The Joe Rogan Experience - #1625 - Demi Lovato

Episode Date: March 27, 2021

Demi Lovato is an award-winning singer, author, and subject of the new YouTube documentary "Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil". Look for her latest album, "Dancing with the Devil... the Art of Starting Over", on April 2.

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. Do you want to bring the water with you everywhere you go? I do. Why do you do that? Well, I like to put lemon in it. It makes me drink more because I just like the taste. And it saves plastic.

Oh, look at you, conscious that's good uh yeah we start we move to um having these metal cups and have water oh I didn't even know these were metal yeah because we used to bring bottles of water in here those plastic bottles and after a while you're like what am I doing? I know I had an investment in a water company one time and I actually ended up selling the investment because I I don't want to promote like all the plastic. You know they can make plastic out of other stuff. They can make biodegradable plastic out of hemp and they could be making water bottles out of stuff that would naturally biodegrade in the earth. Yeah.

They could, but they don't. Yeah, exactly. So we have a water filter machine and then we just move to metal. So that's our thing. Nice. What's all the stickers all over that thing? I like to, well, it was a very bland water bottle. So this is like your bottle.

You have this one bottle yes take it everywhere yes i left it in mexico on a meditation retreat oh they sent it back like that's how important it is um just a bunch of like did you go to one of those no talk meditation retreats did you do one of those no no no i'm way too talkative for that shit. I have a couple of friends who have done those and they try to tell me how awesome it is. I'm like, yeah, good luck. I feel like I would just be the person that goes to their room and starts talking to themselves

and defeats the whole purpose of being there because I just want to... If you tell me not to do something, I'm going to go do it. If you pull a fire alarm, tell me not to. I'm going to want to do it. Right, especially as an entertainer right like you're rebellious that's kind of part of the gig you know it's like you don't want anybody telling you what to do you're the boss bitch right you have to be um kind of have to be yes but i feel like there are definitely pop stars that are not rebellious at all. Boring.

Who are those boring people? I don't know them. I don't personally know them. You're not hanging out with them. I just, yeah, like I don't, I don't know. I've kind of, I've kind of actually always just stuck to myself, really. I don't have a ton of industry friends. That's probably really healthy.

Yeah. Just, it's, it's nice to like, like my my my best friend that I brought out here her name's Susie and I brought her on this trip and just like for instance one day I was at home and I had been doing stuff all day you know interviews and photo shoots and this and that and she like, I walked in the house and she was like, yo, D, so you've been doing rock star shit all day. You want to do some normal shit? And I was like, hell yeah. And that's like, that's what I do when I get home. That's hilarious.

The most normal. You do normal shit to pretend you're normal. Like some people pretend they're rock stars. Yes, yes. I go and pretend I'm normal. That's hilarious. God, that's so real though. I mean, that's your reality, right? Right, yes. I go and pretend I'm normal. That's hilarious. God, that's so real, though. I mean, that's your reality, right? Right, right.

God. When did you, what was the first showbiz thing you did? How old were you? So I auditioned for Barney and Friends when I was seven. Whoa! And I, well, actually, I auditioned when I was five and I didn't make it because I couldn't read yet so my mom was drawing pictures by each line and that's how I memorized my lines but they caught on to that and they didn't cast me until I was seven or eight so and then I did that so you were eight years old doing Barney yes wow yeah so i probably saw you on tv my kid loved by my my my middle daughter has this weird thing that she used to do when she was younger

like she renames people she decides she doesn't like your name she gives you a whole nother name cute yeah she's she's very i hope she hates my name no no i want to have a new name from her no she actually kind of like normally they ask who's on the podcast just like to be polite. I go, it's Demi Lovato. She goes, what? She almost said, what the fuck? She goes, the same one? That one?

Cute. She's like, seriously? Oh my gosh. She's 12, almost 13. She's kind of becoming a girl. Talks really fast. Says like a million different things. What are you saying?

What? What? I love that. Who? Yes. Huh? Yes. But when she was little, she called Barney Hada.

She decided that Barney was too complicated because she was one years old. Wow. So she would call him Hada. Wow. She was like, Hada, Hada. Hada. So she would always love watching Barney. So we probably watched you.

Wow. I was the little girl with glasses. What was that like? You know, it was fun. I had always felt like I never related to kids my age. And so when I finally went on set, and there was only eight kids in the cast or I think so 10 kids in the in the entire cast but you only work with three four kids at a time per episode

um maybe less and then the rest of the people on set were the the crew and that's like 150 adults and I was in heaven because I never related to kids my age. Why do you think that is? I don't know I just always found myself like when the kids were at the park like gravitating to or summer barbecues you know all the kids are outside and I'm in inside trying to hear the gossip of the moms like I want to know what's going on I don't know I just didn't um I've I guess I've always kind of had an old soul but it's weird that you can remember that you remember that feeling when you were seven years old that you wanted to be around adults not kids I felt more comfortable on set than I did in public school with other kids

wow yeah so I liked it for for a period of time and then I missed kids my age and I went back to school for about two years and then left again when did you start realizing you were famous realizing you were famous? So there was just one day where I went to go visit my friend. He was doing an autograph signing. He used to be on Hannah Montana and this was in Dallas. And he came out to Dallas to do this autograph signing. And I just like went to show support and see my friend that's been in L.A. for a while. and somebody there heard or saw me and she just screamed and I was like oh my god what's happening and how old were you then 14 no 15 15 wow I was 15 and all of a sudden she screams and I like look over she's looking at me and I'm like oh god what's what's on fire yeah what's happening and then she got excited

and I realized what was happening and I remember like running to my mom being like did you hear that scream that was for me and I don't know what's happening so did your mom try to explain it to you no I was 15 like I knew I knew what was happening. Honey, this is how it goes. Yeah, she was just like, your life's about to change. Because at this point, I had been casted in Camp Rock. And the thing about Disney back then was the Disney fan base was so, they were the web sleuths before web sleuths were like, they knew everything about me

before the movie had even come out they were super fans they were super fans and so they had done their research and they they knew what i looked like and i don't know they just screamed did you do you feel like that was like a shift in the way you thought about show business when you when you realized that you were now someone that if people saw you they would scream did it become a different thing to you it definitely I was like okay this is new um I don't remember feeling like like having a conscious thought of like this is what it's gonna be like wow this is crazy it was just kind of like, this is what it's going to be like. Wow, this is crazy. It was just kind of like, that's so weird. Why did someone scream over me? You know, and then at concerts, it makes sense.

You know, when like you're singing and that's what people do at concerts, they scream. But I think like in the lobby of a hotel in Texas, it's just a little alarming. When was the first time you did a concert? It's just a little alarming. When was the first time you did a concert? I mean, I did performances growing up.

So like I performed, I did like this military base tour when I was like 12. And I promoted this DVD that I was on that had a music video on it. It was like this workout. I don't know. It's a long story. But I went to military bases a music video on it. It was like this workout. I don't know. It's a long story. But I went to military bases and I did some performances. But I think my first actual concert of my own was that summer. I was 15. And it was at Hershey Park in Pennsylvania.

And it was an amusement park. And 200 people showed up, tops. And a month later after that, Camp Rock had come out. And I was opening for the Jonas Brothers on their tour. And that was 18,000 people. So I went from 200 people in my audience, if that. That's stretching it. To one month later was 18,000 people in that

month I also like they I opened for 30,000 people so it was just like my life changed overnight wow yeah it was wild the perils of becoming famous when you're young are well known right it's no one is really, there's a small handful of people that have made it through unscathed. It's a, it's a weird way to grow up because everybody else grows up trying to prove their worth or trying to find their place in life and trying to, you know, get people to understand who they are

you grow up where basically most people who run into you know who you are before you knew who they are and they're they're already like kind of freaked out that you're there and they'll do anything for you and they want to see you and they want to see you perform. They just want to see you sing and talk. And it's a very strange way to grow up. Right. What did, did you at any point in time have this feeling like, hey, maybe this isn't the best way to grow up? So I grew up in Texas, Dallas, Texas. I keep forgetting we're in Texas, Dallas, Texas. I keep forgetting we're in Texas, Dallas. But I, I grew up, you know,

I went to public school except for the one year that I homeschooled on Barney and Friends. And I experienced bullying pretty bad while I was there. And so I ended up leaving public school. And so I ended up leaving public school and I went into a really depressive state for a period of time. I didn't you know, when you're 12 and you're bullied, that's your social life. Like your social life is everything to you. And so I felt like I didn't have much to look forward to anymore except for my music and music kind of kept me alive so it's not that like I ever looked at the industry as um this kind of weird burden on my teenage years or whatever like yes it it is weird in hindsight but I looked at it as it actually kind of saved my life at times because it gave me something to live for. And I knew that if I stayed in Texas that I wouldn't make it out alive.

The bullying was that bad? Yeah, the bullying was that bad. They knew that you had been on television already? So was that part of the reason why they were bullying you? So when i asked them like why are you guys so it all started with like i wrote a note you know you're in sixth seventh grade you're passing notes back and forth and i called someone this other girl like called her annoying and said she was being a bitch right and then that escalated to by the end of the day i it was that like scene in the movie where you walk in the lunchroom and everyone just looks at you.

Because the thing was, is like the girls that I wrote that about were the popular girls. And so it just like anyone who wanted to be popular took their side and everyone just was like, I don't know. side and everyone just was like I don't know so I had a concert that weekend on a military base and I went to like Vegas for the the concert or something and when I came back it just had increased and so when I asked them like why are you guys doing this I wrote a note we all write notes in school we're in seventh grade that's what we do and they were just like well you're a whore and you're fat and so I internalized what they were saying and that's when my eating disorder developed and I couldn't I mean I wasn't a whore um I believe you yeah it is so crazy how children have this instinct to pile on to people like that, though.

Bullying is more common than not, right? Well, and you have to understand is my generation was like the first with social media. So what I was really dealing with was the cyber bullying of everything. I had wished that someone had tried to fight me because I'm a fighter. And so I would have thrown down, but they were coming at me with words that scarred me emotionally for years to come and ended up, you know, scarring me for the rest of my life. And I kept saying to people who didn't understand cyberbullying, like, I wish that someone had just hit me and gotten it over with because at least I wouldn't have to live with those words that they said to me for years. And that's what was the hardest part was the emotional trauma of like of all of it, which made it hard to meet fans my age because I had just been bullied three years before by people my age.

fans my age because I had just been bullied three years before by people my age. When I was meeting fans, I was excited to meet them. But at the same time, I knew what they were capable of. So I had this weird like battle in my head every time I'd meet someone my age of like, I'm so appreciative of you, but I'm also terrified of what you're capable of. Wow. So you just had a wall up for any young kids that reminded you of the girls who bullied you. Which was my fan base at that time. And so that was always in my mind. And and I actually never even told anybody that really, because I didn't think it was important. I also felt guilty for feeling that way towards my fans. Did you discuss the bullying with anybody at the time?

Oh, yeah. I discussed it with my mom. She took it. We went, I mean, she came to the school and tried to tell them what was happening. And they were like, if it's cyberbullying, we can't do anything about it. It didn't happen on school grounds. So no punishment really took place. And, I mean, they had a suicide petition that they passed around the school and tried to get people to sign it so that I would kill my like it's it gets gnarly and and girls can be mean yeah middle school girls can be mean and so I talked about it a lot and then I decided that was really my first taste of activism work was being an advocate for anti-bullying and I remember I like decided to start talking about it and I felt like I felt some purpose.

And all of a sudden my career wasn't about my talent anymore. Have you ever run into those girls? So I haven't run into them, but I did make a phone call to like the main girl that bullied me because when I got sober, a part of the program, they teach you to, on your ninth step, is you make amends. And when you do your resentments, or you make a list of resentments, you write down everyone you've had a resentment against your entire life. At least this is the way I was brought through the steps.

And her name was on it. And when they had me go through what was my part and I was like well I put the name down that she was a bitch so like I guess I did play a part in that and when I looked at everything I was like you know I can't look back at that situation and and say that I was innocent so I went to own my part, but a part of the step was calling and making amends. And so I called her. And she was like, oh, my gosh, I can't even believe you remember who I am. And I was like, bitch, you ruined my life.

Are you fucking kidding me? And I was so, I just, like like sat there and was like, cool. I think this concludes the end of this phone call. I'm sorry. And wish you well. Was she, did you get past that? Did you talk to her? She was so thrown off that I even remembered who she was after becoming famous and a celebrity that like she wasn't interested in

talking about what had happened when I was 12 or when we were 12 what did she want to talk about like what's it like to be you like how are you like oh my god I miss you so much I hope you're well and I was just like oh my god grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Isn't it? It's so strange. People that are not famous, for some reason, they think that people who are famous are not people. Yeah.

