I never wanted this to happen, I don’t know why I did it, and I don’t know how I got into this mess. On July 24, 2018, I overdosed on a dangerous mix of the opioid drugs, heroin and fentanyl. Despite my close friends, and the team of assistants and therapists that monitored me closely, no one was fully aware of my relapse to hard drugs after six years of sobriety. Just a month before my overdose, I wrote a song called “Sober“:

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know why

I do it every, every, every time

It's only when I'm lonely

Sometimes I just wanna cave and I don't wanna fight

I try and I try and I try and I try and I try

Just hold me, I'm lonely

Momma, I'm so sorry, I'm not sober anymore

And daddy, please, forgive me for the drinks spilled on the floor

To the ones who never left me, we've been down this road before

I'm so sorry, I'm not sober anymore

On the night of my overdose, I called my drug dealer after my friends left the birthday party that was at my house. My dealer came over and gave me heroin. What I didn’t know was that he laced it with fentanyl. That wasn’t the only thing he did to me. He also sexually abused me that night, while I was high on the devil drugs he’d given me. When my friends found me, I was naked and blue. I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me. When I woke up in the hospital, they asked if we had had consensual sex. There was one flash that I had of him on top of me. I saw that flash and I said yes. It wasn't until a month after the overdose that I realized that I wasn't in any state of mind to make a consensual decision.’

The person who found me was my assistant and/ friend, Jordan Jackson. Once Jordan found my body, she thought that I was dead and she dialed 911 despite others wanting to keep my overdose a secret as long as possible. I was administered with Narcan, an emergency antidote for opioid overdose. My friends had told me that I only had five to ten more minutes to live.

I recognize throughout the new docuseries, substance addiction is a lasting, lifelong condition. I work at it every day. I still experience dark moments from time to time, but I have come a long way spiritually and emotionally. Since My overdose, I have learned to love myself and do things that contribute to my health and happiness, like meditation. I knew that what I had been looking for I hadn’t found yet. But what I had been looking for was not in the form of a drug. It was the spiritual growth that I have had over the past 7 months. I equated my drug and alcohol abuse to my new album which reflects on my 2018 relapse and overdose, “Dancing with the devil. The Art of Starting Over.”

Though I’m still figuring out my recovery and what works for me, I’ll continue to be an advocate for mental health and substance addiction. My candidness in my music, and in this 2021 docuseries, is one of my many efforts to spread awareness about addiction as a disease. I encourage those struggling to ask for help – do not hide your inner struggles, and do not try to cope with them alone. You deserve to be happy, to be healthy, and to thrive.

I’m telling everyone to not conform to what other people want you to be. Anyone can choose their life and set it up the way they want to. With the right people around them, they can thrive. I want everyone to take that away.