Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil,

Trauma, and Addiction

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Youtube Resources > Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil, Trauma, and Addiction

August 5, 2021
Cultural Critic,
Movies/TV Review,
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The review below is in no way a substitute for professional counseling and therapy. This article also involves
topics of sexual assault, domestic violence, and addiction, proceed with caution. (long read)

Demi Lovato: Dancing With the Devil | Live Premiere

Docu-Series on Youtube TV

Addiction
Anybody who has struggled with addiction knows how persistent, irresistible, compulsive, and relentless it
can be. Addiction manifests itself as a sense of losing control. The root cause of addiction can often trace
back to childhood trauma. Stress, significant losses, and lack of fulfilling relationships can also contribute to
addictive behaviors and drug usage. Though drug addicts are the most stigmatized in our society, addictions
can encompass a wide range of compulsive behaviors such as workaholism, binge-watching TV, binge
eating, compulsive spending, sex addiction, compulsive self-harm, compulsive gambling, and video gaming,
etc.

Generally, the aim of these addictions can be to escape emotional discomforts – such as boredom, anxiety,
and fear, It can also be a maladaptive coping mechanism developed at an early age due to humiliation,
cruelty, abuse, and neglect from caretakers. Collectively, society still has a very limited understanding of
addiction and the cause and treatment of addictions. The good news is that emerging literature such as “In
the Realm of Hungry Ghosts” by Dr. Gabor Maté, serves as an insightful lens for us to understand the root cause,
manifestation, and treatment of addiction via trauma healing.

We have blamed addicts as “weak, too fallible, disgusting, deserved it, weak, lazy, a character defect…” The
degrading list goes on as our attempt to feel superior. As someone with many compulsive behaviors I’m trying
to lessen, I believe we need better education and consciousness-raising on the topic of addiction. As Dr.
Gabor often says, instead of asking people “why the addiction?” Ask instead, “why the pain?” Often, when we
start to ask addicts their childhood background, painful details with almost unbelievable cruelty can emerge,
many of which are too shocking for us as a human species to comprehend. But under extreme circumstances,
the human species have always been capable of committing atrocious crimes against each other such as the
events of the holocaust, slavery, Japanese internment camp, Rohingya genocide, the Nanjing Massacre,
Genocide of the Indigenous peoples, etc. Can you imagine the collective generational trauma people from
across the world experience with these inhumanely traumatic events? When we don’t address the trauma,
the pain often, unfortunately, manifests in violent interpersonal relationships at home, leading to addictions.

As wealth inequality grows worldwide, the pressure to be relentlessly productive while earning meager wages
for people not in the ruling class stress people out. Not only is life not fair, but life can be relentlessly cruel for
some. Many children not only grow up in poverty but with abusing adult caretakers. All these pre-existing
factors increase the exposure to addiction significantly. To quote Dr. Gabor Maté, a Hungarian-Canadian
specialist in working with addicted people, he writes in his book “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts”,

“A sense of deficient emptiness pervades our entire culture. The drug addcit is
more painfully conscious of this void than most people and has limited means of
escaping it. The rest of us find other ways of suppressing our fear of emptiness or
distracting ourselves from it. When we have nothing to occupy our minds, bad
memories, troubling anxieties, unease, or the nagging mental stupor we call
boredom can arise. At all costs, drug addicts want to escapte spending “alone
time” with their minds. To a lesser degree, behaviorial addictions are aslo
responses to this terror of the void.

In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Dr. Gabor Maté

When an infant is cared for, mirrored with loving-kindness, gentleness, curiosity, and unconditional love from
the parents, it is more inducive for the brain to develop healthy attachments and feel secure. However, when
kids grew up in homes where there is a vacuum of love. Then it is way easier for them to reach out for external
things such as food, substances, and obsessive procedural repetition to fill the void of their minds – be it
boredom, confusion, anxiety, or fear.

Demi’s Documentary
When I stumbled across Demi’s documentary “Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil”, I knew it would be a bold
gesture as it addresses the taboo topic of addiction. Pop culture has never been short of stars who are mired
in addiction. Many celebrities die from their addiction at a young age such as Mac Miller, Elvis Presley, and
Marilyn Monroe. It has often been said that people who are the most creative tend to have the most internal
pain. In a way, musicians or entertainers with heightened sensitivity can trace their emotional sensitivity to a
painful internal emotional world, the relief of which often comes from creative outlets such as music, dance,
and performance.