You become a famous person. You're not a person. It's like you have like a shield around you. You like all your emotional scars or all of your past right for some reason that doesn't it doesn't affect you you're in a castle somewhere covered in gold right yeah yeah they think that like that's probably how she felt when she was talking to you like how do you remember me like you're in a castle covered in gold and so i'm hearing this thinking like i've i just got out of treatment for an eating disorder like you don't think i remember you you were the first person to ever call me or not the first but

you were the first mean girl to call me fat like of course i remember you it was just wild but you know you look back at times like that and everybody like those were my teachers at that time like we all have teachers and and people and so even though I I used to resent that person for many years I look at that time in my life and I'm like well I needed to learn those lessons then and um is what it is can't can't change the past it's a painful lesson yeah that hangs with you for that long but did you feel a large weight lifted off you after having that conversation with her uh no no felt the same way no it actually it made me more upset because i was like how does someone who literally altered the course of my life not that I'm blaming her for my eating disorder I would have probably developed one anyways because my mother had one and so I was

I was looking at negative food behaviors and that's all I knew and so when someone called me fat, I knew exactly what to do. Now, like I said, I don't blame her for it. But I couldn't believe that she didn't think I remembered who she was after what she said made me decide to stop eating. Yeah, I just, what I said earlier, I just don't think that someone like her ever thinks that someone like you even has normal feelings. Yeah, totally. And a lot of people still think that about celebrities.

Like, a common thing that I hear all the time is like, I hate it when celebrities talk about politics. And it's like, are we not a citizen of the same country? Because if you have a right to talk about politics, I do too. I think what people have a problem with is when celebrities tell people what to do. Yeah. Because people will listen. Then I have a problem with that too.

Yeah. And I do it. And I tell people what to do. And I'm like, don't listen to me. I'm a fucking idiot. But I think that that is a thing where when regular folks hear someone who's maybe an actor talking about how he wants to vote for Joe Biden and you're like, hey, man, just shut the fuck up. Just go be Captain America or whatever you do. Not Captain America.

That guy's great. I don't know why I said that. But you know what I mean? Go be whatever you are in some television show or some movie. I mean, go be some whatever you are in some television show or some movie. Don't lecture folks about politics when you probably barely know what you're talking about. You're only doing it to suck up to the liberal people in Hollywood that you think they're going to give you movie roles. But in the defense of that, I will say that like pretty much everyone in Hollywood, I guess, is pretty much everyone is a liberal. By saying

you're a liberal is not going to help you get a role in a movie. It does help, though. It helps reaffirm. Because there's a few people that aren't liberals, like Chris Pratt, and he has to keep his mouth shut. He has to be real careful. People were going after him online for nothing one day. I forget

what it was. But it's just like, they don't like him because he's Christianian like literally like i've seen people say i don't trust him he's a creepy christian that's so terrible the nicest guy no i know chris he's super sweet he's so nice it seems fake we totally really is that's really him i've been around him multiple times i went on a hunting trip with him i hung out with him in Utah for a week. He's the nicest guy. He's so, so, so sweet. He's great. I mean, that's really who he is.

I ran into him randomly with my family when we were in Hawaii on a vacation. Just ran into him. He's like that all the time. He's a genuine great guy, but the best example of a Christian. Like, the idea of being a christian is love your brothers as you would yourself be kind spread the word of peace and

love that's literally who that guy is i mean he really lives that way yeah no i believe it and i i i don't know him super well but we used to work out at the same gym and so i'd always see him in there and and he's he's kind of a like he's kind of a goofball he's a goofball yeah he's it was really funny to see him be like this action star outside of the gym but in the gym make dad jokes and he used to be a fat guy too so he's got that kind of like used to be a fat guy now he's a hot guy energy got it got it got it right because remember when he was on what was it uh parks and recreation yeah he was it was i didn't even see that show i never saw it either

but i remember him from it and then all of a sudden he's on guardians of the galaxy and he's jacked right right yeah but anyway super nice guy but he's one of the rare people that is a young guy or a young person who is not a liberal in Hollywood. It's tricky. And I will say that, like, I think there's this sense of urgency with anybody with a platform because when you only focus on, like, you use your platform for, you talk about so much stuff. You bring awareness to so many topics. You know, it's not politics per se in this instance but you know

it's like I think there's this urgency with celebrities who have a platform to use it for something good otherwise I just feel like I'm basking in the glory of my ego because a concert is like look at me I'm on stage look me, you're all here to see me. And then if I don't do something good with that, then I feel like a narcissist. That's probably good that you think that way. Probably. That's smart. No, it's smart because you're kind of like self-checking.

But you could also look at it this way, that what you're doing is doing your best work, and your best work, just your best singing and putting together songs and performances has a massive positive impact on your fans. I mean, you have to think about it, not just in terms of you getting all the love and adulation that you do get and that you would be a narcissist, but you're doing your best work. And when you do your best work and you have thousands and thousands of screaming fans having the best time because of what you've done because of the work that you put in and the performance that you put out when they're there watching it and experiencing

it they're having the time of their life so it is a net positive it's just the problem is only one person is the person with the microphone is saying and everybody's cheering at you so it feels fucking weird fame is weird fame is weird as fuck weird as fuck yeah like it you probably experience this but i can't go into a restaurant and see a cell phone pop up in my direction without thinking someone's taking a picture. Yes. And they might not be. Right.

But, like, I've been, I'm so hypervigilant in every scenario possible that if I hear a camera shutter, I'm like, like, spidey senses, you know? Yeah. Well, I fortunately grew up not famous, so I know both sides. I know anonymity and I know fame and it's i just i don't envy your position i've talked to quite a few people that have been young and famous like

miley and just uh quite a few other ones uh rob low and it's a weird road it's a weird road when you don't know anything other than being famous and the power dynamics to the struggles if you are making if you're providing for your family at a young age that gets weird like I had this I think part of the reason why I rebelled so much as a teenager was because my parents didn't know how to raise a child star like they did the best that they possibly could but at at one point when I'm being so I was what words can you say on here anything all of them I was a cunt okay I was a 17 year old cunt that didn't care I was just miserable because of how hard I was being worked and I didn't feel like I had the autonomy to stand up for my wants and needs.

And now I do. So I'm good. But at this point, I just, yeah, I lost my train of thought. I knew this was going to happen. What was I saying? You were just talking about what it's like to be young and famous. Your parents didn't know how to raise a child star. Cause get this,

like when, if I would get in trouble, my mom would say, you're grounded. I'd say, well, I paid the bills. What are you going to do?

And like, she could smack me, but like, that's still not going to make me stay grounded. Like, so it was this weird power struggle and um that's a weird spot to be in it's a weird spot to be in and i i know that my parents did the best that they could um and and look we all go through stuff but i don't think anybody knows how to

raise a child star there's no manual the only way to do it i think you would have to raise like 30 of them in a row from from birth to adult and go well that didn't work let's try another way right well that's not working let's get this kid uh to join the military when they're young let's get them to do you know fucking boot camp or something like i don't know what you would do to a child star to take them and make them grounded when they know that they can walk on stage and 18,000 people go bananas as soon as they see them it's a weird it's weird yeah it's weird yeah and so you've obviously done some things to try to balance yourself out you've done some things to try to

you know to mitigate some of the effects of fame and and obviously just by the way you're talking about it, how you want to do good, you don't want to be a narcissist. And you think about these things all the time. So when you said you went on that meditation trip, what are you trying to do when you're doing these things? I went, you're going to laugh, I went the week of the election. Good move.

Yeah, I was like, I don't need to be here regardless of what happens. Like, I just don't need to be in this country this week. So I went to Mexico and I went on this meditation retreat. And basically I met with my healers. Like I have a few healers. One of my healers took me down there and introduced me to other healers there. When you say you have a healer? Yeah, she's she's I call her my healer.

She's super intuitive, psychic, if you will. It's, and then she helps me. Get rid of money? No, no, no. She helps me get rid of negative energy and teaches me all the things. What is her background? Her background isn't in this stuff.

Is she an accountant? No, no, no. She's not an accountant. How does one find a healer? How do you get in contact with a healer it was like you a friend of a friend um i actually was not doing so well on a trip to bali and uh my security guard knew her and invited her along and when i was there we worked together and she told me things that nobody knew and so like what she knew what um she knew that I was into some some heavy stuff um this was at the time that I

had started using hard drugs hard hard drugs and nobody else knew that people around you knew it right i think that my no security like people around me knew that i was maybe doing party drugs but nobody knew what i was actually doing nobody just you just me and the people i was getting it from right but the people you're getting it from knew you so they knew other people that you knew so i kept people at an arm's length when i was stone cold sober people that i worked with that like i was acquaintances with but didn't hang out with and those some of those people i knew partied so when i decided i wanted to relapse I called one of them up and said hey what do you got and I like the way you said it when I decided I wanted to relapse yeah because you do you do decide so what is that decision like how do you make that decision like you're sitting around

you just like reality's too much sobriety's too much whatever this is is too much i just want to party it was more complicated than that because after being sober for six years um i couldn't understand why the last two years of my sobriety i had a raging eating disorder like if i'm so good spiritually and spiritually fit and all the things why am I still throwing up to the point where it's yeah so I had um told my treatment team at the time I need help um my bulimia is getting really bad and they said well you're not sick enough, but we can put together this week-long intensive retreat for you. They said you're not sick enough? Yes.

Yeah. How does someone decide you're not sick enough to get treatment? I don't know, because the week before, I had thrown up blood, and I had told them that. And they were like, how much blood? Pretty much. I guess because to them, I wasn't't underweight or I don't know. But it was really bad. And I was miserable.

And so I asked them for help. And when I didn't get the help I needed, I just stayed miserable for like six months. And after that six months, when I said, hey, guys, guess what? I just stayed miserable for like six months and after that six months when I said hey guys guess what I'm still miserable and I need help or I'm gonna pick up and I didn't get the help I needed I picked up and that's what you guys call doing drugs again pick up um I think because I was in the rooms of AA for so long yeah that's what that's what they call it pick up I guess that's more NA narcotics but um but yeah I guess and so this healer knew all this jazz she knew what was going

on she alluded to things that day um this is the same healer that like also told me a year ago right after I performed on the Super Bowl and Grammys she was like your career is going to slow down a lot and I was like what are you talking about I just teared up teed up my career come back this year and she was like everyone's going to slow down but don't worry and so I was like okay I don't know what that means but i told myself i wasn't going to worry and then we went into lockdown a month later and for covid so she told you this in february yeah everybody knew that was coming that bitch maybe january i don't fucking know it was before it was before it was a thing in November. It was a thing in November in Japan.

Well, I didn't hear of it. Excuse me, in China, people were paying attention. I didn't hear of it. I'm super skeptical. Don't come for my healer. Don't come for my healer. I'm coming for that bitch. Okay, then you meet with her and she'll tell you some crazy shit and it'll blow your mind.

Okay, then fine. Is this her first fight no i mean i'm sure there are people that have some so wait you don't believe in intuition i don't not believe okay how about that do you believe in manifestation um in meaning do you make things happen yeah like the secret that kind of I guess. I didn't read that book. All that stuff, like the law of attraction, here's the problem with it. They only talk to the people who are successful. So you have a positive user bias, right?

So the people that are successful, like, hey, Bob, how did you become this big big rock star and he'll say listen man i dreamt it i put the pictures on my wall i practiced every night i listened to hendrix i played music i lip-synced i did everything man i lived it i wanted it so bad and i made it happen but what about that guy that's you know working at the fucking chucky cheese now, who also had the same dreams, who also had the pictures on his wall, who also would lip sync to songs and wanted to be in a band so bad. And it never happened. Like, I think for everyone who becomes successful at anything, you obsess on that thing. You think about that thing all the time. And when you do make it and they interview you, everyone wants to pretend there's some sort of magic involved in what they've created and what they've done. I think

there's definitely luck. There's definitely moments where the stars align. There's good fortune. There's raw talent. There's people that have personalities that are suited to whatever endeavor they pursue, whether it's athletics or whether it's art, whether it's literature, whatever it is that you excel at, you can decide that it was manifest, that your mind created it, that you were destined to do this and you're destined to help the world and change the world. But I think we attach meaning to things to try to find order in chaos. And I think that if you just had a grand, if you had an enormous sample group of all the people

that wanted the same things that you have, or all the people that wanted the same things that, you know, pick a person, Chris Rock, all the people that want to be a Chris Rock, how many of them actually make it? How many of them who have those dreams actually make it? There's a lot involved. It's not just this idea of manifest. The problem is it leaves out discipline. It leaves out focus, drive, passion. It leaves out objective thinking, the introspective thinking where you look at yourself and look at yourself honestly, like what am i doing well and what am i sucking at and where am i failing and how do i correct and how do i make better that's how you get better at everything and some people don't do that so this idea of like

manifesting things it is a part of an enormous thing one thousand percent that's exactly what i was gonna chime in and say is i don't think that it's not the end-all be-all. I wouldn't have gotten to the position that I'm in today had I not driven hours to auditions and did the thing. And had talent. And had talent. I know that I earned the chair that I'm sitting in today in front of you because I worked hard and I have talent and I did help manifest that. But I think it all works together. I believe in listening to your intuition

and honing in that ability and trying to kind of like use what your body tells you and your intuition and your gut to make choices that'll have the best outcome for your life. And that's what mainly I mean by intuition. Not like I don't need to know the tickets on a lottery ticket or the numbers on a lottery ticket. I just like if I want something,

I'm going to continue to work hard to get it but i'm also going to manifest it and i think there's also intuition with people right like you have good feelings about people like you meet people and you're like i think you're going to be my friend yes and like and it's sometimes it's real like you do have and then you also have intuitions about people like this person has fucking weird energy yes and you don't know why. Yeah. Like people have, there's something to people that you can't put on a scale. You can't write it down.

