Lisa Marie Presley reveals battle with opioid addiction in new book: ‘I also fell prey’
The addiction was a large component of her divorce battle, but until lately she said little about it openly.
The 51-year-old daughter of Elvis Presley opened up for the first time about her “own addiction to opioids and painkillers” in a foreword she wrote for the book The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain by Harry Nelson. She made it clear that she’s “grateful to be alive today.”
“You may read this and wonder how, after losing people close to me, I also fell prey to opioids,” wrote Presley, whose father had an opioid addiction and ex-husband Michael Jackson died of an overdose.
“I was recovering after the [2008] birth of my daughters, Vivienne and Finley, when a doctor prescribed me opioids for pain. It only took a short-term prescription of opioids in the hospital for me to feel the need to keep taking them” she explained.
Presley described it as “a difficult path to overcome this dependence and to put my life back together. Even in recent years, I have seen too many people I loved struggle with addiction and die tragically from this epidemic. It is time for us to say goodbye to shame about addiction. We have to stop blaming and judging ourselves and the people around us… That starts with sharing our stories.”
While Presley attempted to maintain her own fight private, much of it was disclosed in the divorce filings dissolving her of her marriage to musician Michael Lockwood.
Last August on the Today show, Lisa Marie talked about her addiction without getting into specifics, saying her troubles started when she was 45-years-old. She said her therapist called her “a miracle” and told her, “I don’t know how you’re still alive.”
“I had never openly spoken in public about my own addiction to opioids and painkillers,” she wrote in the book. “I wasn’t sure that I was ready to share on such a personal topic.” But she decided to do it “to help other people.”
“Across America and the world, people are dying in mind-boggling numbers because of opioid and other drug overdoses,” she wrote. “Many more people are suffering silently, addicted to opioids and other substances. I am writing this in the hope that I can play a small part in focusing attention on this terrible crisis. I experienced firsthand how hard it is to cut through all of the bad information out there to get help. We all need to educate ourselves and the people around us on the dangers of opioids and other drugs, and understand what we can do to keep ourselves and the people we love safe…. Acknowledging that we are all at risk is not a measure of weakness, but of honesty.”
Presley also mentioned her children — in addition to the 10-year-old twins, she is a mom to actress Riley Keough, 30, and Benjamin Keough, 26. “As I write this, I think of my four children, who gave me the purpose to heal,” she wrote, and that made her think of “the countless parents who have lost children to opioids and other drugs.”
She ended by saying that she is “grateful to be alive today” and especially appreciative “to have four beautiful children who have given me a sense of purpose that has carried me through dark times.”
Please say a prayer for her and her family.