Addictions and depression also go hand in hand. Many of the celebrities that ODed have long histories of
depression. In some cases, celebrities such as Kim Jong-hyun without drug abuse issues have unfortunately
taken suicide even without the influence of long-term drug abuse. It is no surprise that his gradual self-
erosion caused by his unrelentingly unloving and selfish parents would drive his depression even worse.

Upon reviewing the brave documentary, it helped me confirm the existing research that trauma causes and
prolongs the suffering of addicted people. And we really need to start addressing the pain and ways of healing
trauma before we can truly help people alleviate the pain of addiction and unshakable compulsions. The
below analysis is an attempt to piece back Demi’s major developmental life events that possibly led to her
addiction and the ongoing struggle of fighting against it.

Demi growing up

Demi grew up witnessing her alcoholic father physically abuse her mother regularly. Witnessing partner
violence is terrible for the child’s brain development. It rewires the child’s brain to make them more
susceptible to addiction. When her mother was battered by her Dad, it makes it ten times harder for her
mother to protect her because of the emotional energy drained from dealing with an abusive partner.
At one point, Demi’s Mom divorced her Dad, halting the damage. However, divorce can also be a huge rupture
for children because of the narcissistic nature of children, they can think the divorce is their fault. In the case
of domestic violence, divorce is like a double-bind. On one hand, the abused partner might not be able to
leave the marriage due to financial strains, emotional dependence, or cultural stigmas. On the other hand,
they worry about the emotional damage the child faces by witnessing ongoing abuse. Research has shown
that children raised in calm and loving single-parent households fare way better than those raised in broken
and violent two-parent households. Statistically, it is always more beneficial for the kid and the abused
partner to get a divorce when domestic violence is involved.

Demi as a child in an abusive home environment could have experienced overwhelming emotions such as
hopelessness, despair, fear, and anxiety, all of which are strongly linked to addiction. I can imagine how
terrified little Demi could have felt in such an environment, and carrying over the unprocessed feelings like
helplessness and fear through adulthood despite her musical talents. Anybody who grew up with an abusive
alcoholic Father understands the insanity and emotional pain of it all. It sets you up for a perpetual feeling of
unworthiness and a pervasive sense of internal terror due to the violence from the supposedly most
protective and intimate familial relationship with one’s father.

Being a Child Beauty Pagean

Demi was a child beauty pageant at the early age of 7 years old. She confessed in the documentary, “My self-
esteem was completely damaged from those beauty pageants.” Being a beauty pageant damages a young
girl’s self-esteem more than builds them. I believe the tough competition Demi faced being a child beauty
pageant at a crucial developmental psychological period (age 7) is another huge risk factor for addiction.
Child beauty pageants teach children to seek external validation on superficial factors like appearance rather
than cultivating a strong internal sense of well-being and peace.
To give you a little background on the origin of the Child Beauty Pageant, I went down a rabbit hole via google
search. According to Oxford Bibliographies,

“A child beauty pageant is an event created to reward children for their

appearance and personality. Every competition has the beauty competition:
from that, child pageants can take a variety of shapes. Most have a photogenic
component, some have an interview, and others have a talent competition. “

Oxford bibliographies

Upon close examination, the purpose of the competition is to “reward children for their APPEARANCE and
PERSONALITY. Does it make any healthy sense to teach children the importance of “appearance” via rewards
and competition? NO. It also says each competition with its various forms will have the universal component
of “beauty” and “photogenic” elements. Based on the definition and purpose of these competitions, it seems
strange we delight in the normalization of these contests. Maybe our subconscious culture is still obsessed
with the infantilization of adult women as well as the over-sexualization of little girls.