You can't say, oh, well, they have 20 points of that. You don't know what it is, but some people have a thing. And that's a part of being a human being is reading people's energy. that's that's a part of being a human being is reading people's energy but i think the problem is some people make a bigger deal out of that than it really is and then they try to pretend that they have special abilities and they take advantage of people who are looking for people that have special abilities and i've met those people right there's their spiritual gurus and leaders and you know i think anyone that navigates from a place of ego cannot be trusted I think that if you are if you meet a healer that is all about posting things on their Instagram or

get getting clout or whatever it is like I don't trust those healers but if you say some shit to me that like really connects and and on top of that you're not looking for anything from me you're not you don't i don't feel like you have another agenda then i can get on board with trusting you then you can be my healer no i said i could get on board with trusting you it's just it's it falls into the vernacular of the woo-woo right yes healer yeah guru right right yeah right but i think it's it's probably not what you're envisioning like i'm not i'm not sitting with my healer and what do you do with your healer um we talk about a lot of things when the phone rings does it say like jenny the healer no but her name is jennifer

did i tell you that? Nope. Oh, that's... Are you sure you're not intuitive? Maybe. Hold on. But listen, you were telling a story outside and I overheard you. Okay.

Where like you said, it was just how you can like tell when you're fighting someone and they start to lose energy. Yeah. It's like... Well, I was talking... Well, it's hilarious. I was joking around kind of. But our nurse said the people that had COVID,

I knew they had COVID. I'm like, oh bitch, you got it. You got it. Like, they're like, I don't feel good, but I'm pretty sure I don't have them. Like, you got it, bitch. And what I was saying is they have a thing where people, they just, you can't tell it's, it's hard to read, but there's like a deflating. Like when someone feels great and looks great, they got this energy, like, wow, you look great.

You got a lot of energy. And then sometimes you see their dragon. I'm like, oh, you got it, bitch. You're fighting it off. That's what it's like. But if you're sparring someone, sometimes when you're sparring, you could see they're deflating,

even though it's hard to read. Like if you look at it in a video, you wouldn't even be able to tell. But if you're in there with them, you're like, I feel your energy. Your energy's hard to read. Like if you look at it in a video, you wouldn't even be able to tell. But if you're in there with them, you're like, I feel your energy. Your energy is starting to drop. But if spirituality is essentially energy, like you're putting,

even when you're manifesting things, it's like if you're putting positive energy towards something, if you are able to detect the drop of someone's energy, isn't that still in alignment with all of these things, you know? Sort of, but I think there's a lot of physical characteristics that come with the drop of someone's energy. There's a certain, like, they breathe a little heavier. They don't move as quick. I'm just saying I think that physical energy is still energy.

I think that, like, psychic energy energy the physical energy of it all like i think it all blends together i don't think that it has to be one or the other no i think you're right yeah i think there's some weird shit that happens when you think about someone all of a sudden they call you yes i don't know what that is like people say oh it's a coincidence maybe's a coincidence. And it sounds better if it's a coincidence, right? Then you sound smart and you sound like you just diminish any possibility that there's some strange connection that people share with each other. But I think sometimes it's almost weird enough where I'm willing to entertain the possibility that something else is going on.

Because like sometimes I'll get a text message from somebody I haven't talked to in a long fucking time, and then I'm just thinking about them, and I'm like, how does this dude know that I'm thinking about him? Right. Or they'll call you, or they'll send you an email. There's a little something going on. I think we all have it. We just individually have to harness it.

And you can harness it. You can go to different level you can achieve different levels of psychic ability through meditation and through like I found that when I go inward and I focus on my consciousness that I'm able to either see things or weird things happen. Like it just meditation helps me in so many ways. Yeah. Well, meditation allows you to cut back on a lot of the chatter, a lot of the chatter that's going on in your head, a lot of the noise. And the more you have like some semblance of peace and less noise the more you'll be able to recognize things

for what they really are see things clear and that that's a real battle with people it's cutting out the internal chatter cutting out the negative thinking and all the the the fucking tornado of shit that goes on in your head all the time right you know and people that don't try to silence that they wind up going off the rails like you're a person who you've you've had your ups and downs with drugs and with you know with mental health but you're here right now rock solid right like you and i are having a rock solid conversation yeah And it's not easy for a person to do what you've done in your lifetime. To be so young and to be so famous and to start off when you're fucking seven years old on Barney. That's crazy.

And to go through all these things. But here, right now, rock solid human being, regular conversation. You're right there. You know, that shows that you've, you know, whatever these obstacles that have been put in front of you, you've figured your way over them or around them or you've gone through them. You're doing the right stuff. Thank you. I appreciate everything you just said, by the way.

That means a lot to me. Well, you should be proud of yourself because I have many friends that were famous when they were young and it is not easy. It's real hard. And one friend whose parents ripped him off, he was a child actor and he was famous when he was really young and he found out as he was a grown adult that his parents had stolen millions of dollars from him.

And you know, and these are still his mom and his dad is like, what in the hell and he lives in this tortured world and he he never sought out the things that you're seeking out and that's more common than not what's more common than not is when someone becomes famous very early and it doesn't even have to be young right you could be in your 30s and get famous and go fucking crazy because it's nuts because it's just a weird concept like humans idolizing other humans yeah it's such a weird concept and if you don't do something like you're doing to sort of balance out your head and recognize like no no no no this is just crazy

this is just some weird place that i got in but i'm just a person yeah just like that girl that you called up she doesn't understand yeah like how do you even know who i am anymore yeah yeah like bitch i'll cut you oh i'm a blue belt i don't use knives anymore oh there you go we choke her but yeah you're into jujitsu i remember that i remember i ran into you at the ufc it was a couple of years ago and you were you're like really in a jujitsu like you train hard i was super super into it until covid hit and then when covid hit i just yeah i got really really nervous because i have asthma and autoimmune yeah so um i just i i got really, really nervous because I have asthma and autoimmune shit.

So I just, I got really nervous about training so close with anybody that I took a break from it. But I'm anxious to get back. I can't wait to train. It's a good humbler. That's a good thing to keep you balanced. It's the best thing I found for, I mean, outside of meditation for me. It's two totally different things, but. It's kind of different, but not.

But yeah, you're right. Yeah. Jiu-jitsu people are some of the calmest people I've ever met in my life. They're all chill. Totally. Totally. Yeah. Especially when they get into like flow rolling. Like that is meditative.

That is meditation. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I think even like hard sparring is meditative because you're forced to think only of that thing and when you think about that thing only it acts as like a cleansing yes it blows all that and also it's so hard to do that regular stuff seems easy

yeah like regular life seems easy some some pitches on top of you trying to collar choke yeah yeah but it's also like really empowering when you're collar choking. Yeah. You're like. When you're mounting on someone. Yeah. When you're mounting on someone and you're just. Yeah.

It's. It's. Crazy, right? It's empowering for sure. When you. Do you remember the first time you tapped somebody out? I actually don't. That's good.

That means you probably tapped a bunch of people out. I've tapped out a few people in my time isn't that wild though yeah it what's really wild is like when you surpass yourself like you think i don't know i just i never thought that i'd get a blue belt like i just never thought that i'd be a belt in anything. I'm a singer. And then hard work pays off. And it's just really cool when you get to prove yourself wrong. Well, if you get to blue belt, you're at purple belt. And if you get to purple belt, you can get to black belt. Totally. That's all it is.

It's just key. Where are you training? So I was training at Unbreakable. Oh, okay. Yeah. In West Hollywood. that's a great gym i love that gym so much famous people can go there too it's like yes for whatever reason snoop goes there wiz khalifa goes there stallone goes there yeah so um the reason why it's so chill is they

have like a no like cameras policy it's kind of like the soho house of oh yeah and a lot of athletes go in and train there too but um but it's private and it's super chill i used to train there and then i yeah um then i started training at my apartment building that i was living in and i got a house so i just will train there but so do you um have you gone to like other jiu-jitsu schools like if you're on the road have you ever done that i have like yeah i've gone to random places throughout the country um but i couldn't tell you the name and there weren't also a lot of people in there right um limited to the amount of people just a small amount of people that you can train with. Yeah.

Or just my trainer. You know, it's hard for me. Not a lot of people wanted to let me train with other people outside of a private lesson. Did they worry about you getting hurt? Yeah. They were worried about people being like... And then you sue the shit out of them. Right. Or just not being able to walk on stage. Yeah. They were worried about people being like. And then you sue the shit out of them.

Right. Or just not being able to walk on stage. Right. For a month. Oh my God. Right? You know? Somebody heel hooks you.

Yeah. Sorry, everybody. I lost my ACL. Right. Right. Training. I have worn boots on stage, too. So I'm a very clumsy person.

And they just don't. You've worn boots like broken foot boots? Is that you mean broken foot boots yeah really what happened to your foot so i broke my ankle in 2012 i think or 2013 and then i broke my foot in 2018 and i still had to tour the broken foot yeah i just bedazzled it. You bedazzled your boot? And I did it myself, like in the dressing, in my hotel room in Ireland, like the cheapest, like old jewels and hot glue. That's hilarious. When you were touring, how often were you on the road? Well, in the beginning of my career, it was nuts. Well, in the beginning of my career, it was nuts.

There was a time that summer that I had my first show in and Camp Rock released. By the end of, I guess, 90 days, I had done 70 concerts, 70 shows, 70 performances in 90 days. That's crazy. How did your voice hold up? It didn't. It did your voice hold up? It didn't. It didn't always hold up. And I learned from that in the beginning. I think my manager at the time had managed the Jonas Brothers and didn't realize when he took on me as a solo artist

that I would need more time to recover. Because when you're managing three guys, you're not factoring in two hours of hair and makeup a full show of performance by yourself you can't rely on your brother if you're tired you know there's nobody else but you on stage and so

there was an adjustment period because they were used to working so much so he just you know kind of gave me that schedule but when I said hey I can't work like this, this is too much, and my voice needs time to heal. Then I started touring. It went from five shows a week to four to three.

So I do three shows a week when I'm on tour, pretty much. And is that what you found is maintainable now? Like three shows is the way to do it? Because do you have to do like one show and then a day off? Yes, I normally do that. And then just drink tea and not talk to people? And sleep. Sleeping heals my voice like no other.

So hot tea, sleep, water. And then I don't know what works now, to be honest, because I'm in a different place than I was the last time I toured in 2018. How so? Well, 2018, I went on a North American tour and then a world tour and in the North American tour I was sober um but bulimic then when I went on the world tour I wasn't sober um but I wasn't bulimic anymore so it was just like it was I had different needs at the time and I think my needs will be very different than three years ago and you have to be really careful to not do permanent damage to your throat right of course vocal cords for for

singers that push it too hard and where they get polyps and all kinds of weird things you have to have surgery nodes yeah yeah yeah it can get rough right yeah it can get rough um but fortunately i've only knock on wood had negative uh like implications with my voice after being sick that's like the only time that i've had to cancel a show or anything like that so well that lemon probably helps yeah yeah there's something about like lemon in hot water that's always good when i have a fucked up voice. Yeah. I don't know why, but lemon just seems to do it. Calms it down. I just can't get enough of lemon water. It's good for you.

Yeah. Why not? Why not? Citrus. So what was it? What was your drug of choice? Was it like, were you trying to escape? Was it like a, like what kind of, what did you start with?

Hmm. Start with when? When you first started recognizing that you were using. Like you were using probably to try to mitigate some of the pressures of fame and all the wildness of your life. The first time I ever realized I had a problem was when I was 18. And it was Coke. Coke. Yeah. And what did coke do for you um because I had had an eating disorder I knew what it could do for me and um so I started your appetite keeps you

skinny yeah yeah and um yeah and so that was it and then I And then I got sober for a few months and went out. And the problem was that's when I got addicted to pills and Coke together, Xanax, because I wasn't sleeping from the Coke and needed to go to sleep at night. So I would take a Xanax, but then I would stay up. And then I ended up liking the effects of both of them at the same time. I used to always think of Xanax as this thing that people did just no big deal. Just, oh, you take a Xanax, you relax. Take a Xanax, have a glass of wine, relax.

