In the last episode of Dancing with the Devil, Demi Lovato’s youtube documentary, she talked about being “California Sober”, meaning, while she no longer does hard drugs like the ones that almost killed her, she will occasionally indulge in alcohol and weed to treat her anxiety, depression, and PTSD.
Being in California, where marijuana consumption is legal, this means that she has a medical card for it. This means that she purchases it legally from a dispensary, she doesn’t go to parties to get it from dealers because she doesn’t have to.
Demi Lovato refuses to share her treatment journey in the face of backlash
Which sounds like a responsible way of doing things if you’re going to use marijuana for medicinal purposes. Demi has a treatment team, meaning she has doctors and therapists on-hand who are managing her and have cleared her for this kind of treatment. It’s not something that she decided to do on a whim, it is what’s working for her.
Not all of her management team or even friends agree with this method, her manager Scooter Braun and friend Elton John do not believe that moderation is the key and have been vocal about that, but Demi says that it’s working for her, and her treatment team agrees.
However, ever since her documentary has come out a lot of people have declared themselves armchair drug counselors and shamed Demi for her recovery journey. The thing about drug addiction is, once you are addicted to any kind of substance, even if you are stone-cold sober, you always have to say you are “in recovery” because an addiction is something that will always be there.
There is no true ‘cure’ for addiction, but there are many scientifically proven paths to recovery. One of them is moderation, and while it’s not talked about or recommended a lot, Lovato’s not the only person out there doing it.
Lots of people use marijuana for medical purposes now, and if Lovato’s doctors and therapists are on-board then… what’s our deal? Is it because she was a former Disney star? She’s not affiliated with Disney anymore, she’s a full-on pop star in her own right. Is it because she was once a teen idol?
While some teen idols embrace that label until they die, Demi is 28, she’s a grown woman of sound mind who is making her own medical decisions and paying her own medical insurance and treatment bills. So why the same? She’s not selling her body on a street corner to get high, she’s purchasing it legally from a dispensary with a prescription card.
While it’s easy from an outsider’s standpoint, as someone who has never suffered from addiction, to look in and judge Lovato for her actions, if you’ve never woken up inside someone else’s body, then you really don’t know what works for them.
Also everyone’s body chemistry is different and therefore everyone’s path to recovery has to be different as well. So, before coming down harshly on Demi, let’s take a step back and just… let her exist. Let her breathe.
Let her live her life in a way that is only influenced and controlled by her own decision and her own autonomy, because that’s what started a lot of her problems in the first place – a lack of control over the situations that were happening to her. You can’t choose someone else’s path for them. We’d all do well to remember that.
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