something I must continue to overcome and have not done yet.”
Read that last sentence again: . What tense are we in? What is being said? suggests an ongoing effort; implies something more final; makes an odd fit with . Far from coming off as the work of PR by committee, the tangled phrasing seems to hold complex truth. Here we might discern the brain-bending reality of addiction as articulated by someone whose job has long been, on some level, to bend reality to