I had no idea how difficult those things were to kick until two things one my friend jordan peterson got off of it and it took him like a year and he was in hell and then talking to another friend hamilton morris who is a real chemist and really understands like the the actual mechanisms of what these drugs do to your mind and your body and why it's so difficult to get off of them. But benzodiazepines, Xanax, and those type of drugs, those antidepressants or anti-anxiety, rather, those medications are some of the most difficult drugs to get off of. Way more difficult even for many people than heroin. Yeah. So in my experience, um, you know, when,

when I have withdrawn from heroin, I'm not worried necessarily about, um, what's going to happen to me physically. When, when I have had to come off of Xanax in the past, I've had to talk to a doctor about it, get on a prescription to get off of it. It's just it's a whole thing because people don't realize that heroin. I don't know if anyone has died of a heroin withdrawal, but it's not typical for people to die with from heroin withdrawals. It's typically alcohol and benzodiazepines. Yeah, those are the two big ones yeah those ones because without without properly withdrawing off of them you can go into a grand mal seizure and that's where it gets scary that's terrifying the other thing that hamilton was explaining

is that it changes your baseline that when you get on these things and it does alleviate some of your anxiety but then when you get off of them and it does alleviate some of your anxiety, but then when you get off of them, it actually accentuates your anxiety. So your anxiety, whatever you had before, is now elevated. So it becomes more difficult to get off of them because you needed them because you were trying to alleviate your anxiety. Now you get off of them and you're more anxious than you've ever been before. Right.

So it's not even back to normal. Right. Is that what it felt like with you? Um, to be honest, um, the last time that I had to withdraw from Benzo's was 10 years ago. Um, so, and I just remember. How old are you now you know 28 so you were 18 years old and you were withdrawn from benzos or 19 13 or 19 yeah and um that was that experience i just remember it was my first time ever going into withdrawals from something and i felt like i had the flu i was on i was on the couch for a week just watching tv sleeping it was not fun i had no energy because i was coming off coke like

yeah just sleeping it was what they put on what did they put you on to help you get off of benzos some other thing i don't know it was a prescription that my psychiatrist gave me but um did it help it was supposed to help um wean me off so that i wouldn't go into a seizure it wasn't like it actually helped me um like mentally or anything right right i don't think i even felt if it did have like benefits i didn't feel them because i was feeling so terrible that week so yeah um so coke and benzos were the first yeah and did did the benzos did uh xanax did it it help you i would imagine like who you are now you've you're much more accustomed to the fame and the life and you're kind of like settling into it but I would imagine that being 17 18 19

it was probably unbearable at times because it's probably so insane the most insane thing to me that I could never wrap my head around was like, I was a minor being followed by paparazzi, which are grown men. And so here I am, 16, 17 years old, going to dinner at Bob's Burgers with my friends and paparazzi's there. But it was perfectly legal because they had a camera where does that make sense for a minor right to be followed by grown men but it's okay because they have a camera i think the idea is that once you're famous once you're in a media form whether it's television or movies that you're free game and they can just take pictures of you even though they don't have to have your permission. It's like if you're a minor, it really should be illegal

for them to take photos of you. It should. And I think there's probably Disney stars that would get mad at me for saying that, that might be under 18. Well, they can consent to having their photos taken. Sure. But I think there needs to be like that. There needs to be consent.

And the fact that there wasn't any, there were times where like I hid in my house, like Halloween one night, like I hid in my, when I was 16, me and another Disney star just like hid in my room. You know, you said you do hair and makeup for two hours before you go on tour. Maybe you can get like

a special effects person to give you a crazy nose and like a weird forehead and i thought about it i want to i want to for sure i want to throw a wig on and just go out on the town yeah i barely have any hair now so it'd be super easy oh yeah you could totally do it yeah i mean they can do wild shit with people's faces now oh yeah for sure well fortunately with covid the masks right you put on sunglasses nobody can see you yeah but your hand tattoo my tattoos my necktie a lot of people have neck tattoos a lot of people have those today yeah you could cover that up with makeup or a turtleneck or some shit yeah a turtleneck yeah yeah you can you can move around but it does help it's weird when someone recognizes you when you have a hat, glasses, and a face mask on.

Yes, and you're like, how? What in the fuck? Right, right. Some people are just tuned in, especially if they're a big fan of yours. You know, they listen to all your albums. Or if they're psychic. Or maybe they're healers. so you get off of that stuff and how what how much time do you are you sober before you start doing anything again that time i stayed sober for six years wow well no sorry sorry sorry

about a month later i got sober and stayed sober for six years um so you had some rocky patches trying to get off the train. Yes, I had some rocky patches because I wasn't ready to commit to sobriety for the rest of my life. But I knew I needed to do it because I had people that were saying, for instance, my family was saying, we're going to move back to Texas. You won't be able to see your little sister anymore if you keep doing this. back to Texas. You won't be able to see your little sister anymore if you keep doing this. And also I had other people around me that said, we're going to leave you if you pick up again.

And they did when I ended up picking up again. So, you know, that's the boundary they set for me and i can i can respect that so you had a good stretch of multiple years what set it back off again well it was like i was saying the bulimia bulimia for two years and being miserable all while like not doing anything and thinking why why am i not doing anything because I'm miserable right and it's not like you're sober and you're happy right and when I called an acquaintance that night that I knew from the dirty days yeah no not the dirty days just a fellow songwriter that I had worked with in the studio one time and I she had made an off-the-cuff comment about partying the night before so i was like mental note cool good to know don't hang out

with her and then but when this happened i was like i'm gonna call that person and she brought um some stuff over and a suitcase like pulp fiction oh the duffel bag happened later that night but not from her a duffel bag duffel bag a fucking duffel bag it was a fucking duffel bag it was the worst okay talk about the worst timing my the first night that i decide i'm gonna go out i go to a party and my old dealer from six years before is there at the party. And I'm like, okay. And then it just was kind of a nightmare for a little bit. What kind of dealers are dealers to stars?

Like that's a weird dealer. That's a strange dealer situation. You know, dealers that are hanging out with rock stars and I think it's weirder to take advantage of people that don't have money and are dealers to regular people on the street like I mean I'm not saying that it's good to take advantage of anybody but I'm saying I can see the incentive of wanting to go after a celebrity because they have a lot of money it's like how do you go after somebody that's already on the street and homeless and not making anything like who are like i don't know i see the incentive to go after someone with money

i see what you're saying but you know i think you're looking at it in a different way than i am because you're looking at like they're going after you i don't look at it like that i look at it like there's an opening and someone's gonna take take that. Oh, I see what you mean. It's there. Yeah. Like you're going to use these homeless people are going to use people are going to use and they're just taking advantage of the fact that it's like if they didn't exist, if they were never born, that homeless person is still going to do meth.

Right. Right. Yeah. Right. It's it's not like they're like, hey, you don't need to get your shit together. That tent's perfect for you. What you need is some meth. It's not really.

But the thing, what I'm saying is this person's a criminal. They're out there selling illegal drugs, and they're partying with rock stars. And so they're texting back and forth with these super famous people. But they're also doing this thing that could wind them up in jail for 20 plus years if they get caught which is it's a weird way to live yeah you know because you're intimate with these people you know these people very well that are like splashed on the front page of magazines and on tmz and all this shit and then here you are selling them coke it's a fucking strange life yeah it's a i what kind of dude is a coke dealer

to rock stars you don't have to say their name yeah no i know i'm just trying to think of which one there's so many there's so many yes there's so many people it's not just celebrities doing drugs everyone in la is doing something whether it's smoking weed whether it's not just celebrities doing drugs everyone in LA is doing something whether it's smoking weed whether it's drinking coffee whether it's eating sugar everyone has their vice and so there are people in LA who are partying and doing these drugs that aren't celebrities and that's where the dealers come from they they don't just like meet celebrities and start selling to celebrities they're hanging around the people that are going to the yeah parties clubs whatever and but no one's breaking in their mom's house and stealing her jewelry for coffee and sugar true true yes yes coke and pills yeah it's a different animal

yeah no of course absolutely i know i for sure know that it's a different animal but um but i do agree with you but there's a lot of people, just regular people that do drugs. That's the problem with the concept of a drug-free America. Like a lot of these people saying that are smoking cigarettes. Or drinking coffee. Yeah. They're all drinking coffee or eating sugar every day. Or taking antidepressants or taking Ritalin.

There's a lot of, oh, I have ADHD. I need Adderall it's not i'm not doing drugs like okay you're fucking bouncing off the wall and cleaning other people's houses you're out of your fucking mind you're on drugs there's a lot of you know there's a lot of drugs you can get that are you know like you said coffee or a lot of other things you could you could get these stimulants right you know energy drinks yeah energy drinks yeah yeah it's um people are trying to do things to change their state of mind they don't like where they're at and they want to elevate or lower it or do something and you know and they always

want to cast judgment on other people that are doing it in a different way exactly yeah that's judgment on other people that are doing it in a different way. Exactly. Yeah. That's, it's interesting. You know, human beings are really interesting.

We're really interesting in our desire to escape our state of mind and to try to almost always do it with a substance rather than an activity. Yes. Do you think that escaping your state of mind is beneficial period? Like sometimes, sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. I your state of mind is beneficial, period? Sometimes. Sometimes? Yeah. I think there's a benefit in escaping certain states of mind for sure. Depressed states of mind, anxious states of mind, anger, fear. Sometimes a run will cure you of most of what ails you. a run will cure you of most of what ails you.

There's a lot of things that you can do where you're, you feel like you're just, there's, you're overwhelmed with anxiety or, or thoughts or just, just so many, so much pressure and the weirdness of life. And it sounds so simplistic, but a really brutal workout oftentimes will alleviate most of those feelings

to the point where if you could take in a pill form what it feels like to complete like a brutal 90 minute kettlebell workout and how you feel after it's over in terms of like your relationship to anxiety and your relationship to stress and pressure, that pill would be so popular it'd be so popular but the the actual act of doing a 90 minute hard workout for some people is just so daunting they just i think the reason because of that is because of the diet culture that is forced on us 24-7 and especially women women don't I'm not gonna want to go do a hard 90-minute workout at 10 p.m at night or whenever say it's three in the afternoon if I'm stressed because the second I walk into the gym I'm I'm now seeing thing if I'm walking into a regular gym at Unbreakable,

they don't have like weight loss shit on the walls. But like if you walk into a normal gym, if a woman or anybody has had an eating disorder or deals with the effects of diet culture and has dealt with all the shame that comes with that, that isn't the most therapeutic way for someone. I think you're right, but for some people, a workout isn't as beneficial because they might deal with

the crippling shame and anxiety of the diet culture that's put in our faces every day. I understand what you're saying. So when you go to a normal gym there's like weight loss this and lose fat yes fat burner this and there's just mirrors everywhere like unbreakable doesn't have mirrors which is why i really found comfort in and like working out there because i didn't i wasn't catching the corner of my eye thinking I need to work on this or I need to strengthen this you know it's not about that it's about making myself feel better which is what you were talking about but I think when like it's easy people can get easily

distracted and it becomes more stressful for them to step foot in those environments than it is to maybe go on a walk. Right. I know what you're saying. Yeah. Well, that's the beautiful thing about exercise videos that you can watch someone do a video or, or if you have like a really good coach or, you know, a trainer that can come over and put you through a video where you don't have to stare at some weight loss advertisement. But I can understand how that would be, especially if this is something that you've battled over and over again. You know, it's like being an alcoholic and going to a bar. Right.

Right. It's exactly like that. And so I appreciate you being able to see that. And I think for me, like when I really want to get in a good workout now, like because of COVID, it used to be jujitsu. But, you know, now it's going on a hike or it's getting outside, being outdoors, anything like that. I love snowboarding. You live in California?

Yeah. One of the best things about California is there's so many hills. Yeah, exactly. You can hike. It's like a real fucking workout. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love hiking. I love hiking so much. Yeah, it's nice a real fucking workout oh yeah yeah yeah i love hiking i love hiking so much yeah it's nice to just be outside too it's like there's something good about that

it's good for you to just be separate you know the gyms are great because everything's all there you can get it all done but there's definitely a benefit in doing things outside yeah do you do yoga i used to do bikram yeah um then you watched the documentary and then i watched the documentary um that fucking guy ruined yoga for so many people i didn't even i stopped bikram before i watched the doc but um yeah that's nuts it's crazy that's crazy um i did bikram for a while because it was extreme, and I only liked extreme workouts for a period of time. And for me, an hour and a half in a sauna is extreme.

I know that MMA fighters are used to cutting weight. I can't do that. So that was extreme for me. They only do that once a fight. True, true, true. But for a lot of those guys, they don't ever want to touch a sauna right right get that fucking thing right for me i do that once before a fight and that's good i've seen people in the aerodyne machine in a sauna and i'm like i don't know how they're doing laird ham, do you know who he is? No. He's a world-famous, world-champion surfer.

