Dancer Dani Vitale took to Instagram to refute claims that she provided the singer with the drugs that led to her apparent overdose.
Dancer Dani Vitale has issued an impassioned statement that pushed back against allegations that she supplied singer Demi Lovato with the drugs that caused her apparent overdose.
Vitale, who performs with Lovato and described herself as a friend of the singer, shared her thoughts on the overdose and Lovato’s condition on her Instagram page, where she stated that she has “NEVER touched nor even SEEN a drug in [her] entire life,” and added that she did not use drugs, encourage their use or supply them to “anyone I love.”
Vitale also detailed how the rumors about her alleged involvement in Lovato’s overdose have impacted her life, stating that the “circulation of an UNTRUE story on the internet yanked my life, my reputation and everything I have worked so hard to stand for, out from underneath me.”
In the post, written on August 16, 2018, Vitale wrote that she was celebrating her birthday with friends on July 23, only to wake up the next morning and discover that Lovato had suffered an overdose.
“My whole being was ridden with sadness, confusion, love and hopelessness,” she wrote.
However, Vitale was not prepared for the outpouring of criticism from social media circles, much of which placed the blame for Lovato’s overdose on her. To complicate matters, she claimed that companies with whom she had worked and individuals she considered friends began to distance themselves from her.
“I wound up not leaving my house nor my bed for three weeks,” she wrote. “Terrified to open a blind or to get out of bed, my house remained just as dark as my mind daily. I thought if I stayed asleep, that was the time I didn’t have to be conscious living in this hell that was being forced upon me. And there were nights I would honestly hope I wouldn’t wake up the next morning so I didn’t have to live through this anymore and it would all go away.”
Lovato has since recovered from the overdose, and posted a message to fans via Instagram on August 5. “I am forever grateful for all of your love and support throughout this past week and beyond,” she wrote. “I now need time to heal and focus on my sobriety and road to recovery.” Vitale’s life has also found a degree of stability; though she is again leading dance classes in Los Angeles, but the pain of the social media outburst is clearly still with her.
“I’m still scared to touch my phone and open it, and trying to resume a ‘normal’ life has been brutally unbearable,” she wrote. “This UNTRUE narrative is damaging innocent people’s lives, mine included. We are so quick to point the finger with little to ZERO facts at all.”
