David Archuleta Opens Up About Choosing to Be Homeless at the Height of His 'American Idol' Fame

David Archuleta is getting candid about a very challenging chapter in his life.

The 35-year-old American Idol runner-up has just released his new memoir Devout, and in it, he opened up about choosing to be homeless at the height of his fame.

Keep reading to find out more…

“I didn’t feel like I deserved to take care of myself. So even though I was having a lot of success in the public, I was sleeping in my car a lot of times because that’s what I believed I deserved,” David told People.

In his book, he wrote that he lived with a relative in Los Angeles while competing on the long-running reality singing competition, but then he later chose to live in his car, claiming the relationship was unhealthy.

“I had concocted this belief that I didn’t deserve to treat myself well,” the “Crush” singer wrote. “It was an act of ­ contrition — for my wicked thoughts, for allowing myself to be manipulated by so many. I was at the height of fame, and I chose homelessness. You can have everything, but worthiness comes from within, and I had none.”

Sometimes he’d stay with a friend or park in his car in someone’s driveway he knew, but a police officer once recognized him and it forced him to “acknowledge that living this way might have consequences beyond what I already knew,” such as becoming headline news.

He later left the Mormon Church and opened up about his bisexuality, allowing him to feel much better mentally.

“It’s nice to look back and be like, ‘I got through that in my very imperfect way of doing it, but I made it through it and I found a way to feel better about myself,’” he told People. “And even if I wasn’t able to accept it at the time, I can look back 16, 17 years later and say, ‘I worked my ass off. I worked as hard as I could.’ Even feeling miserable through all that and feeling ashamed to even be there, I worked as hard as I knew how to.”

Buy your copy of David‘s book Devout now on Amazon!

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