Lovato to leave TV show, focus on rehab

Tween star Demi Lovato, who emerged from a three-month rehab stay in January, announced Tuesday that she is leaving her Disney Channel hit "Sonny With a Chance" to concentrate on her music and her recovery. She delves into detail Friday in a Robin Roberts interview divided between "Good Morning America" and "20/20," both on the Disney-owned network ABC.

There, Lovato describes a lifelong eating disorder she says arose after being bullied as a child. "I literally didn't know why they were being so mean to me. And when I would ask them why, they would just say, 'Well, you're fat.' "

That led, she says, to a binge-and-purge cycle and bulimia. "I was compulsively overeating when I was 8 years old," the daughter of a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader says. "So, I guess, for the past 10 years I've had a really unhealthy relationship with food."

Worse, she says, at age 11 she began the self-mutilation coping mechanism called "cutting," in which she would intentionally slash herself.

"It was a way of expressing my own shame, of myself, on my own body," she tells Roberts. "I was matching the inside to the outside. And there were some times where my emotions were just so built up, I didn't know what to do. The only way that I could get instant gratification was through an immediate release on myself."

On Tuesday, in an online excerpt from this week's People magazine, Lovato, 18, said she was leaving her show "to focus on my music. . . . It's kind of sad for me that a chapter of my life has ended but there couldn't be a better time for me to move on."

The L.A.-based actress-singer added: "I don't think going back to 'Sonny' would be healthy for my recovery."

Lovato will continue to sing for the Disney music label Hollywood Records, according to Entertainment Weekly.

The series, in which she played Sonny Munroe, a new cast member in a show-within-the-show sketch-comedy series, is being retooled as an actual sketch-comedy series, "So Random!" scheduled to premiere in June.

Disney released a statement saying, "We extend our ongoing support to Demi and her family as she works to overcome personal issues."

Lovato's spokeswoman confirmed the reports, telling Newsday, "We don't have anything to provide that won't be redundant of what is already out there."