 Demi Lovato just released a brand new YouTube original called Simply Complicated and today I'm going to be doing a review of this movie and I will be focusing on her mental illness, her addiction, as well as her road to recovery. So stick around. I'm 25. The last decade has taught me a lifetime of lessons. I've learned that secrets make you sick. I'm learning how to be a voice and not a victim. I've learned that sex is natural. I've learned that love is necessary. Heartbreak is unavoidable and loneliness is brutal. I've learned that the key to being happy is to tell your truth and be okay without all the answers. This is my story. This is Simply Complicated. What's up everybody? This is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution. And if you are new here, my channel is all about mental health, mental illness, addiction, as well as the solution. So if you're someone who struggles with these things, please subscribe because I'm always making new content. So anyways I must let you know right now I am not someone who is going to Demi Lovato concerts all the time or anything like that but I have always followed her because I remember way back when she had her first incident and went to treatment at the age of 18 years old I remember looking at her and seeing her path of recovery and I kept hearing news about her recovery and how well she was doing and that's always intrigued me. For those of you who don't know, I am an addict in recovery. I have five years clean, a little bit more than five years clean and I also struggle with anxiety, depression, so these things are very near and dear to my heart. So let's talk about where this documentary starts. So whenever I'm working with my clients at the treatment center I work at or when I'm teaching family members about addiction, I start off by talking about the risk factors for addiction because only one out of every 12 people become an addict or an alcoholic and it's important to know how that happens. Watching Demi Lovato's documentary, she was in some of the highest risk groups possible and once you start realizing that it's no wonder that she developed dependence to drugs and alcohol. So first off let's talk about her childhood. She grew up as the child of an alcoholic addict father. Now for those of you who don't know this, if you're the child of an addict or an alcoholic it does not mean that you will become one but you have an 80% chance of becoming one. We don't know whether or not Demi Lovato's father had the addiction gene or if Demi got the addiction gene but if she did have the addiction gene that gave her a 50% chance but simply just being around a parent or guardian who is an addict or alcoholic, seeing your parents behavior makes you more likely to become dependent to drugs or alcohol. Next, she was developing symptoms of mental illness very early on. She later discusses in the documentary how she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I will touch on that pretty soon but mental illness is one of the leading causes of drug and alcohol addiction. Most of the time this happens because most people live with mental illness and it's completely undiagnosed. That was my personal story. I struggled with anxiety and depression but I had no idea what it was and it developed in high school so I literally just thought I was going insane and what happens is we turn to drugs or alcohol and it's a way to self-soothe, self-medicate and that ends up developing into a dependence. The third risk factor was that she started abusing drugs at a very young age. She was in her teens. Now something that I discussed in my course is that the prefrontal cortex of the brain that is basically the break pedal when it comes to addiction and that part of the brain does a fully develop until the late 20s or early 30s and when Demi started using drugs and alcohol to cope with her mental illness, her alcoholic father as well as being heavily bullied as a child, she was stunting the growth of that part of the brain and developing these habits of turning to drugs and alcohol as a way to cope and what happens is that the brain actually starts wiring itself to believe that whenever certain triggers happen, your only solution is drugs or alcohol. Now as I mentioned, it's been kind of public knowledge that Demi Lovato was bullied as a child but it was much worse than I even imagined. There's one point in the documentary where she talks about one of the popular girls who bullied her and she actually got a suicide petition signed by the other students that Demi went to school with. So she was just in a whirlwind of a mess and when she finally started to make it big, her first real big job was on Camp Rock when she got signed into this movie from Disney and all of that stress and the feelings of being overwhelmed and then also the easy access to drugs and alcohol as a kid, like that's what started up the addiction. It was almost like the wheels were starting to fall off. Prior to that, I think anything that was going on would have been chalked up to, she's a teenage girl. That was like the easy answer just to say, well, she's a teenage girl and she's going through stuff and she's being dramatic. So that clip that you just saw, it's very common for this to happen, especially when young people start abusing drugs and alcohol. A lot of people in their lives, they often mistake substance abuse and or mental illness for, oh, that kid's hormones are just going crazy. So it often flies under the radar. So a lot of people don't know and they don't know if they should get this person help or if this is completely normal. In 2017, we are seeing for it's been a trend for years that people are becoming addicted to substances and developing symptoms of mental illness younger than ever before. So I'm very glad that this documentary touched on that. I don't think they emphasize the fact that it's very common for friends, family members, people in your close knit circle, don't really know that you're struggling with these things because we play it off as just they're a young kid, they're going through stuff. But she was falling deeper and deeper into her addiction. So at the age of 18, Demi went to her first treatment program. She primarily went there for mental health issues, anger issues. But this was what we call a dual diagnosis treatment program. So a dual diagnosis is when you have a mental illness as well as an addiction. So if you're struggling with both, they have to treat both of them equally. The reason this is, it's not only as mental illness, one of the leading causes of addiction, it's also one of the leading causes of relapse if it's not treated properly. Now, Demi talks about and so do her friends and family. They talk about how it didn't take long for Demi to start slipping back into old behaviors and then she relapsed. And she talks about how