Based on the Oxford articles,

“Many critics liken them [child beauty pageant contests] to child abuse.
Opponents of child beauty pageants say they prematurely sexualize young girls
and place too much focus on beauty and appearance at an early age.”
 Oxford bibliographies

Another great article by ROSE MARY ROCHE on “The ugly side of child beauty pageants” also highlights the
insane pressure put upon by parents on these little girls for the goal of material possessions and rewards.
ROSE’s article traces the origin of the child beauty pageant from an Atlantic City hotel owner, who started the
“Most Beautiful Child” contest to boost tourism. Profiting off of little girls’ appearances… Is capitalism gone
wrong or is the system working exactly as it designed? Profits trump all in a capitalist society. So it is not
surprising to see little girls’ bodies used as little tropes for making profits for the hotel industry. As time goes,
the original “Most Beautiful Child” has evolved into a multi-billion dollar revenue-generating business
preying upon children’s psychological vulnerabilities and the adults’ own obsession with materialistic
possessions.

To quote from ROSE MARY ROCHE’s article,

“Looking at this primped and preened child with her heavy make up, frozen
smile, false eyelashes and bouffant hair I feel incredibly sad. Girlhood is under
siege everywhere — Barbies, Bratz, sexualised children’s fashions, Princess
mania and now beauty pageants all erode girlhood with fierce intent.”

The ugly side of child beauty pageants, ROSE MARY ROCHE

Imagine Demi Lovato, a 7-year-old little girl, who was already terrified and confused from the chaotic and
abusive home situation, pushed into the highly competitive competition for the sole criteria of appearance.
Her little brain had no chance of developing healthy attachments and self-regulation. Not only are the adults
in her life not helping her regulate and soothe her emotions, but she was tossed into the frenzy of beauty
competition. The combination of a chaotic home and the pressure of beauty competition at a young age
would have imprinted negatively on any little girl’s psyche.

Her responsibility as a little girl should be to PLAY. She will eventually grow out of that innocence once she
had enough chance of playing and exploring the world freely as a little girl. As most of us are losing that
childlike innocence for spontaneity and fun once we have to make a living in our busyness-crazed, obsessively
hyper-productive, profit-driven, competition-driven, and achievement-driven societies. Losing that period of
innocent play is a huge childhood loss for Demi, and for any other little kid experiencing traumatic situations
at that young age. You will be forced to grow up to take on too much responsibility that is beyond your age,
leading to depression, anxiety, overwhelm, and eventual addiction.

To quote from an Irish Psychologist, David Carey, in the article,

“The work of childhood is play … Play teaches children how to learn. Play is fun,
not competitive. Children compelled to dress like little adult models, strut on a
catwalk like models and smile at an adoring group of mothers, all hell bent on
seeing to it that their child “wins” is the antithesis of play. Let children be
children. Put the parents on the catwalk if they want to compete and see how
they feel about it at the end of the day.”
 The ugly side of child beauty pageants, David Carey

I have empathy for Demi for being robbed of a playful childhood. Like many other traumatized children who
grew up in unbearable situations, there will be much-unprocessed grief for never having had the opportunity
to be a messy little kid and carefree, with no agenda to win, to perform, and to please. What may end up
happening is that these children become adult machines who perform and work tirelessly to feel “happy”,
because they didn’t experience what it felt like to just be accepted for merely existing. John Bradshaw has
emphasized how society prioritizes too much on producing human DOINGs rather than human BEINGs. I am
severely guilty of this too. It is this deeply existential emptiness and feeling I sometimes get of loneliness,
anxiety, confusion, and unworthiness when I am not DOING something. It is hard for me to remember what it
feels like to just be carefree and have fun without the fear of criticism and repercussion from raging and
hypercritical adults. It is a sad loss of creativity and capacity to experience genuine joy, not some
commercially generated synthetic happiness from buying stuff or gaining likes on social media. It is the
genuine joy of just being and existing.

Bullying at School

To draw on references from her previous documentary “Demi Lovato: Simply Complicated“. She was bullied
severely at school. At one point, people were passing a note saying “Demi should kill herself”. Such
messaging is horrifically abusive and damages a child’s psyche. Children are extremely vulnerable and take
any messages to their heart because they are heart-based and do not have the capacity for logical thinking
yet. Children won’t start developing logical thinking and reasoning until the age of 7. So I can only imagine the
depth of despair she as a little kid experiences being communicated those awful messages. As someone who
was also bullied at school and bullied other kids, I understand the severity of the issue of bullying in children,
as bullies themselves are often victims of domestic violence and abuse by their caretakers. It is a relentless
cycle of emotional abuse without consciousness.

