Demi Lovato Dealt With 'Survivor's Guilt' After Mac Miller's Death

Ahead of the release of their highly anticipated album, Holy Fvck, the 29-year-old star sat down with Apple Music 1's Zane Lowe for a revealing interview about substance abuse, her 2018 heroin overdose and subsequent recovery. And as part of this discussion, Lovato also discussed how the painful emotional journey that followed their near-death experience affected her writing process, particularly on their new song, "Dead Friends," which is about the people in her life that she's lost to addiction over the years.

“I’ve made friends of all ages. I’ve lost friends that were around my age, and those hurt so deeply because we’ve been in the trenches together,” as the "29" singer said, explaining that they wrote the track while thinking about friends like Miller, who accidentally died from a lethal mixture of cocaine, alcohol and fentanyl, shortly after Lovato's own overdose.

“I had a lot of survivor’s guilt after my overdose because … right after that, Mac Miller died, and it just put everything into perspective for me of, ‘That could have been you, that almost was you, and how are you going to live your life now?,’" they continued. "And it affected me a lot.”

Miller died in September 2018, just two months after Lovato — who's always been open about their struggle with substance abuse — was rushed to the hospital from a home in the Hollywood Hills. The traumatic incident, which the star recreated in her powerful music video for "Dancing With the Devil," resulted in Lovato having three strokes, a heart attack and blind spots in their vision. Since then, they have continued on with their recovery, including experimenting with being "California sober" by only using marijuana and alcohol in moderation, before reverting back to being "sober sober," which they explained was "the only way" for them.

Watch Lovato's Apple Music 1 interview via YouTube below.

Photos via Getty / Rich Fury & Mauricio Santana