He's a real freak of nature. Cool. And his wife is Gabby Reese, who's another famous world-class athlete. And he does workouts in the sauna with oven mitts on. He gets on an airdyne machine. This is his fucking savage. Look at him.

He's a savage. so he's in the sauna 250 degrees in the sauna sometimes like no no bullshit like he sent me photos where it says like 230 and i'm like you're gonna you're that's a brisket yeah yeah you're good you can't stay in there you're gonna die oh die. Oh, my God. But he can tolerate it. He's built himself up to be able to do that. But he also wears oven mitts and rides a fucking airdyne machine in there. No. Yeah, because the metal gets too hot to hold it. Oh, my God.

I wasn't even thinking about that. Yeah, that's why he's got the oven mitts on. You can't hold onto the metal. Yeah, what in the fuck, dude? I just thought he wanted to sweat more or something. I was like, no, I need to do it without the mittens at least. It's a fucking frying pan. He's holding on to a frying pan.

Wow. That's, oh my gosh. That is wrong. Wow. He's a crazy person. He does a lot of crazy shit too. He does like these weird weightlifting workouts. He actually has a whole protocol for weightlifting workouts in the pool.

So he'll take 75-pound dumbbells and dive in the water and swim across the pool with a 75-pound dumbbell in his hand. Yeah, what? No. Yeah. I have friends that have gone, and he lives in Malibu, and also in Hawaii. But in Malibu, they have a setup where people come to their house and he'll take them through these workouts.

And I have friends that have gone there and they're like, dude, it's fucking ridiculous. Wow. The shit he does is just ridiculous. Wow. Yeah. I've had a few times where people like some fighters have asked me to like work out with them. And that's a hard no for me. have asked me to like work out with them.

And that's a hard no for me. I'm just like, like one time Ronda Rousey was like, you want to go to the sand dunes and run the sand dunes? Fuck out of here, bitch. And I remember I told, no, I said yes. And then I told my boyfriend at the time and he was like, you're going to do what? And I was like, yeah, I'm going to go run the sand dunes. And he was like, you know how hard that is?

And I texted her back. I was like, I don't think I can do that. It's really hard. Yeah. It's a weird thing how like you're running, like running a hill is hard. Running a sand hill is like running a hill times three. There's something, it's like the sand gives out. You're not getting anywhere.

It's like. Yeah. Look, walking at the beach is hard enough. Okay. I'm just trying to keep my flip-flops on. Exactly. I'm flexing my toes. Just trying to get to my towel.

Yeah, it's amazing what a hard workout you can get on sand dunes. Yeah. Running dunes, that's maniac shit. Yeah. I was on some maniac shit back then, though. Were you? Yeah, I was on some maniac shit. Like, what else were you doing?

I was nuts with my workouts there were times where I would live at the gym so I would actually like I would work out in the morning and then I would take a meeting at the gym like in the back office Like my management would come to the gym. Yeah, I would take a meeting, maybe eat some food, go to a second workout, which was probably either like if I did jits in the morning, I'd do striking at lunch or vice versa. And then I'd do weight training as my third workout. And after I would eat and do recovery, like the Normatec pants, the IV. I was training like a fighter at one point.

Were you training for something? Did you decide you were going to try to do something? Tour. Just a tour? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Why did you want to get in such crazy shape?

tour yeah really yeah um why'd you want to get in such crazy shape um i think it has to do with my eating disorder um i just was like i i have the ability to compartmentalize things so if it's an intense workout i can get through it by disassociating, which has worked in certain aspects of my life, but I've realized it's just not beneficial to my eating disorder. So I know what my, what I'm capable of physically. I know I'm capable of a lot, but I don't take, I don't push myself to that limit anymore because there's, I'm not a pro athlete. I'm a pop star. So like, there's i'm not a pro athlete i'm a pop star so like there's no point and i literally had dan leith um who was a nutritionist for ufc fighters like he was my meal prep person my chef for a year that's crazy yes and and so people would ask me like what are

you training for and i'm like i don't know like well one of the things that does happen to people when they develop addictions is they try to replace that negative addiction with a positive addiction yes and so i got sober and started working out so much and did you get shredded i did get a little shredded for sure um but i think that's why i like got to a blue belt so fast was because i was training i was taking privates three times a week and so i was training so much and and then it all went by the wayside during covid listen you can bounce right back yeah muscle, muscle memory. I got this. But I think you probably don't want to get to that three times a day thing. No, no, no.

There ain't no life in that. No, there's not. And that's what I had to realize, too. It was like, how much of my life am I actually living? Because I wasn't going to dinners with my friends. I was inviting my friends over. Eating chicken breasts and broccoli. I was inviting my friends over so that Dan could cook for my friends and I,

chicken breast and broccoli. Yeah. My friends were like, can we not go to your house for dinner tonight? Your food's bland, bitch. Yeah. They're just like,

we're hungry. Yeah. You're eating like you're cutting weight for a fight. That's hilarious. For a year. Yeah. Oh my God. Wow.

Were you taking supplements as well and doing the whole deal? I never got super big into supplements, just like vitamins, but nothing. Because my team had known about my eating disorder, for some reason, they were totally fine with me working out three times a day but didn't want me to take supplements oh how weird yeah what vitamins they were worried about vitamin just the idea of a pill like i think they they thought that if i went towards a supplement i would go towards the the weight loss stuff and they're not wrong so the weight loss stuff is all speed right i mean there's no real weight loss stuff which is probably why they were concerned yeah yeah i heard of garcinia pills or something like it was like this a fad like four years ago is that the shit dr oz got in trouble for pushing

maybe this was like four years ago so maybe yeah they brought dr oz in front of congress they're like hey fuck face like you're you're saying this is a miracle cure this shit doesn't do anything no yeah yeah you never didn't know about that yeah he was uh pushing some miracle weight loss cure it's literally a miracle it's literally doesn't do anything this is how you lose weight taking less calories and you burn off good night everybody that's it that's the only way that's how you lose weight you don't lose weight by taking some fucking miracle right there's no mirror so he got in trouble for that i also just stopped caring about my weight which is like i know for someone in the fitness world, it's probably hard for you to hear, but like, I think I just spent so many years stressing about it that in order to really find a balance with my health and my body, I had to allow myself, I had to legalize all the foods that I had not kept down for however many years and, and myself like I didn't eat uh pasta or like pizza

or cheeseburgers like for years I'm talking like like years I did not eat them and um now I just allow myself to to eat what my body is craving and and because of that, I don't eat the whole thing anymore. You know, like if I'm craving ice cream, I allow myself to get the ice cream. I eat it. I don't throw it up. And yet I still don't finish it, which is funny because when I was in my eating disorder, I would finish it even if I was hungry or not. Like it was just this like I have to eat it now because if I don't eat it now, I'm never going to be able to.

It was just this weird compulsion that I had. That's the problem, right? These compulsions. Whether it's eating disorders or gambling disorders or whatever, the human mind is very strange and these patterns that it gets locked into that it just wants to repeat over and over and over again. So it sounds to me like what you're doing

is developing a healthy relationship with food. Yes, and I had to take a different approach because I was never introduced to food in a healthy way. My mom had an eating disorder my whole life until I went to treatment when I was 18. She ended up going to treatment three months after I got out. And but she was she was 80 pounds when I was three years old. Yeah, when her and my dad went through my divorce, she was she was very,

very little. And so that's what my role model of food was, you know, so it was like so small yeah and that's why I don't blame the girl that bullied me you know I think I was destined to probably have some negative food behaviors given how I what I grew up around but um it definitely like was the catalyst for me to take on my own behaviors. Yeah. Yeah. Growing up with that sort of a thing that you're, you're people mirror whether they like it or not. Their parents behavior. Yeah. That's horrible.

God, 80 pounds is so little. She's also, um, a little woman. She's, she's five, two.

She's super petite. Um, and that's not invalidating what she went through at all. But, um, but it is, she is, she is a little firecracker. I call her cause she's this like ginger used to be a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader. Just the most upbeat personable mom you've ever met. How is she now with all your trials and tribulations, all the things you've gone through? She's so great. We are closer than we've ever been. She came over the other night on like Sunday night. Um, cause I hadn't seen her. That's awesome. She came over and like, I remember I went upstairs to go get a massage and in the middle of my massage which was like an hour later i hear her like finally leaving she

like stayed and hung out with my cousin and my friend and it was just cute because like i wasn't even down there anymore but she she felt comfortable just hanging out she's just so so chill that's nice yeah that's not it's well that's great to hear it's always great to hear when people go through shit with their parents or friends or whatever and then get it back in yeah get it back together my family is really close today closer than we've ever been um just because of all we've had to go through together we've all dealt with our own demons but we constantly try to lift each other up and as long as you're trying to do that then i think you'll be okay do you know who gabor mate is he's a famous uh you looked at

me so i'm gonna say you don't he's a famous addiction specialist okay no i don't but i feel like i've heard that name a pretty brilliant guy i've listened to him talk multiple times and one of the things that he says about addiction is that almost all of it has roots in childhood trauma and uh I watched your YouTube thing and the the thing that struck me the most was well it was a lot I shouldn't even say the most but one of the things that struck me pretty hard was your relationship with your dad and that your dad died alone and you don't even know what day he died and they found him and just the relationship that he had with your mom and just you having to grow up with that in your head that this is your dad and that this this person who was abusive to your mom and who died alone and you have this, like, people want relationships with their parents. They want good relationships with their parents.

Everybody does. And when you have that, like, I mean, it had to be a big part. Just besides all the fame and all the chaos that comes along with that, that had to be a big part of it. For sure. that comes along with that, that had to be a big part of it. For sure. And I think that set me up for relationship issues later down the road. It was hard growing up because my mom didn't ever want to,

like, not have me be raised without my father. But at the same time, he was so abusive to her that she couldn't be around him. And, um, I don't know. It was, it was really hard for me because I wanted, I wanted my, my birth dad. I didn't understand at that young age why my, my real dad wasn't around, but I also knew that my mom didn't have a ring finger for a reason and so and when I asked her why she didn't mince words I mean it was my my dad that did that and so what do you mean um so they were fighting one time and he slammed her finger to her hand in a door and she actually lost her pinky and her ring finger. Oh, Jesus. But they were able to sew the pinky back on.

And it's like that dichotomy of wanting your dad but also knowing your mom is missing a finger because of him is like this. Oh, fuck. How do you wrap your... You don't really. And so there was a lot at a young age that I think I didn't know how to process, didn't know how to comprehend. And, you know, unfortunately, I had to go through a lot to learn where all these roots have stemmed from but because I've gone through all of that. I've been able to

kind of identify the problem and Reprogram my narrative into what I believe is true today not what I believed was true 15 20 years ago and and I have a new life because of it. Do you want to have children of your own? I used to. I think if anything, I want to adopt more than anything. I think, I don't know. I was engaged to a man last year. Like, I totally thought that I'd be married, maybe pregnant by now.

And that's not the case. So I've just stopped kind of attaching myself to. I know that my life is not going according to my plan. Right. What's the plan? My plan as a 15 year old would have been like this this this by this age and this this you know just life doesn't go according to any plan so like I could sit here and say like yes I would love to have children but I don't know because that

might change next week I think in this moment I want to adopt for sure well that's a great way to raise a family yeah it's a very rewarding way I also don't know if I'm gonna end up with a guy so I can't really like see myself um maybe even like having my like getting pregnant you mean like ever I don't know you don't know I don't know I'm so fluid now and a part of the reason why i am so fluid is because i was like super closeted off you mean like sexually fluid yeah yeah like girls you like boys yeah yeah yeah um anything really so i just what do they call that like pansexual or something like that? Yeah. Yeah, pansexual. That's hilarious. They have a new word for it. There's a new word for it. It used to be bi.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? It used to be she's bi, and now it's like someone's pansexual. I heard someone call the LGBTQIA plus community the alphabet mafia, and I was like, that's it it that's what i'm going with i'm going with that so that's hilarious yeah i'm a part of the alphabet mafia and prep this there's a lot of letters in there yeah when you get too many letters and you can't remember them all and you're in it i'm like why can't we just say queer y'all you know i'm just kidding when did you realize you were uh whatever you want to call it?

