Demi Lovato Says Team 'Barricaded' Her in Room So She Couldn't Leave to Eat

Demi Lovato recently opened up about her eating disorder which got so severe, that her team "barricaded" her in a hotel room using furniture.

The singer-songwriter, who has been open about her struggles with mental health, as well as addiction issues, made the revelation during a recent episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast.

Lovato, a former Disney star who recently announced she was using "sher/her" pronouns again, said during the podcast that her management's control over her and her health led to her suffering her publicized drug overdose in 2018.

Before starting her story, Lovato suggested that her problems worsened because of one person who became a member of her team. Lovato stated that everything in her life became controlled, including food, which she suggests was "so dangerous."

"It actually exacerbated my eating disorder to the point where I became bulimic again. From 2016 to 2018 I was dealing with that," Lovato said on the podcast.

"I've never talked about this before but there was one time when I had binged and purged one night. I came clean to my team and said, 'hey this happened.'"

She then explained how she'd snuck out of her hotel room because she wasn't allowed to have a phone because she could have called room service.

"I didn't have food in my hotel room, like snacks in the mini bar, because they didn't want me to eat the snacks. Ellen talked about this on her show. They cleared the dressing room of all sugar before I'd get in there," Lovato recalled.

"After I told them what had happened, my security guard walked by my room, and was made aware that they had built, they'd like barricaded me into my hotel room. They'd put furniture outside of my door so that I couldn't get out, and sneak out and eat if I wanted to. So it was that level of controlling when it came to my food, which just made my eating disorder worse," Lovato explained.

The actress and singer has been open about her eating disorder for years. In 2011, she wrote about her personal struggles in Seventeen magazine, while the MTV documentary Demi Lovato: Stay Strong discussed her stint rehab and recovery.

Lovato told podcast host Alex Cooper that things took a turn in 2017. "One time I said 'I'm throwing up blood, I need to go to treatment, I need to get help.' [A member of her team] looked at me and said, 'You're not sick enough.' And I think that was his way of saying ' No you're not going back to treatment because that'll look bad on me.'

Lovato explained how she didn't go back into treatment and within a year she ended up overdosing. "I felt trapped. I felt like I couldn't get out of this situation. And my way of blowing everything up was relapsing on drugs and alcohol."

On July 24, 2018, Lovato was rushed to the hospital due to a reported opioid overdose. She also spoke out about her experiences and the conditions which led to her overdose in the YouTube documentary series Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil.

Lovato's latest album Holy Fvck is out now.