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Lisa Marie Presley, 54, is seen at the Golden Globes on Wednesday night. On Thursday morning she was rushed to a hospital after EMTs responded to her home for a ‘full cardiac arrest’
Lisa Marie Presley died on Thursday at the age of 54, after a life long lived in the shadow of drug and alcohol abuse.
She abused drugs from the age of 13-17, until her mother checked her into a Scientology rehab center.
Her son Benjamin died by suicide in July 2020 aged just 22, after a long battle with addiction. Her two-year marriage to Michael Jackson collapsed amid his drug abuse, and she herself became addicted to opioids in 2008, when she was given a short-term prescription during her recovery from the birth of her twin daughters, Vivienne and Finley.
By 2013, she was heavily abusing cocaine, and checked into rehab at least five times.
She was believed to have been sober in recent years, but following her son’s death her ex-husband Michael Lockwood said he feared she could relapse.
The daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley was just nine when her father died aged 42 of a heart attack, likely brought on by his addiction to prescription barbiturates.
As the only daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, she was quickly thrust into the limelight as a child and had more than her fair share of tragedy
Lisa Marie said she had to go to rehab ‘several times’, admitting to between three and five stints in a Mexican treatment facility
The little girl found his dead body slumped face-down on the carpet, with his girlfriend Ginger Alden trying to revive him, and recalled crying as she said ‘my daddy’s dead’.
His body was not removed from the property for three days following his death in August 1977, which Lisa Marie previously said made it ‘not seem real’ to her, and was ‘oddly comforting’.
As a teenager, she rebelled with drugs from the age of 13 to 17, but her mother put her into The Castle, a Scientology center in Hollywood, to get her off drugs.
‘I did everything but mushrooms and heroin or crack,’ she said.
‘Cocaine, sedatives, pot, and drinking — all at the same time… I don’t know how I lived through it.
‘I woke up one day with a bunch of people on the floor. I drove myself to the Church of Scientology and said: ‘Somebody… help me right now.”
For a time it worked, and Presley said she was drug-free from the age of 17.
At the age of 27, she married Michael Jackson – her second marriage, after a six-year union with actor Danny Keough, father of Benjamin and his actress sister Riley, now 33.
By the time of their 1994 wedding, he had been addicted to opioids for over a decade, following an 1984 accident on the set of a Pepsi commercial which left him with severe burns.
Lisa Marie and her second husband, Michael Jackson, are seen in Paris in 1994
Lisa Marie had a shotgun wedding to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, (left) just 20 days after she finalized her divorce with Danny Keough. She then went on to marry Hollywood actor Nicholas Cage (right) in a marriage that lasted just 107 days – with Cage filing for divorce
The last time Jackson and Lisa Marie spoke was in 2005 just before he went on trial for another molestation allegation
He checked into rehab in 1993, saying: ‘I became increasingly more dependent on the painkillers to get me through the days of my tour.’
He canceled the latter part of his 1993 ‘Dangerous’ world tour and announced that he was going into treatment.
Presley said she hoped their marriage would quell his addictions.
‘I fell into this whole, ‘You poor, sweet, misunderstood man, I’m going to save you,” she said in 2003.
‘I fell in love with him.’
But finally she gave him an ultimatum – and he chose drugs.
‘He had to make a decision. Was it the drugs and the vampires or me?’ she told Oprah Winfrey in 2003.
‘And he pushed me away.’
Their divorce was finalized in 1996.
Her third marriage, to Nicholas Cage, lasted only three months – Cage had also battled drug addition throughout his 20s, and famously revealed he took magic mushrooms with his cat.
By 2006 she married musician Michael Lockwood, and the birth of their twin daughters begun her own descent into drug addiction.
She fought to keep her addiction private, but details of her battle for sobriety emerged as she filed paperwork to divorce her fourth husband – musician Michael Lockwood
Lisa Marie tried to keep the majority of her battles private, but after marrying musician Michael Lockwood and having twins Finley and Vivian together, the pair went through a bitter divorce. The family are seen in 2010: from left – Riley Keough, Michael Lockwood, Benjamin Keough, and Lisa Marie Presley
In the forward to a 2015 book by Harry Nelson, The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain, she revealed for the first time the extent of her own addictions.
‘You may read this and wonder how, after losing people close to me, I also fell prey to opioids,’ she wrote.
She explained: ‘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.’
Presley, the only daughter of Elvis and Priscilla, added: ‘I had never openly spoken in public about my own addiction to opioids and painkillers.
‘I wasn’t sure that I was ready to share on such a personal topic.’
Ahead of the Golden Globes, Lisa Marie celebrated her late father’s 88th birthday with fans outside Graceland – Austin Butler also attended this event
Lisa Marie Presley was rushed to hospital less than two hours after celebrating her father at the Golden Globes with Austin Butler, who brought him back to life on the big screen
She said, in the 2015 book, she faced a ‘difficult path’ with her recovery.
‘It is time for us to say goodbye to shame about addiction.
‘Across America and the world, people are dying in mind-boggling numbers because of opioid and other drug overdoses.
‘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.’
Presley mentioned her children – the twins with Lockwood, plus Riley and Benjamin Keough.
‘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.’
The scale of her problem was laid bare amid her bruising 2016 divorce from Lockwood, after a decade of marriage.
In a 2017 deposition, which was obtained by the Radar Online, she admitted to abusing cocaine, opioids, painkillers and alcohol.
‘The last three years I … had to go to rehab several times,’ she said, later putting the exact number at somewhere between three and five stints in a Mexican treatment facility.
‘I was a mess. I couldn’t stop.’
The 54-year-old suffered a cardiac arrest at her Calabasas home on Thursday morning and was resuscitated by paramedics
Presley said that her addiction peaked as their marriage ended in 2016.
‘The last year of our marriage, I was abusing cocaine terribly,’ she said, according to the court documents.
Asked if her drug use was heavy, she said, ‘It was bad, yeah.’
She added: ‘I didn’t mix the pills and alcohol until, like, the last two years.’
Presley and Lockwood’s divorce battle is ongoing, with Lockwood now seeking money for his legal fees.
He said in court that he feared Benjamin’s suicide could cause her to relapse.Â
Lockwood requested custody of the children.
‘Lisa Marie Presley’s son shot and killed himself in her home (Although she was not there at the time.)Â
‘With all due sympathy and respect, this creates a new and unaddressed twofold problem: the safety of the children and the greater likelihood of LMP to relapse into drug and alcohol dependency,’ the documents read.Â
She was rushed to hospital on Thursday, suffering a cardiac arrest – having been out with her mother the night before at the Golden Globes, celebrating the success of Austin Butler in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic.
Priscilla Presley, 77, said she was getting the ‘best care’.
In a statement to People, she said: ‘My beloved daughter Lisa Marie was rushed to the hospital. She is now receiving the best care.
‘Please keep her and our family in your prayers. We feel the prayers from around the world and ask for privacy at this time.’
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