Another factor to consider is that she cannot go to her parents to soothe her for being bullied at school.
Children with healthy, loving, and protective caretakers can get their emotional needs met and learn to
protect themselves from bullying, and its after effect of lowering self-worth and self-esteem by talking to
their caretakers. Tragically, in the case of Demi and myself, there is no available adult to talk to about such
issues. Her Father is mired in his own addiction, rage, and abuse. And her Mother is possibly too emotionally
battered to meet her emotional needs. It is a tragic cycle to make the child feel helpless and repeat the cycle
of being abused later in life.

Sexual Abuse at Age 15

It takes a lot of strength and courage for women and men of sexual abuse to come forward with the truth.
Before the #MeToo movement by Tarana Burke. There is still much misunderstanding and stigma to trust the
accounts of victims and survivors of sexual assaults. The legal system airs on the rigid and dogmatic criteria
of “proof” usually via a rape test kit and rounds of traumatic questioning by the police and court. Based on
statistics of the RAINN organization, (short for Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the reporting rate for
sexual abuse is only BOUT 31%. Out of all the reported cases to police, the final prosecution rate is only about
2.5%. The recent court case decision to overturn Bill Cosby’s sentence by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on
June 30, 2021, is also a huge blow and threat to society’s integrity and the faith of the victims and survivors
who have come forward.
Demi opened up for the first time about her rape at age of 15. “I lost my virginity in a rap,” she shares in the
documentary. It happened when she was just a teenager, in an environment where it was taboo to talk about
sexual abuse, especially when the perpetrator was in the same circle, and facing no consequences. Demi
probably didn’t have the capacity to process the trauma at that age, adding another layer of acute trauma to
her life. She did what many victims of sexual abuse did after having her body violated, “I called that person
back a month later and tried to make it right by being in control and all it did was make me feel worse.” She tried to
recreate the scene of the original trauma and to fix and change the past, the act of which many trauma
survivors do. Psychologists call it “repetition compulsion”. The urge to repeat the original trauma is
excessively overpowering, leading to addiction and self-harm, and all types of behaviors. Unfortunately,
Demi experienced another traumatic sexual abuse incident during her 2018 overdose, where she was
unconscious and assaulted by her drug dealer. She was found naked and body blue in bed the day after her
sexual assault by the dealer, while being rushed to the hospital for resuscitation after her OD.

People who have struggled with addiction usually are unconsciously living out their past unprocessed trauma
by repeating it or acting it out in new relationships. Though Demi finally publicly shared her original sexual
trauma and the consequential sexual assault in 2018, I can only imagine the shame and emotional pain she
had to stuff down while performing on stage and going on tours for all the years. All these extremely
traumatic events overlapping onto one person and them being unprocessed are prime grounds for addiction,
which abused and traumatized people turn to for ease of excruciating emotional pain.

Our unrelenting rape culture worldwide also complicates the justice-seeking process for victims and
survivors, whose sexual predators take a very long time to prosecute, while they are questioned and
brutalized for their honesty. Cases involving incest are particularly shocking and unbelievable. For instance,
the Austrian rapist, Josef Fritzl, who chained his daughter in a cellar and repeatedly raped her for over 2
decades, was not discovered and prosecuted until Elizabeth Fritzl (his daughter and victim) had birthed 7
children due to incestuous rape. Elizabeth had only escaped due to an accidental sickness from her daughter.
Elizabeth commented “No one will believe me” upon disclosing her Father’s horrific abuse at the opportunity
of her escape at the hospital. In the U.S., we have sexual predators such as R Kelly, Larry Nassar, Jeffrey
Epstein, and Bill Cosby, whom the survivors fought tooth and nail to prosecute for decades but STILL were
bullied for lying about the abuse due to these men’s substantial financial, political, and social power. It is no
surprise that Demi’s sexual predator was not given any consequential punishment or damage and remained
in the entertainment industry after raping a teenage girl. The societal prejudice and devaluation of the female
and feminine is a massive trauma spanning generations of violence against women and the denial of
systemic justice to them.

