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Even though she was open about her addiction issues while she was alive, she gave readers further insight into her state of mind during that stage of her life through the memoir.
Perhaps one of the most eye-opening revelations in the book was her addiction to painkillers immediately after welcoming twins Finley and Harper. Here’s how Lisa Marie felt about the situation.
Lisa Marie Presley Describes the Intensity of Her Addiction
Like some of us, Lisa Marie had her own ghosts to keep at bay and being high helped her combat some of those feelings. Even before the death of her son, Riley’s brother Benjamin, she had faced one of the biggest challenges of her life.
While Lisa Marie had formerly touched on her addiction to painkillers following the birth of her twins in 2008, she gave a deep dive into the intensity of that time of her life through the memoir ‘From Here to the Great Unknown.’
“It escalated to 80 pills a day,” Lisa Marie writes. “It took more and more to get high, and I honestly don’t know when your body decides it can’t deal with it anymore. But it does decide at some point.”
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Prior to reaching that point in her life, she had only used drugs for recreational purposes. “It was an absolute matter of addiction, withdrawal in the big leagues,” she writes. “I just wanted to check out. It was too painful to be sober.”
Weighing in on that time period of Lisa Marie’s life, her daughter Riley Keough, 35, shared that Lisa started using the drugs to cope with the pain of welcoming the girls through C-section.
However, she soon “progressed to taking them to sleep.” Riley further described how her mother would feel shame that she is an addict with two young children.
According to Riley, Lisa Marie’s addiction was something that shocked the family, as her mother previously wouldn’t even touch Advil or Tylenol as an adult. Yes, she might have used drugs as a teenager, but she has since been sober as an adult.
Riley Keough On Feeling Her Mother Wasn’t Ready To Be Sober At the Height of Her Addiction
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At length, Lisa Marie was hospitalized for her addiction and was court-ordered to attend rehab in LA. There, she decided to get bariatric surgery, which eventually led to her death in Jan. 2023 due to a complication that led to a small bowel obstruction.
“I didn’t feel she was ready to be sober,” Riley writes.
While writing some of its topics – like her mother’s addiction and death in 2023 and her brother’s addiction and suicide in 2020 – was obviously very hard for Riley, she did it so that people can understand the woman her mother was.
“I hope that in an extraordinary circumstance, people relate to a very human experience of love, heartbreak, loss, addiction and family,” she said. “[My mom] wanted to write a book in the hopes that someone could read her story and relate to her, to know that they’re not alone in the world. Her hope with this book was just human connection. So that’s mine.”
‘From Here to the Great Unknown’ is now available for purchase.
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