Well, I think that's a loaded question because like I saw Cruel Intentions when I was a kid and saw Sarah Michelle Gellar and what's her face kiss? Selma Blair. I was like, oh, I like that. But like felt a lot of shame because growing up in Texas as a Christian, that's very frowned upon. And so, you know, any attraction that I ever had to a female at a young age, I shut it down before I even let myself process what I was feeling. You know, you just. Do you think people also have like a weird thing about it because they saw you when you were young? You were this young girl and this teen star, and now they think of you as being,

whether you're gay or whether you're gender fluid or sexually fluid, whatever you are. People are like, no, no, no, you're that cute girl from Barney, and now you're the, no, no, no, no, no, no. I know what I like from you. That girl JoJo Siwa is a perfect example I went to I went to a Jojo Siwa concert how was that it was wonderful good my 10 year old loved Jojo Siwa um yeah cute so I took her to a concert cute fucking ridiculous best dad ever it was pretty I got video of me like looking at myself i'm looking at her screaming what is this right uh it was pretty fun uh but when she came out i remember there was some discussion amongst moms like whether or not you know is this is are you okay with this like your daughter's

you know going like likes jojo siwa but now she's talking about maybe being gay and like like it's it's weird that the expectations that people have on folks like like like look gay adults used to be gay kids yeah that's how it works that works folks they grow up yeah and sometimes sometimes they weren't gay kids but they just like change their mind later in life. And that's okay too. And the same thing with straight. Like if you know someone and they're a straight child, but then they're 30 and they like to fuck, is that okay?

Like, are you okay with that? Are y'all okay? Can I have my sexuality back, please? Are they allowed to be an adult human being or do they have to be in this weird box that you've put them in? Right. Like I'm pushing 30. Okay. Or do they have to be in this weird box that you've put them in? Right. Like, I'm pushing 30, okay?

I am no longer a 15-year-old on Disney Channel. Please let me live my life. Well, you're going to live your life whether they like it or not. I'm pretty sure of that. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. But it's got to be strange expectations.

And do you ever have people, whether it's marketing people or PR people, that try to tell you not to talk about certain things? Of course. Yeah. Of course. They're all wrong, by the way. All of them. I think I've always had a hard time working with PR because I have such a strong opinion

and such strong boundaries that if I feel like a boundary is being crossed in an interview, um, I don't want to come off as an asshole, but I, you know, I feel obligated to stand up for myself. Exactly.

But PRs don't really like that. Publicists want to interject for you. So like if, if someone was sitting here and you asked a super inappropriate question the publicist would be like sorry next question please and it's like and i'm like that's so much more cringy than like me just shutting shit down yeah and and so i but it's hard because you know some of the people that are doing the interviews are writing an article about you in a magazine that you've read for years and years and years so you don't want to be an asshole an asshole and so it's this weird

it's this delicate um balance of like politeness and assertion i think i mean it's it's really difficult for a lot of people to do but i think what stars and and athletes even all all kind of performers where people are paying attention to them what they need to do is take back that narrative and figure out a way to speak for themselves and whether it's through their own podcast or uh you know a blog or you know if they just feel like writing their thoughts or just making videos and putting them up on youtube about how they really feel about things. And it's a great exercise too for them because sometimes you don't know how you really feel about something until you think about it for a long time and express yourself.

Like you can have like a real quick response to anything, whether it's current events or something's going on in your own life. You might have a quick response that you might think about it 20 minutes later and go, well, I don't think I think about it that way. Totally. There's more to it. There's more to it than that. So when someone else is deciding who you are or what you think or how you behave, just

by virtue of a bunch of weird gotcha questions and they're trying to make some article about you, like that's not representative of who you are. Like, this kind of conversation. Totally. Like, this kind of conversation. Like, people are going to listen to this. And they're going to go, oh, now I get her. That's who she is.

Yeah. Because it's really you. Right. Because it's really you. This is what more people need. They need less PR people. And they need, because you're allowed to be wrong or to make mistakes or to say something where you maybe you were a little rude because someone was rude to you

like that's who you are that's being a person that's that's better but and this is i do this in every the thing is is like yes that's who am. And that's what I think in that moment. But because I do have a platform and you have a platform, too, if we say something that gets cemented into the Internet forever. And so if we even thought 20 minutes ago something that we don't agree with 20 minutes later, you know, people hold that belief to our identity as who we are. Let them. Just say what you really think later. As long as you're being genuine, as long as you're being authentic.

Let them obsess over quotes and sound bites. Who cares? I'm getting a lot of heat right now for being so vocal about not being abstinent anymore. And having come from, you know, a very abstinence-based recovery, I think people have had a problem with that and so but the thing that i keep going back to is like at the end of the day my head on my pillow do i feel good about the choices i'm making and do i stand strong in my beliefs yes then i'm not going to let what someone in Idaho has to say about what I'm doing. Well, people want absolutes, right? Whether it comes to recovery from drugs and alcohol,

or whether it comes from anything, they don't want you to deviate from the path. And they want you to always be helpless in the face of your addictions. Right? This is the this is the thought process between a lot of the 12 step programs that you're helpless in the face of your addictions right this is this is the thought process between a lot of the 12-step programs that you're helpless in the face of your addictions um i don't know if that's true i have never had a drug or an alcohol addiction i've never had that kind of a compulsion so i don't know but what i read about you is that you think of yourself now as california sober like please tell me what the fuck California sober is I saw the smile on your face like start to form and it just made me so happy all right well so part of my um process now is like not defining the parameters publicly because I don't feel like it's anybody's business but me and my treatment team but it's a term that a lot of people use uh to identify this

path of moderation with the help of some green plants you know what I'm saying I do and so green plants you know what i'm saying i do and so green is the key word and and that's that's that yeah but it's it's such a loaded subject that even bringing it up you have to kind of guard yourself from the way other people are going to perceive what you're doing right i'm a celebrity and i guard everything i say even if i'm speaking my truth i still have to guard it to some degree because i don't i i'm working so hard not to offend anyone you know so it's like yes but every aspect of my life is that way now now do you find that this green stuff makes you more relaxed in dealing with the anxieties of life or like what is the green stuff is weed? Well, just like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we'll just like call it what it is. Yeah, it's it's something that, you know. It's something that, you know, it helps. And it also like is something that you can use for different things. It helped me learn how to meditate at first. You know, it was a lot easier to smoke a little bit and then meditate than it was to just go in without with just like the most clear mind. It helped me build a relationship with meditation to where I don't need it to meditate anymore. You know, there's things, there's benefits to it. And I think there's also just a sense of security

and knowing that even if I'm having a bad night and I turn to that, that's not going to kill me. Right. You know. I've always found that what marijuana, like when people think that marijuana is an escape, I mean, I guess it can be for some people. But for me, it's been the opposite of an escape. Right. It makes me more aware of things.

It makes me be able to appreciate the present moment longer because they say it slows down time. And so for me, as someone who deals with, I have ADHD. So how does it manifest itself when you say you have ADHD? My ADHD manifests in, I lose my train of thought really easily, which you've kind of seen once happen already. I lose my train of thought. I get distracted so easily. But I just I can't focus. So say I'm in the studio, like recording my vocals. I get so so caught up in. OK, what do I have? What am I doing tomorrow? What do I need to get done today? What do I have? What am I doing tomorrow? What do I need to get done today? What's what's the plan tonight? And I'm just thinking I'm future tripping. You know, I'm not appreciating the magic of music coming and appreciate the instrument that I am and that was a revelation that I had as as an artist that I'd never had before because I'd always just like

thought that my voice comes from me and not like really appreciating myself as an instrument and that was cool and it's things like that that just perspective it's like it opens your mind and um yeah and it doesn't kill you so it doesn't kill you and that the description of you having adhd to me sounds like you just being a person that's just normal i wonder about those those diagnoses so the way that i found out was someone did like a healer no it wasn't my healer it was a different healer no i'm just kidding um i went to this this place and they did like a a brain assessment and they did a brain scan and they also ran a bunch of different tests behavioral tests things like that they had me like um one of the tests was like they gave ran a bunch of different tests, behavioral tests, things like that. They had me, like, one of the tests was, like, they gave me a list of things I had to put in a schedule, like a planner. But I had to move things around.

And it just was, like, oh, it was so overwhelming. But just things like that that, I don't know, they knew that I was, but I didn't ever really know. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure I am too, if that's the case. If that's the case, I mean, look, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know a lot about it.

People get bored when they think about other shit. I mean, I really think, and when you say that you lose your train of thought, we've been talking for fucking two hours. Everybody loses. Yeah, yeah. Wow.

Everybody loses their train of thought. Yes. It's just normal yeah it's normal and also i don't take medication for it because i don't think it's bad enough or anything like that i just like if anything weed kind of is a little bit of a medication for it at times because it helps me like i'm able to rehearse longer because I get lost in the flow did you see that movie soul no oh it was that like new Pixar movie yes yes in a part of the movie they talk about when people lose themselves in music or art or

whatever maybe even flow rolling they go into it. They go into a different dimension in the movie, and that dimension is the ability of just flow. We all recognize that, right? When you see someone's in flow. Yes, yes. And so it's when you close your eyes and you're singing. It's that stuff. And that helped, you know,

weed helps me get into that state when it comes to rehearsals do you do you know the band counting crows i do oh my god colorblind i love all their shit but mr jones there's there's a there's a music video for mr jones and i remember this because it was like 1993 or whatever it was when that song came out and i was in my apartment in new york and uh i was on my way to a show and i was ready to leave and i was it was back in the day when people watched mtv for videos like they had music videos and that dude adam is dancing in this in this video singing and i'm like that dude is so free like look at him look at the way he's singing there like he's not he's not he doesn't have a care in the world he's just in the flow so he's

the video takes place in this apartment where he's singing and i just remember watching it going like that guy is like he's not holding anything back he's just completely lost in this song and i remember totally he's killing it well it'd be better if we could hear it but they'll pull it off at youtube or whatever we're on right now spotify i got spotify let us play it fuck what are we doing well isn't that why we escaped youtube in the first place but that to me was always the the video that i looked at and being like that we escaped YouTube in the first place but that to me was always the video that I looked at and like that guy's just in the flow you know and that

feeling I guess you'd get there without weed you can you totally can I just found that like weed gets you there quicker yeah just a little bit and I just yeah I there's it doesn't hurt you that's the thing it's like

it doesn't hurt your body but i do know people that have gotten addicted to weed you know yeah and that's something to be mindful of for sure but i i have a physical addiction though it's not an addiction like alcohol or benzos or coke or anything like that it's a it's an impulse it's a psychological addiction that's what it is yeah i mean maybe for some people it's a physical addiction like really really rare but for most people there's no there's nothing happens when you get off it there's no withdrawals yeah yeah i think that it's something to be like mindful of just like anything new in my life. I kind of, I have a treatment team that I run things by. You run weed by them?

Yeah. What'd they say? Whatever. You know, I came out of, I went to treatment for like a relapse. I relapsed in 2019. It was heavy. And it was a heavy one. Explain to everybody what you went through because it's like, it sounds normal, but you

almost died. So I overdosed on heroin and crack that was, well, the heroin was laced with fentanyl. And I OD'd in 2018 and that experience was a near-death experience for me the doctors told me I had five to ten minutes before it was too late um when they found me, I was blue. I was, there was blood. I had three strokes, a heart attack, and multiple organ failure. And I still have brain damage from it. What kind of brain damage? So I have blind spots in my vision. And I also had hearing loss from everything.

The blind spots are like, I don't I don't drive um I can't unless I was on like an open dirt road and I could just like I just don't want to put other people at risk on the roads um so you like normally you see everything like you see everything in front of you right now no so even like your face I see your eyeballs when I'm looking at your eyes I see your eyes but I don't see your nose your mouth or even your microphone what do you see this part it looks like I I looked at the sun you know when you're a kid and you look at the sun because someone told you not to because I'm that kid yeah it's like that when you look at the sun and like your or even like a camera flash and it kind

of goes like greenish bluish it's not black but it's you can't see and it's just like a blind spot that takes over kind of like everybody's bottom half of their face whoa and so my focus on someone's bottom half of their face if they were smiling could you look down at their teeth? I have to look down at people's mouths when they talk. So you only see like a stripe, like a strip of their face. Yeah, literally just exactly where you put it. I could see the top of your fingers, but not your hand. And so for the first few months, like I couldn't read out of a book. I was so hard to like tweezing my eyebrows couldn't do that at first

how do you live how do you live exactly my brows are extremely important to me so that was a huge thing fabulous thank you so much thank you you're doing a great job whatever you can see thank you uh whatever you can see you're a savage oh my god um but yeah it's so there was things that and i had to ask like opinions on my outfit like i couldn't wow couldn't see what shoes went with my outfit is this getting any better no so it plateaued after six months like whatever it would be after six months after the overdose would be what it'll be for the rest of my life. And this is from the stroke? Mm-hmm.

Wow. Have you looked into, there's some therapies that they're doing with people with neurological damage where they're using IV stem cells. IV stem cells, they're doing it in Panama and in Colombia and a few other places where they can't. They're doing some shit they can't really do in the United States. No, but I will definitely look into that. in Columbia and a few other places where they can't, they're doing some shit they can't really do in the United States. Um,

no, but I will definitely look into that. Yeah. I would love to connect you to this guy named Dr. Neil Reardon. I've had him on my podcast before. He's actually in Dallas and I, he came on with Mel Gibson cause Mel Gibson's Mel Gibson's dad.

