Lisa Marie Presley Opens Up About Her Opioid Addiction in New Book: 'I'm Grateful to Be Alive'
Lisa Marie Presley has been going through an ongoing divorce battle, and her addiction to opioid has become a focal point of the proceedings.
While the 51-year-old singer and daughter of Elvis Presley has said little publicly on the subject, she opened up about her addiction to painkillers and opioids in the foreword for Harry Nelson’s book The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain, according to Yahoo.
In it, Presley reveals she is “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.
“I was recovering after the [2008] birth of my daughters, Vivienne and Finley, when a doctor prescribed me opioids for pain,” she added. “It only took a short-term prescription of opioids in the hospital for me to feel the need to keep taking them” due to their dangerous addictive properties.
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Addiction has been a part of Presley’s life since she was a child, as her father and ex-husband Michael Jackson both died of complications from drug use.
Presley has attempted to keep her addiction private, however details over her battle for sobriety emerged in the paperwork filed during her divorce from her fourth husband, musician Michael Lockwood. She told the Today show last August that her addiction problems began about six years ago.
“[It’s] a difficult path to overcome this dependence, and to put my life back together,” she continued in the foreword. “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.”
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The singer and songwriter specifically mentioned her children, Riley Keough, 30, Benjamin Keough, 26, and two 10-year-old twins, as the purpose behind her sobriety.
“As I write this, I think of my four children, who gave me the purpose to heal,” she wrote after considering “the countless parents who have lost children to opioids and other drugs.”
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“[I’m] grateful to be alive today… and to have four beautiful children who have given me a sense of purpose that has carried me through dark times.”