The Good-Girl Syndrome

Trauma survivors, especially girls, tend to form a false identity to strive to be a “good girl” as defense
mechanisms to fend off further abuse and the emotional pain of not being properly loved, respected, and
nurtured. Such urges to strive to be “perfect” are intensified when a daughter is raised by a physically,
emotionally, or sexually abusive father. A girl with both parental figures being abusive is at extreme risk for
being retraumatized by unsafe and toxic future relations upon entering teenage and adulthood. In Dr. Gabor
Maté‘s book, “When the Body Says No: Exploring the stress-disease connection“, girls who grew up without proper
attunement from their mother could believe they were not lovable and cease showing their needs in order to not
“distress” or “burden” their mother. Similar needs suppression can happen or be exacerbated without proper
attunement from their father or both parents. Gabor illustrates,

“When the parent can’t put in the work to maintain the relationsihps, then the
child has to. She does so by being a good girl. She does it by being precocious, by
 being intellectually mature. When she reches the age of abstract thought,
around age theirteen or fourteen, when these connections in the brain actually
happen, all of a sudden she becomes your intellectual sounding board.”

When the Body Says No: Exploring the stress-disease connection, Dr. Gabor
Maté

A mother’s ability to attune to her children’s needs is robbed if she is engaged in a distressing and abusive
relationship. In the case of Demi’s mother, she is one of the many other women who suffer emotionally and
physically at the hands of a troubling and abusive husband. The cultural narrative of the “beauty and the
beast” where the woman is supposed to “love and nurture the beast [the man] in a relationship to recovery”,
combined with the trope of submissive women, reinforce women’s psyche to double down efforts to
“transform” their abusive male partners rather than working away for good. I have been personally entangled
with such toxic dynamics in my past relationships with men. To no surprise, my mother, aunts, and
grandmothers, have all been married or engaged to abusive men that either cheat, beat, or verbally or emotionally
degrade them. The vile of generational trauma can be unrelenting if no help is sought after. Mothering is hard
enough, mothers who were neglected as a child and abused again as a wife cannot possibly raise their
daughters to respect themselves and seek healthy and nurturing relationships consciously regardless of their
intent. The daughter will have to undertake a colossal task to heal their traumatized psyche.

Demi, who grew up witnessing an abused and beaten down mother, were possibly battered emotionally at her
crucial moments of development between the age of 0 and 7, when children were the most helpless and
dependent. On one hand, her fantastic vocal talent gave her an outlet and spotlight. On the other hand, her
extraordinary talent can overshadow the emotional neglect at home. Think about the numerous number of
adults who grew up from “look-good-on-paper” middle-class families, but struggle severely with anxiety,
depression, and suicidal ideation because of emotional malnourishment and deficit.

Because of socialization and social hierarchy, girls who were abused tend to strive to be “perfect good little
girls” and “perfect adult women”, while men were encouraged to be “tough” and stuff their feelings via
alcohol, cigarettes, and violent acting out. However, healthy adulthood means the ability to experience and
express a full range of emotions, rather than looking perpetually “uplifting, happy, positive, and strong.” The
suppression of negative emotions will eventually lead to addiction and behavior problems. As a result, it is no
surprise that Demi has relapsed repeatedly to alcohol and addiction because of untreated trauma.

I think society’s harsh judgment on her repeated relapse and her team’s unrelenting pressure for abstinence is
a symptom of the larger society that strives for black and white thinking and perfectionism. It is also a
symptom of the varied societal issues our generations face that are not being addressed: the unrelenting
pressure of success; almost aggressive media mobbing and targeted marketing aimed at human insecurities;
environmental destruction; disregard for nurturing human relations and communities; disregard for creativity
and art; lack of affordable and equitable housing, health care, and education; toxic bombardment of false
advertisements and products, relentless pursuit of profits at the cost of the environment and human
relations; unaddressed and unhealed generational trauma from colonialism, slavery, genocide, violence,
massacre, and war.

It is much easier to blame the addicted person for their “moral failing”, “lack of willpower”, and their “choice”
of abusing substances, rather than addressing and working through the structural and systemic issues of our
society.
Complicated Relationships with her Father

In previous interviews, Demi has mentioned her relationship struggles with her Dad, which caused the lifelong
struggles of her future relationships with romantic interests. As a daughter of an abusive father, and a family
history of generationally abused women in my lineage, I understand the magnitude and emotional charge of
being unconsciously involved with abusive and unavailable men over and over again so that the original
Father wound can be healed. But it is a painful and excruciating journey for the daughters to grieve all the
harm unfairly done to her without trying to perform or strive or change to gain the fatherly or male approval
that will never come. The fairy tales of reconciliation and forgiveness are unrealistic to daughters of abusive
and narcissistic fathers. The trauma is too severe in the family for the girl or daughter to try to “save” her
Father or heal him. And it is not her responsibility and job.

