Demi Lovato returned to the Met Gala on Monday, eight years after a bad experience at the event made her question if she’d ever want to attend again.
After the gala in 2016, Lovato posted on Instagram a since-deleted photo of herself standing on the red carpet near Nicki Minaj, who appeared displeased. Lovato wrote that the image “pretty much summed up my first and probably last Met.”
“I had a terrible experience,” she told Billboard in a 2018 interview. “It was very cliquey.”
Lovato said that she remembered “being so uncomfortable that I wanted to drink,” and that she ended up leaving early – while still wearing “millions of dollars of diamonds” – to attend an alcoholics anonymous meeting.
“I related more to the homeless people in that meeting who struggled with the same struggles that I deal with than the people at the Met Gala,” she said.
Lovato publicly documented her history with substance abuse and her recovery.
In July 2018, Lovato was hospitalized following a near fatal overdose just one month after revealing that she had relapsed when she released a song called “Sober.” She later shared in her 2021 YouTube documentary “Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil” that during her hospitalization, she suffered multiple strokes and a heart attack.
The singer has since turned over a new leaf, telling Andy Cohen on his Sirius XM radio show last year that she’s practicing sobriety and is in a “more positive mind space.”
“I wouldn’t change my path because I don’t have any regrets,” she said.