When his dad was in his nineties, he was in a wheelchair. When he was a hundred, he was walking around and it's yeah all from stem cells he would send him down to panama to get all these stem cell treatments and you know his thought is like there's there's thoughts where people are like hey you know you don't really know what's the negative repercussions this like okay listen when you're 94 years old there's no fucking negative right like let's

let's just yeah let's just get real here totally and meanwhile you know mel gibson was telling me i wouldn't give this up he was telling me that when he was 100 he had boners so his dad would have a boner and he'd be walking around at 100 years old and he's like it's the craziest shit he's ever seen in his life like the guy was in a wheelchair his hips were all fucked up he was in pain all the time and you can do i sent my mom there my mom was uh on the verge of a knee replacement she had she'd fucked her knee up and um she went there and six months later her pain went away it took about six months for it to really generate enough healing and then i sent her back again for a second one. And they could do things with stem cells that you really,

and this is a, Dr. Neal Reardon's like a legitimate doctor. He's got peer-reviewed research. He's got books he's written on this stuff. And they've had some great success with certain neurological conditions that people have had by using and utilizing IV stem cell treatments. Wow. Yeah. I wonder if that could help you.

I kind of feel like I want to cry right now because I didn't think there was anything that could help. Listen, there's always new things coming down the horizon. Totally. I just literally had such radical acceptance over the fact that this is that's it forever yeah that i was just kind of like okay and like i'm gonna keep fighting well more power to you that you're able to do that because it might really be what you see for the rest of your life this might be it but yeah who knows but who knows but even just i never thought that there would be a possibility of anything else. They can do some wild shit now.

They really can. They can do some wild shit. They're helping people with some serious spinal cord injuries. Wow. Yeah. They use umbilical cord cells. When women have babies, they get C-sections, and they take their umbilical cord, and they make stem cells out of it.

Obviously, I'm not a scientist, so I'm butchering how they do it. Got it. c-sections and they take their umbilical cord and they make stem cells out of it obviously i'm not a scientist i'm butchering but it's pretty radical stuff wow that is really really cool i've heard of of people i had a friend i've had a couple friends that have gotten injured and they get the stem cells yeah um yeah i've done that yeah yeah That's one of the reasons why I'm so interested in it. Right. Because it's healed injuries that I had that were really fucked up injuries. Like I had a full length rotator cuff tear in my shoulder. It's gone.

Disappeared. Wow. Yeah. Six months later, I got another MRI. It doesn't exist anymore. And that's because of stem cells. Wow. Yeah.

The closest thing I've done with stem cells is there's a woman named Barbara Sturm, and she has her own skincare line, and she takes your blood, and then she uses your blood and puts it in the moisturizer. Whoa. And the stem cells, like, heal your skin. Yeah. But I haven't... That was before COVID.

Women do some wild shit for their skin. Yeah, that is true. They do that thing where they run that needle all over their face. Oh, micro blading. Yes, I've done that too. It's not painful, but it's weird. It looks crazy. Yeah, it looks crazy. It looks like you got attacked by little bats. Little tiny bats.

Your whole face has been bitten up. Yeah. So this experience that you had, you're, you're, you had a heart attack, you had strokes, you have this vision issue that's going to exist for the rest of your life. So I'm sure everyone around you then was like, Hey, you got to stay the fuck away from all drugs forever. Like, this is it like we almost

lost you this could be it for your life so how do you how do you ease into weed from there so it's it took a lot of time um what was the impetus like what what led you to do it um what led me to do it actually was I got into recovery from my bulimia. And I thought, all right, this is an addiction I've had since I was 12. How is it that everything started at 12 for me? I was like, how is it that I finally found recovery from this, but yet I'm still struggling with substances? I thought I thought well what am I doing with food that's different and I wasn't looking at it from a dogmatic approach this all or nothing mentality you know I was eating Taco Bell and letting myself keep it down and not throwing it up anymore and that to me was a new the normal person like doesn't know that that, of course, that's what you do with Taco Bell.

You let it sit. This was a new fucking idea for me. I was like, my mind was blown. You would eat, you would go on a bender, eat Taco Bell and then just like, okay, out of the pool, boys. Pretty much. Pretty much. Every time you ate something terrible like that you knew that you were gonna throw it up yeah yeah and um so when i when i went after i had relapsed

in 2019 on the hard stuff um i went back to the treatment center i'd gone to right after uh treatment and I just said to them I was like I I think I need to allow myself the ability to really try this middle path and not like before when I said I was on a middle path but really was like going was like really trying to party like I mean like if I want to smoke then I'll let myself smoke and I just I kind of came to terms with I kind of came up with that and talked it through with my treatment team back home and let everyone know like hey this is I have to own my truth and um and my treatment team said, Okay, like, we'll support you and stand by you. What do you need from us that will help? And it was at that point that like, I started getting this thing called the Vivitrol shot, which is a shot that

blocks all the opiate receptors in your brain. So if you I mean, mean honestly even if i were to get like in a bad injury and go to the hospital i couldn't even get opiates in a hospital because like my body will reject them so much it goes into withdrawals immediately really yeah and why do you need that um so it also helps with bulimia because what people don't realize about bulimia is that it helps. Bulimia, when you throw up, your opiate receptors go off in your brain. So sometimes people actually get addicted to the high you get after throwing up rather than like people think that it's like there's actually a physical component in your brain that people get addicted to um and that's why people become addicted to the feeling that euphoria after you that's crazy i had no idea i thought it just you always felt

every time i've thrown up i'd felt terrible i never would have imagined that there's a i guess because you're sick yeah i think like if you're not sick maybe you don't feel terrible i never would have imagined that there's a i guess because you're sick yeah i think like if you're not sick maybe you don't feel terrible i don't i don't understand i don't know but now i'm thinking of trying it no no no no oh my god no i'm kidding i'm kidding i'm kidding listen okay i'll never be believing i fucking i eat like a pig. And that's okay. It's okay to eat like a pig? Thank you. Yeah. If that's what makes you happy, then own your truth and live it.

All right. So I'm still curious as to what about weed made you want to even introduce it into your life after working so hard to be sober and having this horrible experience with overdosing. Right. So I often say, and this is really hard for people to hear sometimes, but I think that drugs saved my life at times because had I not had something to medicate with, I wouldn't be here. I would have taken my life by now. I've dealt with suicidal ideation since I was seven years old. And that's just something that's always been a part of my journey. I don't know why, but depression has, I've been, I've had a journey with that. There was a period of time where I thought to myself, I'm so miserable. I'm still sober. Now I'm sober again. This is after the overdose. I'm so sober and still so unhappy. What am I doing? And I got to this place where I kept thinking,

if I pick up, you know, that term, I had been told so many times by people in recovery or treatment team, whatever, not this treatment team, but a different one, that if I picked up that I would die. And I thought to myself, what kind of life am I living if I'm miserable 24-7 and if I feel like the bottom is going to drop out, I'm going to die? Like that's not really a life to live. And so I thought what if there's some sort of relief in between that's not going to kill me, that's not – I don't know, super dangerous. What is it? And I thought, well, I live in California. You know, why not a little weed?

And so I tried it and it wasn't so bad. And I began to appreciate what it could do for me. It stopped me from going to the other things. A lot of people say that weed is a gateway drug, but what people don't know is that it can also be a drug that can provide a little bit of relief for people who feel like when they get that low they're either gonna pick up something really dark really heavy or something more ominous you know yeah i don't buy that gateway shit i don't either i really don't

and i don't buy it with anything also i hate even calling weed a drug because it's a sacred plant like it's sacred medicine and so talking like a healer yeah i am i am but but it is it's like it's under the category of secret plant medicine. So there's definitely some magical properties to it. For sure. I think there's a lot about it that the plant has suffered from, you know, decades and decades of propaganda, almost 100 years worth. You know, it was made illegal in the 1930s. Oh, yeah.

By Harry N. Slinger. And William Randolph Hearst. Yeah. you know it was made illegal in the 1930s oh yeah by um harry ann slinger and william randolph hurst yeah and uh well harry ann slinger was before the 80s but um yeah it just was it's i think that people are are the only people that object to it are people they don't know what it's like i think some people have had a hard time with it themselves and they object. And that's, and that's true too. And I, and that's their truth.

And so I want to respect their truth. I love how kids say that these days. Live your truth. Live your truth. That's your truth. It is. And it's so important because it's like, I can respect their journey by saying,

and Elton, Elton John is in my documentary he says moderation does not work plain or simple plain and simple um i can respect that because for elton that is his truth for me i think elton was doing some hard shit though right yes um but i when my director of my documentary told him while he was filming, like, hey, you know, she's not 100% sober anymore. And he said, moderation does not work. Sorry.

And it's like, I can respect that for him because it didn't work. Did the director tell him specifically what you're not sober with? She smokes a little weed? Maybe. Maybe Elton would have went, huh? Yeah, I don't i actually don't i wasn't i don't know of the specific specifics of that conversation but how long has this been going on the weed thing um going on three years oh yeah so it's so you really weren't going on two years going on two years i'm so you weren't sober sober for that long.

Like after the overdose. After the overdose, I stayed clean for like 10 months, nine, 10 months. But you were still miserable. My depression was, when I say I've never been in a more dark place than that, I would have to, like, I, it was dark. It was really bad. And I didn't know if I was going to survive that. And do you feel better now? I do.

Is this, like, the best you've ever been? Like, your best state? That's great. Like, if you can say whenever you are at right now, like, wherever you are in life, if you can say, I'm doing better than I've ever done before. That's great. That means all the bullshit that you've gone through, you've kind of like figured your path. Right. I've never felt more sure of who I am or even what I want out of life because my whole growing up as a kid, I thought my life was music.

I thought my life was success, was all of this that I worked so hard for my whole childhood. And when I, the way that my, even my treatment team has changed, my case manager today, like, came into my life and kind of reshaped my whole thinking. I remember I sat down with him. And he talks about this in my documentary. Like, I sat down with him, and he talks about this in my documentary. I sat down with him. His name is Charles. And he was like, what's wrong? And I was like, I don't want to be here.

He's like, why are you here? And I was like, because people want me to be. And he goes, who's paying for it? And I said, me. He goes, you can leave. And I was like, really? And it was like hearing somebody in the treatment world say to me, like, you're in control,

was a concept I never knew before. So it might seem to the, I don't know. I never had autonomy until these last two years, really. Because I just I always ran things by other people or just listen to other people without objecting. That sounds depressing in and of itself. Yeah. And when you when you quiet your own voice for so long, it's going to overflow. Yeah. It's when you're always running things by people. Another thing that's happening when you're doing that is you're trying to find out what

you should and shouldn't do in terms of how other people feel like you should behave. Other people feel like you should like what's going to be best for your career, what's going to be best for your image. Yes. And you start thinking like that, it's very constricting and you compromise yourself and you make yourself way less interesting.

Whoever you really are never gets to grow because you're always stifling it and you're always squashing it and you're trying to fit it into this box. And the box because you're always stifling it and you're always squashing it and you're trying to fit it into this box. And the box that you're fitting into is the box that exists in a million different forms already. You're not even necessary, right?

There's a million other pop stars that will say the same shit that you're going to say if you run it through your publicist, right? Because your publicist just wants you to say things to keep getting them a paycheck. That's what they want to do. They want to keep you popular. They want to protect your career, keep you popular. And what's the they want to do. They want to keep you popular. They want to protect your career, keep you popular, and what's the best way to do it?

Don't say anything crazy. Don't say anything controversial. And that's why I think to myself, how much would my life look different had I gotten the help that I needed when I asked for it? When I went to people and said, hey, I'm really bulimic right now.

