(CNN) — Demi Lovato returned to the Met Gala on Monday, eight years after her worst experience at the event left her wondering if she’d ever want to attend again.
After the 2016 Gala, Lovato posted a now-deleted photo on Instagram of her standing on the red carpet next to Nicki Minaj, who looked displeased. Lovato wrote that the image “pretty much sums up my first and probably last meeting.”
“I had a terrible experience,” she told Billboard in a 2018 interview, “and it was very exclusive.”
Lovato said she remembers “not wanting to drink” and leaving early to attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting — while wearing “millions of dollars in diamonds.”
“I identified more with the homeless people in that crowd who struggled with the same struggles as I did with the people at the Met Gala,” she said.
Lovato has publicly documented her history of drug abuse and recovery.
In July 2018, when Lovato released the song “Sober,” she was admitted to the hospital a month after suffering a fatal overdose, revealing that she was sick again. She later shared in her 2021 YouTube documentary “Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil” that she suffered multiple strokes and a heart attack while hospitalized.
The singer has turned over a new leaf, telling Andy Cohen on his Sirius XM radio show last year that he’s staying sober and in a “more positive frame of mind.”
“I won’t change my path because I don’t regret anything,” he said.
