Demi Lovato Has ‘Survivors Guilt’ After Learning Of DMX’s Condition

On TMZ Live, Demi Lovato shared her reaction to DMX's current state: the rapper is on life support and his prognosis looks dire. She sees the parallels in her own life and said she suffers from survivor's guilt, knowing that that could have been her.

"Anytime that I see somebody O.D. or even pass away that's in the public eye, I immediately think, you know, 'That could have been you, had you not been putting all this work into the last couple years of your life.' I feel like, there's times where I've even talked about feeling survivor's guilt because you do ask yourself: 'Why am I still here? Why are others not?' It's a challenging thing to get over, but ultimately I had to realize that every day is a day that someone else doesn't get. Every day that I'm here on this Earth is a day that I need to be counting my blessings for and just being appreciative and grateful for it. And also, it makes me want to live the best life I can possibly live, knowing that others didn't get the same chance that I did."

Lovato was asked to talk about how she's handling recovery with being "California Sober" (smoking weed and drinking alcohol in moderation) and how she is able to control it. She explains abstinence doesn't work for everyone, noting that total sobriety has "not worked for every single person who's tried it." She continues on to say, "When I'm feeling like the floor is falling out from underneath me, I was like, 'It's just a shame I don't have something that I could lean in towards in those moments. I don't understand why I can't just pick up a joint.'" When she talked about this with her team, she said she found a middle path or gray area (or a "green area"), with food and substances.

Lovato's Dancing With the Devil: The Art Of Starting Over album is autobiographical, and shares a title with her YouTube documentary series. “If you listen to it track by track, if you follow the track listing, it’s kind of actually like the non-official soundtrack to the documentary. Because it really does follow my life over the past couple of years. When we went through the track listing and kind of mapped out how it kind of coincided with my life’s story, it made sense to add the more emotional stuff in the beginning and then transition into The Art of Starting Over,” Lovato said. One thing that was not affected by her 2018 OD was her voice, which is better than ever.