(CNN) — Demi Lovato returned to the Met Gala on Monday, eight years after a bad experience at the event made her wonder if she would ever want to attend again.
After the 2016 gala, Lovato posted a since-deleted photo of herself on Instagram standing on the red carpet near Nicki Minaj, who looked displeased. Lovato wrote that the image “pretty much summed up my first and probably last Met.”
“I had a terrible experience,” he told Billboard in a 2018 interview. “It was very exclusive.”
Lovato said she remembered “being so uncomfortable I wanted to drink” and ended up leaving early – while still wearing “millions of dollars in diamonds” – to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
“I identified more with the homeless people at that meeting who struggled with the same struggles as me than with the people at the Met Gala,” she said.
Lovato publicly documented her history of substance abuse and recovery.
In July 2018, Lovato was hospitalized following a near-fatal overdose, just a month after revealing 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 is practicing sobriety and is in a “more positive mental space.”
“I wouldn’t change my path because I don’t regret anything,” he said.