Demi has disclosed that she had to cut off contact with her Father at one point when he was an alcoholic, and
the emotional impact of her Father’s death tortured her repeatedly. She felt she failed to “save” her Father
and felt like a fraud not able to support her father while touring the world talking about mental health illness.
From a fellow survivor and psychological perspective, it is harsh and unrealistic for her to put the burden of
recovery of her Father on herself. She was a child who was not protected, bullied and abused. Now that she
has finally grown and has safety, she has every right to work through her own trauma and heal them without
worrying about healing her Father. Women have been strangled with numerous impossible responsibilities,
including being emotional mascots and therapists for their husband, boyfriend, father, brother, or whatever. It
will be a relief if society or survivors can stop blaming themselves for failing to “cure” their loved ones of
addiction by sacrificing themselves.

Additionally, girls internalize the way their fathers treat their mothers. Demi’s romantic relationships can be
an unconscious reenactment of her Father and Mother’s unfulfilling relationships without therapeutic
intervention. It is through no fault of her own, but the legacy of generational trauma where the emotional
template of abused, oppressed, and silenced women suffer at the hands of unavailable, abusive, uncaring, or
addicted husbands.

In one article that featured Demi, I find her response towards her struggle to phone her Father enlightening,

“Some days I regret not calling but other days I’m proud of myself for holding my
boundary because I was doing what was best for me and my mental health. It’s
complicated, and I wish it were different but this made me into the person I am
today. Anyway my heart goes out to the people still holding their boundaries as
well. (sic)”

Father’s Day is so difficult, says Demi Lovato, Demi lovato

Her response captures the complexity and struggle of being in an emotionally challenging or abusive
relationship with one’s father. At the end of the day, everyone gets to choose their own way of responding to
their biological family, and I wish Demi well-deserved peace. She has overcome so much and I hope she gets
to enjoy the peace now.

Stunted Sibling Relationship with her Sister

At one point in the documentary, Demi was told by her family to either get sober or she would never be able to
see her sister again. The “threat” was what got her into rehab for alcoholism. The irony about addiction
programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous is that people can’t be forced into recovery unless they choose to.
Threats do not work. As the addicts struggle with autonymy, advice or threats of “helpful criticism” can be
regarded by the addict as another personal attack amid their lifetime of being rejected and criticism by
people closest to them. Nevertheless, Demi got into treatment to save the relationship with her sister. She
mentioned trying to be a role model for her younger sister but regretted failing it.

Such family dynamics are not uncommon in dysfunctional families. Sibling relationships are often a wrought
territory where different children can grow up having totally alienating and different perspectives of their
childhood. Some more scapegoated and sensitive kids tend to grow up with more behavioral addiction and
mental health problems, while their siblings can turn out totally different. Nurturing familial relationships with
siblings are critical, and Demi’s troubling relationship with her sister is another risk factor for isolation and
addiction. It is through no fault of hers and her sister’s for this troubling relationship but the unrelenting nature
of generational trauma.

High-Pressure Cooker in 2018 World Tour

Demi’s Tell Me You Love Me World Tour in 2018 highlights the boiling point of her depression and suppression.
Her seeming success to the outside world is a mask she can wear for her internal pain. She exemplifies the
prototype of a highly functioning depressed person who excels at a profession or craft, and whose worldly
success helped dilute her excruciating emotional pain. But emotional pains not expressed find their way to
come out. In her case, and in many other people’s cases, including my own, the pain came out in forms of
addictions and self-harm – work addiction, sex addiction, food addiction, spending addiction, self-cutting,
TV addiction, etc.
What is especially troubling and enlightening is her unreleased 2018 world tour documentary, in which her
staff described her as being at the “best” of herself and the “peak” of her performances. Meanwhile, Demi
was slipping into drugs and alcohol in secret. The two-faced nature of Demi is typical of the depressed person,
who feel too ashamed to acknowledge their internal pain and try to minimize it via playing “brave” or “happy” in
public. One characteristic of highly functioning depressed and traumatized people is their excruciating ability to hide
their emotional pain in public. Society’s obsession with positivity and low tolerance of disappointment,
mistakes, and vulnerability also makes it hard for people to express feelings of weakness or rest to take care
of their mental health. Tennis player, Naomi Osaka, was trolled by people for taking a mental break from press
conferences – a timely example of our society’s collective intolerance of human vulnerability, limitations, and
genuine needs.