I need some help. Maybe I wouldn't have ended up overdosing because I felt like, well, there was a point where I thought to myself, they're not listening to me. I'm asking for help. And I just felt like, I don't know, I just felt like maybe things would be different. Do you think that sometimes help for a person like you means they have to kind of step in and tell you what to do and they don't want to and they're scared of you because you're the boss because you're the one who makes all the money you're the star you're the one who goes on stage in front of all these people so when you say I need help they're like oh just I

can keep her moving you know what I'm saying like they don't like because to really step in and intervene in someone's addiction and problems and whatever they're going through in their life, whether it's bulimia or whatever, you've got to put your foot down. And you've got to tell them, this is what we're going to do. A lot of people probably don't want to put themselves into that position with you. Right. I mean, I think that was the case, or that would be the case now because I make my own decisions. But I think when I asked for help at the time I wasn't in

control of the amount of calories I was eating in a day so like when I say that like my calories from if I ate halo top ice cream the night before they would be halo top ice cream it's like diet ice cream that like yes that like only the only reason why it's low calorie is because they put so much air in it that you think you're eating a pint of ice cream but you're only eating like this much really yeah that's i looked into it because i was like it can't be diet because it is really good but let it melt and then eat what's left exactly so i i think that like at some point yes but um or I think at some point in the future like people might think that because I'm making my own choices but it hasn't I have never consistently made my own choices for a solid amount of time and so now I feel like

I have a now I feel like the boss because I'm making the decisions you know now I feel like the boss because I'm making the decisions. Now I'm like, no, I want to do this TV show or I want to put out this album and I want to do this. I don't want to go on tour yet. You know what I mean? Just making choices for my wellness that are more important than my career. Another thing that's going to be really important is surround

yourself with strong people yeah strong people that are doing similar things like they're also kicking ass yes so that you realize like this is the atmosphere that you thrive in yes and the feed off of these people instead of them looking to you for strength or them looking to you for the worst isn't it looking to you for finances like if they need you financially yeah that um doesn't really like doesn't work no it doesn't work and i think knowing ahead of time that that was not ever going to work with personal relationships like i didn't ever really open myself up so that people could come to me and ask me for for money like if it's family of course if it's like close close close close close friends that's maybe a different situation but even at that the other problem it's not just that

they come to you for money but that they work for you so they rely on you financially and these people wind up being a part of your circle and you you get a limited version of who they really are. Which is true. And I see that. I know what's going on at all times, even when my team doesn't think that I see what's going on. I'm sure you do. And so I have my eye on everything and everyone. And so I feel like the boss now, which is good.

But what I'm getting at is that you need other tanks to go to war. And I started surrounding myself. I realized the relationships with other women is so important. I was the type of person that kind of always rushed into a relationship or was always in a relationship. And now I'm single and I rely on my friends to self-regulate as opposed to a partner. You know, I mean, actually, I rely on myself to self-regulate. But when I need support, I go to my friends who are also, some of which are on the same journey as me.

And that's been really helpful to have close friends that can hold each other accountable. Like, hey, we're on this middle path together. Like, we're not going to not gonna smoke a lot like too much weed you know what I'm saying like we gotta get obliterated yeah like let's but but also be gentle with ourselves and have compassion right for the journey that we're on because there isn't really um I don't know I feel like I haven't really, I guess smart recovery is a program that works with moderation, but like it's not as,

um, there's not much of a manual, I guess, for this middle path. It's just not a manual for anything you do in life. It's difficult to navigate. Right. Yeah.

And that's why if you're navigating from your truth you'll always feel certain like you even if you're not right you'll feel sure about it has there ever been a time where you are on or smoking weed after your recovery from this horrible overdose? Were you like, why am I doing this? Maybe I shouldn't even be smoking weed. Maybe I should just be sober. Totally.

There's been times where I've thought, yeah, I should be 100% sober. But when I ask myself, what is the reasoning behind that? Um, it's not realistic for me to look at my life and think for the rest of my life, I'm never going to ingest some substance, whether it's at the dentist getting work done or, you know, like, it's just not, I don't know what's going to happen in my life. And I once had somebody tell me, like, at my first time in rehab, they were like, I always turn down pain medication. And I was asking them a question. I was like, so you mean to tell me if your arm got chopped off and you're in the hospital and you're turning down pain medication? She was like, yep.

And I was like, I just don't believe that. My pain tolerance isn't that high. My arm's getting cut off. I'm going to need something. So it's just this like kind of ideal that of perfection. I don't really, I don't subscribe with because perfection has never worked for me before. And in fact, perfection has always been my demise it's been my downfall because I've strived to be so perfect at things that when I'm not I yeah it becomes destructive

that's a real problem with artists because you're you're trying to put something out and the way to get something really good is you have to be self-critical. And because of that, it can kind of get away from you and then nothing's good enough. And then you're striving for perfection. You can never achieve it. No matter what, you're unhappy. And people get in these crazy mental loops

when it comes to creating things. And it can be very self-destructive it's hard to get out i think it's self-destructive when that's the most important thing in your life when that is all that you put your purpose and meaning of life into is your music of course you're going to obsess over that but i have other outlets now you know i have things that i love to do like going on hikes and meditating with my friends or going to the beach, just like having a social life. I no longer worry about my status on the charts because I know at the end of the day, me being with my friends is what makes me happy. Not a placement on a chart because you take my friends away, you take my family away and I'm still at the I'm still on top of the charts that's not going to fulfill me that's not going to make me happy so even more

lonely and I think that's a common um you know belief that a lot of child stars have is that when you attach your purpose to your career at such a young age you don't know any different when you get older and then it stops fulfilling you and you're like why isn't it working so you start filling it up with other things yeah and that's where I got into trouble now I fill it up with things that are beneficial for me you know I fill it up with meditation I fill it up with healthy exercise even if it's just going on my trip I have a trampoline in my backyard. Trampolines are great. They're so fun. They're so underrated.

And they're such a great workout. Even if it's just like 15 minutes. It's really good for you. Yeah, just like jumping, listening to my favorite music. That is something that I use to fill up my time. Well, it sounds like you're enjoying it. I am.

That's what's most important that you whatever you obviously have put so much thought into how to live your life in the best way that works for you and you're figuring it out yeah this is great thanks it's awesome i'm constantly we're all constantly figuring it out hopefully if we're not we're falling apart or yeah yeah one or the other yeah but it seems like you are like you're consciously moving in the direction of improving your life and figuring it out yeah when you when you're doing that when you're constantly moving in the direction of figuring it out and trial and error and but always moving towards living a better life, living a more fulfilled life, then you're on the right path.

Right. For sure, right? One could say that I'm manifesting a better future. Without any voodoo, maybe. You're working hard at it. Come on. All right, all right. I just wanted to see what we could get away with.

Well, I mean, look, it's a part of it for sure is that you want you know you have a vision of being happy and fulfilled totally but it's it's harder for you it's going to be harder for you it's going to be harder for you because you're famous it's going to be harder for you because you grew up famous it's going to be harder for you because you know of all the different shit that you've gone through it's a you've got a path that like another person that doesn't like a man is never going to understand that path i mean i can try you cannot you can tell me and i i can put myself in your shoes and try to i can try to figure it out but the only thing that you and i have in common is we both like girls we both like girls in mma Yes. And weed. And jujitsu and weed. But you know what I'm saying?

Wait, you sound like a good time. What are you doing later? But other than that, it's like no one's going to really – and that's the other thing I was going to get to with you. Do you have famous friends? I have a few. Do you find yourself like – I used to never understand that when I was younger.

I was like, why do famous people always hang out together? And then I'm like, oh, they don't fucking know anybody that understands them, that gets their life. I would say my closest friends aren't famous. I would say I have a few close friends that are famous. I think the closest friend that I have in the industry is Ariana Grande. the closest friend that I have in the industry is Ariana Grande. Um, she's someone that has been so fucking supportive time after time after time again.

And I, you know, she's someone I can go to. She's someone in the industry that like when I need an industry friend, like she'll be there for me. And she's also a giant huge star too. She's a very big pop star. And so we don't get to see each other a lot and

i think that's what kind of keeps me from hanging out with other celebrities our schedule's never online like genuinely that's kind of the only reason why i don't have no okay okay a lot of people i don't i just also love like non-celebrities like sometimes more than celebrities because like i said when i came home that day my friend was like you did rock star shit all day you want to do some normal shit and i'm like hell fucking yeah and that's what gets me excited it's like right me and her jamming on the guitar and drums you know that's like just watching netflix or jumping on my trampoline. Like we just, it's normal people. Shit.

Normal people. Shit. I'm a home body that really thrives being at home with friends. Well, especially when you, in contrast to being on stage in front of 18,000 people. Right. Right.

Right. The last thing I want to do is like go be around a ton of people. You know? I do that every day. Yeah. Right, right, right. Or go to a red carpet and get photographed. I just hate red carpets, period.

It's weird. They're weird. Why is your carpet red? The carpet's never red, by the way. Maybe once in a while it's red. But you go to like the Teen Choice Awards, it's like purple. Fucking People's Choice is like. Does it bother you that it's red, but you go to the Teen Choice Awards, it's purple, fucking People's Choice is like- Does it bother you that it's not red?

It always bothered me, because I've only stepped on an actual red carpet maybe twice, and then all the rest of the times it was an actual red carpet, it didn't meet the stature of the event. You know what I'm saying? It's weird that it's a phrase too, right? I know. Like the red carpet. Well, a lot of people call it step and repeat.

Oh, is that what they call it? It's another term. Because you have to step and then over here. Step and repeat. Over here. Demi, over here. Over here. Over here.

Right. Over here. Pick your nose. They're always yelling at you to do something. Over the shoulder. Blow a kiss. Just try to get you to look at them, right? Pick your nose.

Yeah. It's odd, right? So weird. Yeah. And also, I'm never probably looking at their camera There's so many cameras How do they know They gotta go through like 500 shots

In 5 minutes And find which one I'm looking at their camera Or they just go on photoshop and move your eyeball left and right Wow That's what they do Those dirty fucks They do all kinds of weird shit with people Photoshop and move your eyeball left and right. Wow. That's what they do. Wow, you're totally right. That's what they do. Those dirty fucks. Yeah.

They do all kinds of weird shit with people. Yeah, and they'll fuck with you too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a strange world you live in, kid. Yeah. But you're navigating it well.

You really are, regardless of what anybody says. Don't listen to them. Look, you're here. Like I said, you're a rock solid human being right here in the moment yeah that's all you can ask for i feel present i feel grounded i know i got a lot of work to do just like any other human on this planet but like i'm excited for the challenge you know what is it like having this youtube original documentary out where it's just so much of your life and your pain and so i mean it's so personal and yet you're like everybody look at my life here's my family here's all the

shit i went through you know this is me when i was little like what is that like like reading your diary to the world and but like I like to call myself an open book with boundaries like I I share a lot in the doc but I don't share every single thing there are things that I left out um that's just not beneficial for other people to know I I told the things that Um, that's just not beneficial for other people to know. I, I told the things that hold me accountable and that, you know, I think will help other people. Um, but yeah, I, I, I keep some stuff to myself. I just think that, um, what was your question? I said, what is it like to have this documentary out that shows so much of your life to the world?

Well, technically I answered it. Maybe you do have ADHD. That's what I'm saying. I was like, technically, technically I answered it because I said it like. You did answer it. You did answer it. You answered it perfectly. It's like reading your diary to the whole world with video and photos.

And it was stressful. Why did you decide to do it? Because of how cathartic it is. That's why people write in their diaries. There's something also, I've never really known anything different. Like I've always been an open book to the world. So just all of a sudden,

shutting the door on telling my story didn't feel authentic to me anymore maybe because I had never done that before and it may have been a healthier decision I just also think there's something really healthy and speaking your truth and putting your truth out there and for someone like me who's always tried to please other people by being what they want me to be, whether it was a sexy pop star in a leotard or engaged to a dude, like, I had to speak my truth and tell the world, hey, my truth isn't going to be what you want it to be anymore. Like, I'm chopping my hair off because it feels right to me. A lot of my fans want me to have long hair. They love the long hair.

It's like, look. How do they feel about the double unicorns on your shirt? They haven't seen them yet. Only you have. But we'll find out. And I'm eager to know. It's hilarious if people have expectations about your looks. Like how you should wear your hair. Yes. but that's being a pop star yeah and so this was my way of saying

hey y'all all wrote like really false stories when this happened so first off i'm going to clear the the air i'm going to tell you what really happened secondly i'm going to show you that i'm done living other people's truths and third i'm here to tell you that i'm going to show you that I'm done living other people's truths. And third, I'm here to tell you that I'm going to live mine no matter what you think of it because it feels right to me. And this is the first time in my life where I felt right and grounded and centered in this way. in this way. So no matter how many people tell me, complete abstinence is the way to go, or we want your long hair, or you got to be with a guy. Like, no matter what you guys tell me, I'm going to do what feels right to me. And if that means growing my hair out at some point, fine. If that means being with a dude at some point, fine. If that means being completely

sober one day, fine. But in this moment, I'm living my truth for me and not for anyone else. And that's something that I think every celebrity in the public eye deserves to feel because when, or at least child stars, like when you grow up being told what to become by publicists, by agents, by managers, you don't really find autonomy in decision making in your life. Good for you. Really, you're a powerful person. That's awesome. I love hearing it.

I love hearing how healthy you're approaching this and the way you're thinking about all this. I think it's very empowering. And kudos to you, kid. Awesome. Thank you. I'm impressed. Thank you.'re thinking about all this. I think it's very empowering and kudos to you, kid. Awesome. Thank you. I'm impressed. Thank you. And I really enjoyed this.

I really enjoyed talking to you. I fucking enjoyed this. And you're dope and you're hilarious and we like the same stuff. So we're friends. We're friends. Yeah. All right. Thank you.

Bye, everybody. Bye. Thanks.