all she did was she was hiding it more. She was spiraling out of control faster. She was lying and manipulating people. She would get like a day or two clean here or there. And this is very common. I work at a treatment center and a lot of the people who come to my treatment center are coming back after a relapse. And something if you're an addict or alcoholic watching this, you know for a fact that when we relapse, we go down even harder. It doesn't take long for addiction to get back exactly where it was before we got clean. I know that was my situation with my multiple relapses. But it gets even worse because we start to feel guilty. We start to feel ashamed. We start to feel angry, all of these things. So we're just trying to self medicate more and more and more. So something that Demi discusses is that she was getting sobriety companions. Sometimes we call them sober coaches. It's kind of like an informal sponsor. Basically, it's like an accountability partner. Usually the person is in recovery or they are just very well educated and they're a therapist or whatever the case may be. And she talks about how she went through like 20 of these sobriety coaches until she finally stuck with one. And basically what this guy did, he told Demi's manager like, this is Demi's biggest fear is losing the people closest to her or hurting them. So they planned an intervention and they talk about it and it's really real like it gave me flashbacks of the intervention that my family had for me. But that is what Demi says was the point of her fully surrendering to this thing that she had a problem and she needed to change the way that she was living. So if you are someone who has a loved one friend, family member, coworker, whoever it is, and you've watched this, I really hope that you take some advice from this documentary about when they did this intervention. Because a lot of people tend to enable addicts. They think that they can love the person until they're better. But a lot of us when we're struggling with addiction, if we haven't hit our rock bottom, we have to be pushed towards a rock bottom. And with celebrities, it's even harder because they're rich, they're famous. There was no way that a celebrity like Demi Levada wouldn't be able to find a drug dealer any chance that she wanted to. So it was very important that they had to push her towards this rock bottom in order for her to get help. Because she talks about how she was basically suicidal and she did actually overdose when taking cocaine as well as Xanax. So don't wait for a person to hit rock bottom. Sometimes you have to intervene before they get there because that rock bottom might be death. She approached her recovery completely differently this time. She went into a sober apartment. She had a sober support group there. She was actually working the program because she acknowledged her last relapse was because she was not working her program. When I teach my clients who are coming back after a relapse is keep it simple. Just look at everything that you were not willing to do last time and do those things this time. And Demi Lovato was truly inspirational when she talks about how she was doing this. So Demi starts talking about how she works her recovery. And this right here is one of the most amazing quotes that I'll show you. Everybody has their own path in recovery. For me, it's about going to therapy, working my program and having an honest relationship with myself and the other people around me. So yeah, Demi talks about how she works her recovery program. She's also doing therapy, but she also found this kind of relief through exercise, getting into kickboxing and jujitsu. And she talks about how working out is this form of meditation for her. And if you haven't yet, I have some videos on mindfulness meditation, which is a specific practice of meditation, but she talks about getting into this flow where you're completely in the moment, your mind isn't tripping about the past or the future, or you're not worried about what other people are thinking, you're just completely in the zone. There's something that a lot of athletes do, they just get into this zone or musicians, you've probably experienced that zone and actively meditating or doing any type of activity that gets you into this zone, or we call it flow. It helps you get into that state more often. So anyways, I just want to give this documentary an enthusiastic two thumbs up, like talk about amazing. I try to do videos like this as much as possible because a lot of people look up to these celebrities. And when you have people like Demi Lovato, Macklemore, Eminem, Robert Downey Jr. and many others recently kid Cuddy talked about his struggles with mental illness. There have been a ton of articles about hip hop culture, talking more about mental illness. And this is huge, it warms my heart because my whole channel right here is to increase awareness, decrease the stigma, but also provide support to anybody out there who's struggling with mental illness or an addiction. And I love when celebrities do things like this. And when I see how many views this documentary already has like, I hope that it empowers people. This channel is all about the solution. So I will encourage you like, please focus on the solution that was so blatantly put on display in this documentary. Learn from what Demi Lovato talks about. Look at her recovery. Look at what she's doing. But what I saw, I saw how much work she does for her personal recovery. And this thing isn't easy dealing with a dual diagnosis, mental illness and addiction, like just dealing with one of those is hard work. So I hope that what you took from this is how much work it takes to keep this thing under control. But you know, at the end of the day, like it's completely worth it. And I'm so glad, so glad that this documentary came out. And I hope that you share her documentary with people. Feel free to share my review with people, share my channel with people like I'm always doing videos about how you can, you know, work with your depression, your anxiety, your addiction and other forms of mental illness. And I'm planning on branching out even more. This is the question of the day. What did you think about Demi Lovato's new documentary simply complicated? Leave your comments below because I would love to know your thoughts. But if you like this video, give it a thumbs up. And thank you so much for watching. And again, if you're new here, click right below this box is lower bound subscribe button. Click that because I'm always doing videos about mental health, mental illness, addiction, and so much more. If you're new here too, or if you haven't yet, click or tap right over there. Check out some of the other videos on this channel. I have over 100 mental health related videos. So again, thank you so much. And I'll see you next time.