Society’s Response in Addiction

Treatment
All the previous analyses of Demi’s childhood and trauma histories lead me to the important topic of
addiction treatment in our society.

For decades, the U.S. legal system has been criminalizing drug usage, throwing people into jails for minor
drug possessions. Interestingly, based on Gabor’s research in the book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, many of
the illegal drugs today such as heroin and cocaine have existed and come from natural plants and existed on
the planet for millennia. How come people nowadays are more addicted than ever if these substances have
existed for thousands of years? Based on Dr. Gabor’s research, the “high” from the intake of heroin or cocaine
mimics the natural serotonins or wonderful feelings infants often feel when they were attuned to by nurturing
mothers. When a mother takes gentle, nurturing, and consistent care of their infants through holding, gazing,
soothing, and playing, the infants’ neurological brain cells and nerves naturally generate enough and
abundant stimulants such as serotonin and dopamine to make them feel happy. It is the mother’s touch and
warm gaze that stimulates and kickstarts the infant’s natural neurological production of “good feeling”.
When babies are neglected, not held, or abused, infants’ brain does not learn to naturally produce these
“good feeling”, making them at high risk for further addiction throughout their childhood and adult life.

Gabor’s insights are profound in understanding why people don’t “choose” addiction for high but to soothe
their emotional pain by unmet childhood needs. Reagan’s War on Drugs in the 1970s has been proven
ineffective and insensitive based on emerging new researches on drug and addiction treatment. More
troubling is the racialized intent under Reagan’s policies rather than a genuine concern for humans’ well-
being. Based on research from the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization aiming to promote compassionate,
human-centered, and scientifically driven drug policies, an article about A Brief History of the Drug War
illuminates,

“The first anti-opium laws in the 1870s were directed at Chinese immigrants.
The first anti-cocaine laws in the early 1900s were directed at black men in the
South. The first anti-marijuana laws, in the Midwest and the Southwest in the
1910s and 20s, were directed at Mexican migrants and Mexican Americans.
Today, Latino and especially black communities are still subject to wildly
disproportionate drug enforcement and sentencing practices.”

A Brief History of the Drug War, The Drug Policy Alliance

Also according to the article, John Ehrlichman, a former top Nixon aide, confessed,

“You want to know what this was really all about. The Nixon campaign in 1968,
and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black
people. You understand what I’m saying. We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to
be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the
hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both
heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid
their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the
evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

A Brief History of the Drug War, The Drug Policy Alliance

Unfortunately, many policies employed in the U.S. are woven with its deeply troubling and racially charged
agendas, from segregation laws to the prison industrial complex. The War on Drugs’ underlying agenda to
criminalize marginalized communities trace its roots all the way back to the 1600s when 20 African slaves
were brought ashore to Jamestown, Virginia. Four centuries later, the laws and policies are still barely
catching up in terms of serving the justice that has been robbed of generations of people of color and
oppressed groups.

Research has also shown that the opioid overdose rate is increasing in the U.S., and skyrocketed during the
Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has resulted in the loss of jobs, lives, and communities and an
exacerbated sense of isolation within and between communities – high-risk factors for depression, anxiety,
and addiction.

The existing wealth inequality and lack of access to mental health treatment for the marginalized
communities before COVID-19 are also exacerbated during the pandemic. Besides the fact that the opioid
overdose rate has negatively impacted the white population, the death rate has doubled and significantly
impacted the black population.

Monique Tula, executive director of the National Harm Reduction Coalition, coined the level of urgency of the
opioid epidemic in the article U.S. Drug-Overdose Deaths Soared Nearly 30% in 2020, Driven by Synthetic Opioids,

“The rising death toll points to a need for urgent, comprehensive measures to
address the crisis, public health and treatment experts said. States, cities and
counties should use money they are expected to receive in legal settlements
against opioid manufacturers and distributors for treatment and prevention
programs, including investments to help reduce disparities in communities of
color...We’ve got to try all this stuff…It’s beyond too late.”

U.S. Drug-Overdose Deaths Soared Nearly 30% in 2020, Driven by Synthetic

Opioids, Monique Tula

Though the urgency to address resources and accesses is on the top of priorities, the U.S. really failed to
address its drug policies and its systemic and cultural view of understanding and treating addiction. The
current overall sentiment in many conservative states is that the government needs to be tougher on crimes.
Dr. Gabor’s research has shown that a very common misunderstanding for addiction is that it is a “personal
choice”, while failing to address the underlying driving force – untreated trauma. In the context of societal,
political, and environmental factors, the U.S.’s legal stance on criminalizing drug usage is detrimental and
ineffective in reducing addiction rates. People need harm reduction treatments and access to therapy, not
prison sentences to get better. It is a shaming and incomprehensive view of the magnitude of human
suffering and societal insensitivity.

A very illuminating case study for addiction treatment and reduction is Portugal. Portugal has seen a dramatic
decrease in drug overdose, HIV infection rate, and drug-related crimes and diseases since they
decriminalized drugs. A very well-written piece by Susana Ferreira on Portugal’s Drug Policy delineates
Portugal’s own struggle and victories with its drug epidemic and its long process of trial and error for finding
approaches that effectively reduce and treat drug addictions, which finally led to innovative and humanizing
legal policies. The article details the important general cultural shift of the people of Portugal from vehemently
opposing drug decriminalization to accepting the evidence and impactfulness of the innovative approach of harm
reduction instead of criminalization,

“cultural shift, and a change in how the country viewed drugs, addiction – and
itself. In many ways, the law was merely a reflection of transformations that
were already happening in clinics, in pharmacies and around kitchen tables
across the country. The official policy of decriminalisation made it far easier for a
broad range of services (health, psychiatry, employment, housing etc) that had
been struggling to pool their resources and expertise, to work together more
effectively to serve their communities.”
 U.S. Drug-Overdose Deaths Soared Nearly 30% in 2020, Driven by Synthetic
Opioids, Betsy McKay

A compelling argument from Susana Ferreira‘s article on Portugal’s Drug Policy is that once the language and
the way we view addicts change, there can be transformative societal change, she writes of a language shift
as,

“Those who had been referred to sneeringly as drogados (junkies) – became

known more broadly, more sympathetically, and more accurately, as ‘people
who use drugs’ or ‘people with addiction disorders’. This, too, was crucial.“

Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?,
Susana ferreira

The pioneers active in pushing Portugal’s drug decriminalization also stresses that,

“the most effective response to addiction had to be personal, and rooted in

communities.”

Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?,
Susana Ferreira
Currently, the U.S. sentiment for drug treatments favors directing people to jail rather than treatment centers.
The stigma around addiction caused by criminalization also makes it much harder for society to pool
resources and establish treatment centers. Drug criminalization also inflates drug prices and promotes black
market dealing in illegal states where people were at higher risk of drug-related crimes and infections. The
negative impact of the War on Drugs was similar to the Prohibition when the government tried to curtail
alcohol consumption and addiction via criminalization but failed miserably. The eventual legalization of
alcohol enabled 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous to prosper, which was way more effective
than jails to get people sober.

We cannot reach Portugal’s stage and success in addiction and overdose reduction until we start to shift the
cultural stigma around drug decriminalization. Portugal and many other Western civilizations have battled
drug epidemics and experimented with their own solutions for decades, but the overarching theme is that
punishment and criminalization do not work. The U.S.’s lag and denial in its punishing and dehumanizing drug
policies can be racially, politically, and religiously related, but what’s clear is the negative results of these policies –
that people are overdosing at unprecedented higher rates each year, with the Covid-19 pandemic causing
record-high numbers of deaths due to overdose caused by depression, anxiety, and mental illnesses. What’s
the use of jails and sentences in humanitarian crises such as the pandemic?

End Note
I consider Demi’s “Dancing with the Devil” documentary as bold, brave, vulnerable, and illuminating. The more
we talk about addiction and trauma as a society, the less stigma and shame there is to it. And it is truly a gift
for the public that she can bring the taboo topic of addiction into the spotlight. I only have mad respect and
love for Demi.

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